Abstract

Participation to trade fairs is very important for almost every enterprise, not only because it offers the opportunity to implement a specific strategic trade plan, but also because these events constitute a powerful instrument of acquisition and diffusion of information and knowledge, working as key elements in a relational marketing perspective. Recently the functioning of a fair has been compared to that one of a temporary cluster, where the geographical proximity leads to different types of positive externalities, tied to the intensification of the relations between the actors (either spontaneous or programmed) and to the process of information and knowledge spillovers. Nowadays fairs cannot be perceived only as means for selling activities, but they have also to be considered as crucial platforms for activating new forms of relational marketing, working as filters for knowledge and information flows. We are referring here to an innovative conception of the trade fair system. Stemming from these observations, in this work we verified through a case study (the Vinitaly trade fair) the reasons and the main results of participating to an international trade fair for enterprises.