An application of fuzzy-set/ qualitative comparative analysis

This thesis is an extension in the literature stream of trade fair performance assessment in which the relationship between marketing efforts and performance outcomes is studied. The study starts with literature review on trade fair’s performance measurement and then it presents the conceptual framework grounded in Resource-Based View. This is an application of an alternative research methodology, Fuzzy-Set/ Qualitative Comparative Analysis to study performance assessment of Business-to-Consumer trade fairs. An extensive online questionnaire was sent to trade fair exhibitors’ contacts provided by Finnish Trade-fair Association (Messukeskus), to collect the data of trade fair’s marketing inputs and outcome measures. During the data processing phase, outcome and conditions were justified and calibrated then analyzed in R studio. As results, the thesis delivers two causality model solutions of High-performance outcome and Low-performance outcome at trade fairs. The discussion deliberates the insights from the solutions to document best practices in coordinating trade fair’s resources. In addition, the study emphasizes the importance of objective settings to achieve expected performance and promotes the application of FS/QCA in marketing performance studies