Subject Areas and Future Research Agendas in Exhibition Research: Exhibitors' Perspectives

Abstract

Over the last two decades, exhibitions have drawn serious attention from researchers in tourism and general trade and management. This article identifies main research trends in current exhibition research and sets directions for future exhibition research through the content analysis of extant exhibition literatures. A total of 55 exhibition articles published in academic journals during the last two decades were collected for this thematic review. Thorough review of these publications highlighted several research themes in exhibition research. The research themes discussed in this article focus on exhibitors: (1) the role of exhibitions, (2) motives for exhibition participation, (3) exhibition participation process, and (4) exhibition service marketing. Based on the results of the thematic review, we make recommendations for future exhibition research.