A Study on the Improvement of Exhibition Site Management Quality
based on the Exhibition Service Quality Perceptions of Professional
Guest
Wang Shangjun
School of Economy & Management, Shanghai Second Polytechnic University, P.R.China, 201209
Keywords: Exhibition Business, Exhibition Site Management, Service Quality Management, Professional Guest,
Quality Perception.
Abstract: Exhibition business is very popular today in China and more and more exhibition activity have be held and
become the famous brand. In order to make the business successful and keep a good reputation, exhibition
hosts pay more attention to their managing quality. Especially, Site management plays a very important role
during the operation and management of a brand exhibition. The services provide to the guest including
exhibitor and professional guest are the key elements of improving the quality of management. The study
try to examine the exhibition service quality based on the perception of professional guests who are
attracted to take part in brand exhibition holding in Shanghai. And identify the importance and satisfaction
of services provided to professional guest during the exhibition by 20 key elements of service quality
including hospitality, visiting order, visiting environment, venue facilities and logistics facilities, etc. And
proposed some key advice and strategy to improve the quality of exhibition site management by improve
the service quality to professional guest.
1 INTRODUCTION
The total exhibition area of the exhibition held in
Shanghai was12,008,000 square meters, which
increased by 8.25% in 2013. (As shown in Table 1)
The biggest increase of the exhibition items of
100,000 to 200,000 square meters was up to 21.43%.
2015 is the year that implementation of the Ministry
of Commerce to promote the "guidance of the
development of exhibition industry " in the period of
“the twelfth five-year planning”. Shanghai’s target
of becoming one of the international exhibition
centers in the Asia Pacific region has been
increasingly prominent. In particular, the completion
of the National Convention Center in 2014, with
500,000 square meters of exhibition space, including
indoor exhibition halls of 400000 square meters and
outdoor exhibition area of 100,000 square meters, as
the world's largest and most competitive exhibition
complex, has created unprecedented advantage for
the development of Shanghai exhibition industry.
Currently, besides the increase of exhibition
numbers, the expansion of exhibition areas, the in-
depth analysis of customers’ perception for the
service quality of the exhibitions held in Shanghai
and the precise grasp of the key features of a
professional guests’ perception for the quality of
service have become the key to enhancing the
market competitiveness of Shanghai exhibition
market and improving the operation and
management level. IPA as an effective tool can help
the researchers to analyse the law of professional
guest’s perception for the service quality of
exhibitions and provide useful strategies for the
researchers.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
The topic of Service Quality (QOS) originated a
concept about customer’s perception for service
quality proposed by Gronroos in 1982. Since then,
the achievements of decades of research by scholars
in this field center on exploring theoretical models
and empirical studies
[1-7]
. With the development of
exhibition industry, the research about how to apply
theories and methods of service quality to the
operation and management of exhibition has
multiplied. The research perspective has switched
from macro-study about the relationship between the
26
26
Shangjun W.
A Study on the Improvement of Exhibition Site Management Quality based on the Exhibition Service Quality Perceptions of Professional Guest.
DOI: 10.5220/0006018500260031
In Proceedings of the Information Science and Management Engineering III (ISME 2015), pages 26-31
ISBN: 978-989-758-163-2
Copyright
c
 2015 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

exhibition quality and destination to the micro-study
about the evaluation and perception of service
quality in exhibition. increasing use of MICE
industry perspective organizers and exhibitors
focused on analyzing the perception of the degree.
Go, Qu (2000) and other methods have been used to
evaluate and construct organizers’ and clients’
feelings for some exhibition destination or
exhibition center.
[8]
.Wendy Huntsman (2001) using
the IPA model from the perspective of the exhibitors
were satisfied with the study of participating factors,
whether or not he believes the main exhibitor
satisfaction and on-site service, 25 booths factors,
cost, and other related ancillary services
[9]
. The
access of exhibition service perception is mainly by
SERVQUANL and IPA tools and mainly perceived
by exhibitors. For exhibition’s organizer and
destination, IPA mode is a valuable tool which can
show us the exhibitors perception to exhibition’s
sevice quality and can propose effective
suggestions(Chen Pinpin, Cai Libin, 2014)
[10]
.SERVQAUL mode can help to construct
evaluation index about satisfaction of professional
audience(Zhang Wenjie, 2010)
[11]
.The two tools are
all effective measurements, which can be used to
evaluate the service quality of Mega-event( Wang
Liang, 2011)
[12]
. Furthermore, the index of
exhibition service quality is more and more accurate
and detailed. For exhibitor,25 indexes including
booth, price, logistics, etc can be the measurement of
service quality. Form 2009 to 2014,the evaluation
index has increased form 20 to 38. In a word, the
current study on exhibition service are mainly based
on the exhibitor’s perception. This study is trying to
analysis the exhibition service quality perceived by
professional guests and construct the evaluation
index to find out the laws of service quality of
exhibition in order to propose constructive
suggestion to improve it.
