The two-sided trade fair market: Identifying attributes and value creation management

Abstract

The paper examines a two-sided market on a multi-sided platform of an exhibition company and looks at the technology of market formation, its specific features, the concept of value creation management and conditions for its implementation. Methodologically the research rests on Rochet-Tirole’s theory of two-sided markets, as well as industrial organization theory, entrepreneurship theory, general management theory, logistics theory and general systems theory. The author uses the methods of analysis, decomposition, synthesis, abstraction, generalization, deduction and axiomatic method. For the trade fair organizer, the article presents the author’s versions of the main business process and the process model of managed transformation of a platform’s resources and its parties into the organizer’s intermediary services. The study proves that a two-sided trade fair market exhibits some identifying attributes that allow categorizing it as a Rochet-Tirole market. It substantiates the concept of value creation management, where the number of exhibitors and visitors is the target function, and the price structure of the organizer’s services is the tool for initiating control actions. The research details the system- and process-related specificity of the logistic support for the organizer’s activity. The findings provide the basis for the theory of two-sided trade fair market and should encourage the scientific support level for the exhibition business.

Keywords

• trade fair
• discrete sequence
• platform
• transaction
• network effects
• logistic system