Imagine for a moment that your show has been transformed into a high school hop. Boys are on one side of the room, girls on the other. The music starts. Will the boys and girls dance together?

Not if they aren't the right mix. If the boys are jitterbuggers and the girls are ballroom dancers, they likely won't make it to the dance floor. If no one dances, the kids will leave, and they won't return.

There also are kids who don't know how to dance, but who are at the hop because it's where the action is. They, too, are likely to be disappointed.

Substitute exhibitors and attendees for the dancers, first-time exhibitors and attendees for the non-dancers, and you have a show, says Francis J. Friedman, General Manager of TJF Consulting. To ensure a successful exposition, a show manager needs to know why people are there and what they are seeking. This requires research.

Understanding the dynamics of a show; identifying shifts in a market; recognizing exhibitor and attendee objectives and motivations; and finding potential future exhibitors and attendees are critical aspects of a show that can be investigated with quality research.

Know your audience
"Satisfying the customers, or providing what they need and want, is of much greater importance today than previously," says Douglas C. Dohring, founder of The Dohring Company. "More and more, people have choices in which shows they attend, particularly in the business-to-business environment."

They also have more marketing options. For example, instead of filling out lead cards at trade shows, companies can forego trade shows and sift through vast on-line and CD-ROM databases for potential customers.

Marketing shifts are occurring in much shorter time frames, which often means that decisions to exhibit or attend a show are made much closer to show time. Significant numbers of exhibitors at some shows forfeit space deposits, and potential attendees pre-register but don't show.

Today's economic climate also needs to be considered. "In a downsized environment, each person is worth more to the job today than he or she was four years ago, because there are fewer people left to do the work," says Friedman. "A show needs to justify decisions to be there. So show literature and the design of the show need to be 'value rich.' The higher its value content, meaning its utility for the attendee and the exhibitor, the higher the probability that the exhibitors will come back and the attendees will show up."

A truism for both trade and consumer shows is "know your audience." However, there are some significant differences between the two types of events. It's important that consumer show organizers understand their target audiences, both demographically and psychographically, says Friedman, so that they can select the appropriate copy messages and media delivery vehicles to reach and influence that audience.

If you're holding a sporting goods show for the general public, attendees' age and income are pertinent. But if your event is a trade show for buyers from sporting goods stores, attendees' age and income are not relevant. Rather, you are interested in how important the show is to their business, so you ask questions such as, how do you learn about new products? How often do you attend the XYZ show? What other shows do you attend? What percentage of your annual purchases are made at the show or within one month after the show? What factors limit your purchases?

It's important to recognize that an audience is not uniform, but consists of different segments with different needs, attitudes, concerns, and so on. Who comprises each segment? Why are people from a particular segment coming to the show? What do current attendees want from a show? What do potential attendees want?

The types of questions that need to be asked depend on your purpose. Perhaps you want more middle-management attendees. Why aren't they coming in bigger numbers? Why did those middle managers, who did attend, come? Do their needs or reasons differ from those of middle managers who didn't come?

Avoid a mismatch
Jonathan "Skip" Cox, President of Exhibit Surveys, stresses that attendees are only one of the elements that have to mesh if a show is to be a winner: "Unless there is a fit among your attendees, your exhibitors, what's going on in the marketplace, and your own motivations and objectives (such as education, profit, etc.), you're not going to have the synergism necessary for a successful event."

Let's say that you think there's a need for a show in the marketplace you serve. What are people in that marketplace really looking for? What would be their motivations for attending your show? What would be their objectives? What would they expect to see or do there? What would they expect to get out of it?

You also need to ask comparable questions of your exhibitors. Do their needs match those of the attendees? If attendees are coming to see one kind of product and the exhibitors are not showing that kind of product, then you don't have a good fit. And if you don't have a good fit, you're not going to have a successful event.

But before scrapping the concept or jumping to a conclusion on how to create a good fit, do some research and analysis. Do you need to find exhibitors that match the attendees' needs? Or do you need attendees who are interested in the products that your current exhibitors are showing? Has the industry changed? Are the exhibitors showing products that are relevant? If so, who are the people that these exhibitors need to talk to? How do you get more of them to attend your show?

Opportunities for mismatches between exhibitors and attendees can occur at many levels. You may be attracting attendees interested in the exhibitors' products, but their objectives may differ from those of the exhibitors. If attendees are coming to make purchasing decisions and exhibitors are coming to wave their companies' flags, you have a mismatch. The exhibitors aren't prepared to deal with the attendees; they don't have the right kind of staff on duty and they don't have information available for attendees to make the kinds of decisions they want to make.

