Posted by
Barry Siskind
UFI’s Community Manager

Conventional wisdom says that before a company presents a product at an exhibition, it should have completed all its research and be ready for the market. While this may have been true in the past Panasonic GmbH has taken a different approach. They use exhibitions as a platform to beta test future products by soliciting feedback from prospective customers before a product is ready to purchase. It’s an interesting approach and one that will be discussed at the upcoming UFI Open Seminar in Europe in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, June 30 – July 2.

Heidi Saarikoski, Panasonic’s Nordic Trade Marketing Manager will use Panasonic’s experience in her seminar titled, “Using Exhibitions Differently.” I asked Heidi a few questions about her presentation to give you a preview of what you might expect.

Barry:

Is this approach for everyone or does it make more sense for certain corporations?

Heidi:

For us this is a very important approach since we do not sell directly to our end-users, we do not meet our customers face-to-face on a daily basis so the only feedback that we get continuously is based on sales figures from our re-sellers. Sometimes these are in line with our expectations and sometimes not.

Barry:

How do you measure the success of your exhibition investment?

Heidi:

Measuring the success of a Fair/Event is a very good question. I would like to measure it in direct sales but we never sell anything our self during exhibitions. All sales are made through our retailers who also participate in the events. Here we are looking at sales and feedback from our re-sellers. We also look at KMP (Key Measuring Point) based on the different kinds of activities that we set up during the event. For example, Facebook activation, the number of participants in our contests and the number of participants at the exhibition as a total, etc.

For more information on the seminar go to www.ufi.org/stpetersburg2014 and follow it on twitter at #ufistpetersburg .