We strongly encourage authors to use this document
for the preparation of the camera-ready. Please
follow the instructions closely in order to make the
volume look as uniform as possible (Moore and
Lopes, 1999)
[13]
.
3 STUDY DESIGN
3.1 Research Ideas
The analysis of the essay is based on the IPA
evaluation model, that is the "importance -
Satisfaction" model, also known as "the importance -
performance analysis" model. In order to accurately
grasp the visitors’ perception for the service quality
on the site and to provide strategies for the operation
and management of exhibition service, this study
adopts five progressive steps: Firstly, according to
the organizers interviews and theoretical literature,
list 23 perceptual elements of visitors’ perception
for the service quality; Secondly, according to the
design scales, start the pre-survey, whose object is
professional brand exhibition held in Shanghai New
International Expo Center - Shanghai East China
Import and Export Fair, besides, amend and finalize
20 perception elements for the on-site service quality
of exhibition; Thirdly, do formal research on
professional brand exhibitions held in Shanghai New
International Expo Center - Shanghai Hotel
Supplies Exhibition; Fourthly, according to the
survey data, analyse the data of professional visitors’
perception for the on-site service quality of Shanghai
exhibition industry, trying to find out the basic law
of visitors’ satisfaction and importance of service
quality; Fifthly, use "IPA" tool to do analysis of
countermeasures and propose the way to enhance
level of operation and management of Shanghai
exhibition industry in terms of service.
3.2 Questionnaire
250 formal questionnaires were distributed and 223
copies were returned of which 203 questionnaires
are valid. The effective rate was 91.03% and the
demographic characteristics of the sample are shown
in Table 2. According to the letter of the test, the
Cronbach’s a coefficients of the guests’ perception
of the importance and satisfaction of on-site service
quality were respectively 0.817 and 0.852. When the
coefficient is above 0.7, it means that the
questionnaire has passed reliability test, with high
stability and reliability (Table 1). Formal
questionnaire consists of two parts:
Table 1: The importance of reliability and satisfaction
statistics.
Cronbach's
Alpha
Num
ber
The importance
of reliability
statistics
.817 20
The satisfaction
of reliability
statistics
.852 20
A Study on the Improvement of Exhibition Site Management Quality based on the Exhibition Service Quality Perceptions
of Professional Guest
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A Study on the Improvement of Exhibition Site Management Quality based on the Exhibition Service Quality Perceptions of Professional
Guest
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3.3 (1) Demographic Sample Survey
Demographic sample survey of toursits including
gender, age, education, occupation, times of
exhibition visit, visit the six purposes (Table 2).
Table 2: Demographic Characteristic of Respondents.
project Frequency(%)
Gende
r
male 108(53.20)
female 95(46.80)
Age 21-30 years old 106(52.22)
31-40 years old 66(32.51)
41-50 years old 25(12.32)
51 years and older 6(2.95)
Education
High school and
below
32(15.76)
Junior college 55(27.09)
undergraduate 92(45.32)
graduate and above 24(11.82)
Occupatio
n
Sales 78(38.42)
Market 29(14.29)
Technology research
and development
19(9.36)
Others 77(37.93)
Times of
visiting
Shanghai
exhibition
1-2 times 73(35.96)
3-5 times 68(33.50)
6-10 times 38(18.72)
More than 10 times 24(11.82)
Purpose of
Visit
Understand the
market situation
112(55.17)
Look for Partners 69(33.99)
Place an order 43(21.18)
Others 52(25.62)
The survey shows that men accounted for 53.20%
and 46.80% is female ,what’s more, male guests
outnumbered women toursit by 6.40%; guests aged
21-30 or 31-40 accounted for 84.73%; In terms of
education, guests with a bachelor’s degree accounted
for 45.31%, which means the guests are mainly
composed of moderately educated people; In terms
of occupation, the sales persons constitute 38.42%,
of the total number, which is the highest proportion;
In the case of the visiting times, 35.96% of the
guests paid visit to Shanghai exhibition one or two
times, followed by 3-5times, which constitute
33.50% of the total number; As for visiting purpose,
the main purpose is to understand the market
situation, which constituted 55.17%. The above-
mentioned figures show that result of the survey is
quite convincing.
(2) The Survey of Guests’ Satisfaction
and Importance
The survey of guests’ satisfaction and importance of
on-site service of exhibition, including two aspects--
-guests’ satisfaction and acknowledgement with 20
indicators(Table 3). The questionnaire was judged
by Likert Scale,the scores and the options are: scores
of toursit satisfaction 5,4,3,2,1mean"very satisfied",
"satisfied", "average", "unsatisfactory", "very
dissatisfied", respectively, and the higher the score,
the higher the satisfaction level ; The score of toursit
importance recognition 5,4,3,2,1 represent “very
important”, “important”, “average”,
“unimportant”and “very unimportant respectively.