Geographical mismatches also can occur. For years, the Chicago Gift Show was positioned as a national show. Exhibitors arrived expecting to see attendees from across the country. But research showed that the majority of attendees came from the Midwest. The show organizers decided to capitalize on those findings by repositioning the show. This year, the exhibitor prospectus shows a map of the Midwest, and exhibitors will come expecting to see Midwesterners, not Californians or New Yorkers.

The PC Expo also promotes its attendee niche. Research documented that corporate end users comprise a major portion of this computer show's audience. So that's a group show organizers decided to promote to exhibitors, and the corporate end users are given badges identifying their function.

Anticipate the future
When you grow a show, you want it to grow in the right direction for both current and potential attendees. "The International Contemporary Furniture Fair, or ICFF, is a good example," says Jacqueline Labatt-Simon, President of Exposition Research. "It has grown in a planned direction, with a very definite growth strategy. Attendee research indicated what people wanted to see, what they didn't want to see -- and that they didn't want ICFF to duplicate other shows that they're attending. As a result, ICFF not only fulfills attendee expectations, it has created a unique need."

At the core of many industries is rapidly changing technology. "Most shows are pretty much in tune with what's going on in their industries, but we have seen instances where shows focus on a technology that is basically in its mature stage," Cox says. "The organizers haven't kept up with what's been going on in the marketplace. They're attracting exhibitors who are in a mature market and who, as a result, are less interested in exhibiting than they would be if they were in a growth market. It's tougher for them to justify exhibiting when they're in a replacement and revision mode than it is during a growth stage, when their objectives are lots of new installations."

Cox described one show whose organizers sensed such problems. During one-on-one interviews with exhibitors, Cox learned that an existing, mature technology was being encompassed by a newer, umbrella technology that was taking the field in different directions. Further research showed that the show was not attracting enough exhibitors and attendees who were interested in the newer technology. Existing exhibitors who showed the older technology were less excited about exhibiting because they were in a mature stage. Faced with this information, the show organizers had to ask themselves what they were going to do. They decided they didn't want to lose the current base of exhibitors and attendees, but recognized that they had to move in the direction of the new technology.

As the show repositions itself, it may experience a temporary decline in exhibitors and attendees, until it becomes firmly identified with the newer technology. "But if they didn't move in this direction, they were going to take a hit anyway, because there just wasn't enough synergism there," says Cox.

Reverse a trend
When Miller Freeman took over the Premium Incentive Show several years ago, attendance was declining. To learn what might be the cause of the decline, Labatt-Simon conducted a series of focus groups, including groups with two attendee sects: corporate end users who buy premiums or incentives and middlemen who sell to corporate end users. Uncovered was the fact that buying premiums or incentives was a minor part of the job for corporate end users. "Time is valuable," says Labatt-Simon. "If something is a minor part of your job, and you're busy, you may not have -- or make -- the time to attend a show in that field."

Was this a trend? In a follow-up questionnaire, corporate end users were asked to list all the things they were responsible for, and the percentage of their time that was spent on each activity. They were asked similar questions about how they spent their time several years earlier. The survey confirmed that premiums and incentives occupied a small part of these people's time, and that a lot of their time was devoted to sales and marketing.

Last year, with these findings under its belt, Miller Freeman inaugurated the Sales and Marketing Expo. It runs concurrently with, and in the same hall as, the Premium Incentive Show, making it easy for people to attend both events -- and reversing the decline in attendance.

Often, focus groups concentrate on participants' fears and concerns about the future of their business. A show organizer can use this information to better tailor an event to attendee needs. Perhaps research shows that retailers attend a show to buy inventory, but one of their biggest concerns is how to track inventory. The show manager may decide to do a seminar on inventory tracking, have a demonstration on the show floor, or attract exhibitors of inventory software.

But before proceeding with any of these measures, quantitative research is needed. How likely are the retailers to attend a seminar or look at a demo? Do they have enough time to visit software exhibitors? Will any of these steps bring in enough additional attendees to make the effort worthwhile?

In a project for George Little Management, Labatt-Simon found that new attendees don't know how to see a show. "It came out in focus groups, then we quantified it," she explains. "If you've never been to a show, any show is big. I've had people describe 20,000-square-foot shows as being gigantic. It's overwhelming to them. Where do you start? What do you look for? How do you get a plan of attack?"

A person may be so confused, she says, that he or she quickly leaves and doesn't attend future shows. George Little now holds a seminar on opening day on how to see a show.

Tools of discovery
Primary research -- that is, research where you go to the source, rather than depend on secondary sources such as magazines -- can be qualitative or quantitative.

