Attendance of specialized trade fairs effect on trade fair performance from relationship marketing perspective

In today's fierce competition environment, companies attach a particular importance to participate in specialized fairs with various purposes. Companies may participate in specialized fairs for the purpose of establishing new business contacts, getting into new markets, strengthening the relationships with existing customers, advertising new goods and services, gaining new customers and prestige and finding new distributors. Companies that determine the purposes and strategies for participating the fair can be more successful in reaching the desired purposes during and after the fair. Companies that successfully implement marketing strategies at specialized fairs can reach the desired results. For this purpose, companies can increase their fair performances by applying relational marketing strategies in specialized fairs. The aim of the thesis is to be able to see the effects of participating in specialized fairs to the companies' fair performances from the perspective of relational marketing. For this purpose, a survey study was carried out with authorized officials of 112 participant companies. As a result of survey study, it has been seen how the activities performed during and after the fair affected the fair performance. The relationship between activities performed during and after the fair and components of fair performance was determined. According to this, in participating of the companies to specialized fairs with the perspective of relational marketing, strategies about how the companies should apply activities during and after the fair may be recommended to increase their fair performances. Thus, within the scope of the thesis, it has been tried to evaluate how companies could affect their fair performance with the activities they performed during and after the fair with the perspective of relationship marketing.