Applying Kansei engineering to industrial machinery trade show booth design

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Abstract

Trade shows are considered an important marketing channel for companies since they provide manufacturers and purchasers with a vital commercial platform. Traditionally, plastics and rubber industry trade shows have been ineffective due to poor booth planning. Nevertheless, few studies have examined trade show booth design and planning. Actually, most companies lack distinct goals, and their decisions regarding trade show participation may influence decisions regarding which products should be demonstrated, size of trade booth, and level of advertising. Such a decision-making is a problem involving multi-criteria decisions, and requires a logical and objective operating procedure. This work thus devises an objective procedure for trade show. This investigation focuses on booth design for plastics and rubber industry trade shows and comprises three parts: (1) selecting appropriate assessment criteria for trade show design using the Delphi method and Kansei engineering. (2) Establishing suitable booth design principles and procedures for plastics and rubber industry trade show using fuzzy product positioning. (3) Further employing the proposed method to design trade show booths and verify their performance. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.

Relevance to industry

This study was conducted to support machinery vendors as a systematic design flow chart and related criteria to provide an objective approach to trade show booth planning.

Introduction

Trade shows provide vendors and purchasers with a vital platform for commerce. Industrial machinery manufacturers consider trade shows important for promoting global marketing since they focus on marketing to specific customers. However, traditional machinery industry trade shows have been ineffective because of poor booth planning. Little research exists on trade show planning and design. Tanner and Chonko (1995) believed that trade shows provide customers with numerous crucial opportunities for contact and can enable business to be conducted faster. Tanner (2002) reported that trade shows basically provide resource of purchasing and channels for products to achieve market entry. Nevertheless, vendors have strong incentives to participate in trade shows. For example, numerous companies base their decisions of trade show participation on similar decisions made by their competitors. Gopalakrishna et al. (1995) observed that few companies have digitally analyzed their goals and methods with regard to trade show participation. Actually, most companies lack distinct goals, and their decisions regarding trade show participation depend on policy maker opinions. This situation influences decisions regarding which products should be demonstrated, size of trade booth, and level of advertising. Such a ‘black box’ decision is not suitable for application to trade show booth design which is a problem involving multi-criteria decisions, and requires a logical and objective operating procedure.

While examining plastics and rubber industry trade shows, this work presents a multiple criteria decision-making method for trade show design. The proposed method includes three parts: (1) choosing appropriate assessment criteria for trade show design using the Delphi method and Kansei engineering, (2) establishing appropriate principles and procedures for booth design for plastics and rubber industry trade shows using fuzzy product positioning, (3) providing an improved trade booth design to realize the goals of trade show participation.

Section snippets

Methodology

This investigation comprises three parts: (1) data collection and analysis – including gathering criteria for judging trade show design, listing the weightings of the objectives of trade show participation, selecting samples of good design from trade show booths, and creating image–word datum for trade show description. (2) Product positioning – including designing a decision-making model, identifying the ideal booth design model, and capturing image–word datum for describing plastics and

Results and discussion

Sharland and Balogh (1996) and Hansen (2004) identified ten objectives related to firm trade show participation (as listed in Table 2), which are adapted in this investigation. The first four items include ‘increase brand visibility’, ‘attract potential customers’, ‘strengthen enterprise image’, and ‘promote new products’. Their research results indicate that trade show booth design should focus on increasing brand visibility and promoting new products to attract potential customers and obtain

New design and verification

Basically, trade show booth design must aim to maximize participation benefits, in which the booth space that dominates the cost and the largest cost in the design is booth size. For the 2008 Taipei International Plastics & Rubber Industry Show the main participants had booths with sizes of 25–30 units (the area of one unit is 9 m2), so this study uses 25 units as an example. Additionally, the booth height is constrained to under 4 m. To fit trends in green design, the booth construction employs

Conclusions

Kansei engineering is a methodology for systematically exploring user perceptions about a product and translating these perceptions into design parameters based on Ergonomics and Computer Science. It has been utilized in a variety of industries and it was highly evaluated as an effective development method incorporating the consumer’s demand. This work, applying Kansei engineering, has proposed a systematic design flow chart and related criteria to provide an objective approach to trade show

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Ted Knoy for his editorial assistance.

References (19)

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