Results of Market Survey Trade Fairs and internationalization of SMEs.

Market Survey on internationalization of SMEs in Europe was launched and conducted by CBBS in June/July 2012. As CBBS is also an SME, i.e. micro company, we created and launched our Market Survey on portal SurveyMonkey, that proved to be an excellent marketing online tool to collect and get quick feedback from your customers, clients or followers.

We invited some 350 top professionals from trade fair and media business, representatives of the different trade fair and SME associations, chambers and SME sector to take part in survey. Some 60 – 70 % of invited participants to take part in this market survey were our Linkedin connections and followers (http://www.linkedin.com/in/berislavcizmek).

Finally, 55 trade fair, media and SME professionals from 20 countries world wide took part in the survey and helped us in gathering information and answers about the importance of the trade fairs for SMEs related to the internationalization and entering new markets.

Market survey “Trade Fairs and internationalization of SMEs” has brought following results and conclusions:

SMEs are very important customers for for the trade fair industry. According to the survey 44 % of the trade fairs have more than 70 % of SME as exhibitors and visitors in theirs trade fairs or even more important is the finding that SMEs are representing more than 50% of total number of exhibitors and visitors in almost every trade fair (97% of the trade fairs).
Trade fairs are developing special services and programmes to meet the needs of SMEs. Almost 70% of the trade fair organizers developed services and offers matching specific needs of SMEs.
There are different services developed and adjusted to the needs of SMEs. Trade fairs are developing and creating different services and programmes to support SMEs to be more successful as exhibitors and visitors in the trade fairs world wide. The most popular and most common services developed for SMEs are:
- Matchmaking programmes.
- Training and education seminars for SMEs – “How to be successful in the exhibitions”.
- Presentation, marketing and PR activites – support and consultancy of SMEs on the topics like: marketing, promotion, communication, presentation in trade fairs.
- Stand construction – support for SMEs with the stand design and stand construction, special pricing for stand construction for SMEs, especially for the national pavillions or group stands.
Importance of trade fairs for export oriented companies.
SMEs are aware of importance of the trade fair industry for the internationalization and entering new markets.
SMEs are supported by governments, chambers and other institutions to participate in the international trade fairs.
Trade Fair Industry and SMEs are partners.