International virtual trade fairs: An analysis on the perspectives of participating firms

The aim of the study is to reveal the degree of adoption of the virtual fairs, which have become a new virtual event environment, by the enterprises that are in an endeavor to adapt themselves to the digitalizing new world structure, access the information required for export-led growth, and improve their potential collaborations in line with the attitudes of their participants towards these fairs. It is obvious that fairs are still the most sustainable and effective way to reach buyers in the world. However, as a result of the decrease in physical communication caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has created an unprecedented social, political, and economic impact in the world, both the organization of fairs and the attendance and participation in these fairs have emerged as a significant problem for enterprises. It is tried to overcome this problem relatively through the current and new technological developments arising in terms of virtual events. Virtual fairs have emerged as the only alternative to face-to-face fairs with the pandemic. The breadth and depth of the literature on these fairs are still premature. In this regard, the lack of a scale in the field of the effectiveness of virtual fairs is regarded as a significant deficiency. It is believed that the scale presented in this study will contribute to the field. In the study, the quantitative method was preferred by adopting an online questionnaire as the data collection tool due to the fact that the study involved research towards fair participants and there was no in-depth data collection opportunity. The research population consists of enterprises based in Turkey and participated in at least one virtual fair between the years 2020 and 2021, which is the pandemic period. 1,067 companies participating in the digital B2B fair organized by the Turkish Arab Countries Business Association were targeted in order to approach these enterprises. 204 participant company representatives were accessed in the study. It was tried to keep the external validity level high by reaching a large sample group. The Likert-type scale consisting of five sections was sent to the virtual fair participants. In addition to the descriptive statistics of the participating companies, dimensional and sample cluster analyses of the concepts within the research were performed. As a result of the research, the participants reported that even if technological developments increased the efficiency of virtual fairs, the importance of physical fairs would not be reduced, and that virtual fairs would continue to exist as an additional activity and a complementary marketing channel. The study consists of three sections. The first section includes digital transformation and virtualization, the second section focuses on fairs as business-to-business virtual events, and the third section presents field research on the effectiveness of international virtual fairs.