The main research tools are:

• Mail surveys, which are primarily quantitative; typically used post-show; and good for details, such as asking the attendee which products on a comprehensive list he or she is interested in seeing.
• Telephone surveys, which are primarily quantitative; typically done post-show; and quicker than mail surveys.
• Computer-based surveys, which are primarily quantitative; used during a show; able to gather, tabulate and analyze a large amount of data in a short period of time; and, depending on the device, able to be self-administered by the respondent or the data is able to be keyed in by the interviewer, exhibitor, etc.
• Focus groups, which are qualitative; done during a show, during a competitor's event, or at another time; disclose relevant issues and problems, which is a tremendous help when designing quantitative research.
• Formal one-on-one interviews, which are primarily qualitative; typically done at a show; and where interviewers ask all participants the same questions, in the same way.
• Informal one-on-one interviews, which are qualitative; typically done at a show; and, like focus groups, help when designing formal questionnaires and providing insight when interpreting results.

Which of these tools are used by a researcher depends on the types of questions that need to be asked. "I sit down with clients, listen to their problems and objectives, then try to design the kind of research needed to meet their needs," says Labatt-Simon.

Friedman concurs: "You define the problem the show manager wants to solve. Then you select the techniques that will help you get there."

Typically, qualitative research is followed by quantitative work. For instance, you might do a series of focus groups to better understand the emotional dynamics of an issue, followed by a direct mail survey to build a statistically valid sample.

Sometimes, quantitative research supports findings from qualitative -- and sometimes, it doesn't. In that case, says Labatt-Simon, go with the quantitative.

Then there's the problem of respondents saying one thing, but doing something else -- an issue that interests Frank B. Mosher, President of Evolving Technologies, whose TracTeam system is used by exhibitors to record the personal identification number, or PIN, printed on each attendee's badge, along with other data gathered from the attendees. "School administrators may say they're interested in science textbooks, but what do they really do on the show floor?" Mosher says. "How many aisles do they cover? Do they actually stop and talk to exhibitors? How many? Which ones? If they don't get PINed by textbook exhibitors, you've got to question their assertions of interest in science textbooks."

Broad range of costs
Show organizers certainly can conduct research on their own, but many have neither the time nor the knowledge needed to create, execute and analyze data from meaningful questionnaires. "It's important that you ask the right questions of the right people, and that you understand what types of things will bias people's answers or cause them to not want to answer a question," says Dohring. "For example, questions concerning income, or purchasing preferences that may be reflective of income, are easier to ask if respondents know they won't be identified."

Friedman asks, "What does the questionnaire represent, and where are you going with the answers? There's a difference between writing a questionnaire to learn if people are satisfied and creating a questionnaire to find meaningful information relative to new insights into your business."

Professional research fees vary widely. Simply conducting by mail a post-show survey of attendees may cost as little as $5,000, says Cox. According to Dohring, $8,000 to $12,000 is the typical range for a TrendTrak survey. Labatt-Simon gives a ballpark figure of $5,000 per focus group. Sample size and number of segments are obviously important. Mailing 2,000 surveys will cost significantly more than mailing 500 surveys; a four-page questionnaire will be more expensive to create than a two-page questionnaire.

Equally important are the objectives and requirements of the show manager. Cox estimates that investigating a problem might cost anywhere from $10,000 to $75,000. "One study we did dealt with a fairly narrow problem, and we were able to incorporate questions into an attendee survey that the show organizer was doing anyway," he said. "In another case, we worked with a show where organizers knew they had a problem but didn't know what it was. We surveyed six different groups: attendees, non-attendees who have never been at the show, attendees who haven't been back in the past couple of years, current exhibitors, exhibitors who dropped out in the past two years, and potential exhibitors who've never exhibited."

Narrow the risks
Experts suggest that relatively few show organizers are doing primary research. And much of the research that is being done is devoted to documenting who is coming to the show, rather than to in-depth analysis. The possible results of insufficient research -- shows with declining attendance or unhappy exhibitors; shows that exist for a year or two, then disappear; and shows that are losing money.

"A lot of shows that die or don't do well fail because they don't provide what people expect," says Labatt-Simon. "The best way to identify a position and develop a strategy is to do research. Savvy companies recognize that research is more than documenting what you want to prove, it's finding out what you need to learn."

Says Friedman: "We use research to gather information that will help us reduce the risks in making decisions. If we have high-quality information, we can make better decisions and narrow the risks."

As the trade show industry becomes more sophisticated and competitive, decisions based on knowledge rather than assumptions should appeal to increasingly more show organizers.