The greater the score, the higher the perceived
strength.
4 ANALYSIS ON THE
IMPORTANCE AND
SATISFACTION OF SERVICE
QUALITY PERCEIVED BY
PROFESSIONAL GUESTS
4.1 Construction of the Index System
In order to achieve scientific and objective
evaluation, taking the practicality of evaluation
index system into full consideration, from
perspective of guests, according to the process of
exhibition, based on the field trips to Shanghai New
International Expo Center and the venue, combing
the practice of operation and management of
organizers, the essay divides the guests’ perception
for the service quality into two levels of indicators.
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The first level is the level of overall target: guests’
overall satisfaction and perception of importance.
The second level is the level of index.
Table 3: the evaluation system of toursits’ perception for
the service quality of the exhibition.
Target
layer(I)
Level of index II
Viewers
overall
satisfacti
on and
perceived
importan
ce
II1 Registrated admission time is reasonable
II2 The route map is reasonable with clear
marks
II3 Reception staff are dressed in clean attire
with good communication skills
II4 The working staff can provide necessary
information with good attitude.
II5 The position of central service of on-site
clients service is clear.
II6 On-site customer service center can work
for a long time with smooth hotline and high
efficiency
II7 The on-site advertising atmosphere,lighting
and sound effect are good
II8 The exhibition order is good, the security
facilities are complete.
II9 The site environment and hygienic
conditions are good.
II10 The arrangement of shuttle bus is good.
II11 Health service facilities are complete.
II12 The dining service is of good quality.
II13 The resting place is spacious enough in
the venue
II14 The wireless networks can work with a
high coverage.
II15 The venue can provide touch-screen
navigation and mobile APP
II16 Traffic service and accommodation
facilities are available.
II17Surrounding Parking/parking lot can be
provided
II18 Exhibition materials are comprehensive
and readable.
II19 The overall exhibitors are of high quality
and large quantity
II20 Exhibition facilities are diversified, the
percentage of participation is high.
4.2 QOS Exhibition Site Viewers
Perceive the Basic Situation
The index of importance and satisfaction are
obtained from samples of 203 professional visitors.
According to table 3, the evaluation and analysis of
standard deviation and mean value of importance
and satisfaction have been made. (Table 4).
Table 4: Toursit Shanghai Exhibition Service Quality
Perception Evaluation and Sorting.
i
ndicators
Importance
Satisfaction
Mean valu
e
Sequenc
e
Standard deviatio
n
Mean value Sequence Standard deviation
II
1
3.74
19
0.864
3.83
2
0.576
II
2
4.17
3
0.717
3.70
4
0.765
II
3
4.05
8
0.706
3.53
10
0.728
II
4
4.13
4
0.626
3.65
5
0.775
II
5
4.04
9
0.706
3.48
12
0.593
II
6
3.87
12
0.548
3.43
14
0.788
II
7
3.78
17
0.600
3.63
6
0.728
II
8
4.26
2
0.689
3.96
1
0.878
II
9
4.06
7
0.562
3.78
3
0.850
II
10
3.96
10
0.767
3.57
9
0.590
II
11
3.89
11
0.815
3.39
15
0.783
II
12
4.09
6
0.733
2.74
19
0.964
II
13
4.11
5
0.848
2.61
20
1.234
II
14
4.36
1
0.752
2.96
18
0.976
II
15
3.78
18
0.850
3.04
17
0.638
II
16
3.83
14
0.717
3.29
16
0.722
II
17
3.85
13
0.920
3.48
13
0.511
II
18
3.61
20
0.656
3.61
7
0.662
II
19
3.79
16
0.795
3.52
11
0.665
II
20
3.80
15
0.778
3.58
8
0.662
A Study on the Improvement of Exhibition Site Management Quality based on the Exhibition Service Quality Perceptions
of Professional Guest
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A Study on the Improvement of Exhibition Site Management Quality based on the Exhibition Service Quality Perceptions of Professional
Guest
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As can be seen from table 4, the mean value of
guests’ perception for the importance of service
quality of Shanghai exhibition is 3.96. In general the
guests judged 20 items as “important”.The top six
items on the list of guests’ perception for the service
quality are: the coverage of wireless networks(4.36),
order and security facilities(4.26), route map and
marks (4.17),the attitude of working staff and the
availability of necessary information(4.13), the
space of resting place(4.11) and the dining service in
the venue(4.09), which have received the biggest
concern from the guests. And they belong to four
categories---service of facilities, service on the site,
service at the entrance and reception and
management. The last six items on the list are the
diversification of exhibition activities and
percentage of participation(3.80), the quality and
quantity of exhibitors(3.79)
On-site advertising atmosphere, lighting and
sound effect(3.78), touch-screen navigation and
APP(3.78), the registered admission time(3.74), the
content and readability of exhibition materials(3.61).
