Abstract:
Across the world, to reduce the communication bottlenecks of an exhibitor in selecting a suitable exhibition many nations have created platforms to offer exhibitors direct interaction with organizers plus attendees during the pre, onsite and post exhibition stages.
However, in Sri Lanka there are many communication bottlenecks that an exhibitor faces such as Hassle of printed documents, inadequate booth floor plans, communication gap during the event and inability to receive quality service from the organizer; which have led the exhibitors being dissatisfied with the current way of organizing exhibitions and the solutions provided to select exhibitions. Based on this background, the project aims to analyze the communication bottlenecks that an exhibitor faces in selecting exhibitions; and design, develop and evaluate an IT solution to reduce the dissatisfaction.
The research identifies the factors and indicators that affects the exhibitors in selecting exhibitions such as customer satisfaction factor, service quality factor and communication factor through a comprehensive literature review. To evaluate and identify the existence of the factors and problems an industrial survey was carried out via interviews and a questionnaire where more than fifty responses were collected from exhibitors.
Based on the findings of industrial survey, and literature review a business framework was formulated and mapped, to several software requirements which were designed and developed in to the prototype. Additionally, the framework helps exhibitors as a guide on how to streamline the exhibition selection process and how to reduce the communication gap between the organizer and exhibitor during exhibition stages. The business framework is supported by the IT solution “EventZ” where both the business framework and IT solution were evaluated by experts within the industry and academic domains where the majority highly rated and acknowledged.