Among them, three questions under the broad
heading of exhibition activities have appeared in the
last five items.So it is clear that there are more need
for entrance service, reception, on-site service and
facilities than the need for exhibition activities. The
organizer should take guests’ need into
consideration and improve the service in the order of
importance.
The mean value of guests’ perception for the
satisfaction of the exhibition service is 3.44, the
overall rating is between “average” and “satisfied”.
The first six items on the list of satisfaction are
:order and security facilities(3.96), registered
demission time(3.83),on-site environment and
hygienic conditions (3.78),.route map and
marks(3.7), attitude of the working staff and the
availability of information(3.65), on-site advertising
atmosphere, lighting and sound effect(3.63), which
includes questions under the broad heading of
entrance service on the second floor and three
questions under the heading of on-site service(the
arrangement of shuttle bus is numbered 9), which
shows guests are mostly satisfied with entrance
service, comparatively satisfied with on-site service.
The last six items are under the broad heading of
facility service, which are respectively hygienic
service facilities in the venue (3.39), the surrounding
traffic and accommodation(3.29), touch-screen
navigation and APPs(3.04), the coverage of wireless
networks(2.96), the dining service in the venue(2.74)
and enough resting space in the venue(2.61). So in
order to improve service quality, the organizers and
venue providers should focuse on f the improvement
of facility service
5 CONCLUSIONS
5.1 Continue to Maintain the
Advantage and Build Brand of
Shanghai Exhibition Services
Seven indicators of the advantage area should
continued to be highlighted, and the brand of
Shanghai exhibition on-site service should be
established which will be manifested in facilities and
service. The main exhibition venues of Shanghai
exhibition should keep the current feature, which
means the service of warmth, consideration, caring
and human touch. And guests should maximize the
exhibition visit experience in a safe, clean , clear and
comfortable environment with welcoming and
respecting atmosphere.
5.2 Adjust the Strategies Appropriately
and Let the Characteristics of
Service Take Its Own Course
Six indicators of the opportunity area have very
clear features of gathering of people, which can be
influenced by factors such as self-drive, visit
intention and the way of online registration. Guests
are fairly satisfied with factors such as time of
registration or surrounding parking facilities. Since
guests are professionals with specific purpose, they
don’t care much about the exhibition activities, on-
site advertisements, exhibition materials and
quantity of exhibitors. So the organizors of Shanghai
exhibitions should keep these deliberate
arrangements in terms of on-site operation and
management.
5.3 Expand Strategies Actively and
Turn Opportunities into
Advantages
Four indicators of the third quadrant have “double
low ”feature, which need not be prioritized. With
abundant time, resources and cost, the organizers of
Shanghai exhibitions should grasp this diamond in
the rough and enhance these factors, which would be
to promote service quality of Shanghai exhibition
and be beneficial to improving the operation and
management.
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5.4 Start from the Guests’ Feelinngs and
Focus on Improving Positive
Advantages
5.4.1 Improve Network and New Media
Facilities
Infrastructure improvements should proceed from
the actual experience of the guests, the construction
and design should be human-oriented, the
phenomenon that the basic services are just
furnishings should be eliminated.
With the development of new media and mobile
multimedia technology, the guests have higher
demand for wireless networks and mobile signals,
which is especially important to the guests aged 20-
40,because guests are dependent on networks and
signals. Besides achieving full coverage of wireless
networks, organizers should experience the networks
service from the perspective of guests, increase the
connection speed, simplify authentication and
enhance network signal, so guests can realize real-
time information update and enjoy fast and
convenient information transfer.
5.4.2 Enhance the Quality of Catering
Service
The catering service in the venue has a problem of
high price and low quality. Generally, the same
restaurant charges differently inside and outside the
venue. Since exhibition visit is exhausting, it is good
for the guests physically and mentally to enjoy
catering facilities and dining of excellent quality. If
great efforts can be made to make improvement on
catering facilities and dining, if the dining service
can be expanded, if the price of chain restaurants of
the same brand can be the same, guests’ need for
dining can be satisfied, and high pricing will trouble
them much less. In the meantime, their satisfaction
for the dinging service will be greatly enhanced.
5.4.3 Establish Sitting Area in the Venue
Since sitting areas outside the venue is subject to the
change of weather, the organizers of exhibition
should attach more importance to the resting place
inside the venue. A free sitting area should be set up,
which should not interrupt the traffic in the venue.
Free charge device, drinking water, emergency
medicines and other caring services should be
provided to the visitors. In this way, the visitor will
have a very pleasant experience and they will be
more satisfied with the exhibition.
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