Pyramid of exhibition needs
Exhibitions have an ability of transferring a person into another world, integrating everything the best in exhibition industry and in the field of personal interest. As a rule, 75% of visitors plan to visit the next exhibition. Why is it then so hard to attract new visitors?

Eventually, exhibition visitors come to observe what novelties have recently appeared; besides, both specialists and customers consider it to be a kind of day-off, a perfect chance to leave the office and even an entertainment. In 80-th, when budgets were loose and business wasn’t restructured and enhanced in its size, the above mentioned consumers’ attitude could be considered as nothing but the way of wasting time. But in our dynamic and cruel world this can hardly be logical. So what actually happens?

To understand visitors’ motivation we should look at the well-known hierarchy of needs by Abraham Maslow, 1954.

Maslow proves that every human being has his pyramid of needs; each of them must be satisfied to let us reach the next, higher motivation level.

He describes them as:
The physiological needs: hunger and thirst
The needs for safety and security: feel safe
The needs for Love and Belongingness: to belong to other people, to have friends, a boyfriend or girlfriend, even a sense of community.
The esteem needs: the need for recognition, fame, the respect and appreciation of others and the need for self-respect, confidence, freedom and independence.
Cognitive needs: to know, to understand, to explore.
Aesthetic needs: feeling for symmetry, beauty, order.
The need for self-actualization: the need to reach goals and continue reaching them.

Let’s analyze each of them and will see whether exhibition format satisfies them or fails to do that.

The physiological needs
The physiological needs are the basic ones; that is related to the fact that food industry is often criticized. Nowadays the most of the street shops located in the central streets understand that coffee house where customers can renew their energy and discuss what they have already seen or what they are willing to see leads to more durative shopping process. Such zones in shops leave general pleasant memories. This is very essential for clients’ determination and faithfulness formation. Visitors strive to those places to come to themselves, especially when they are situated close to exit.

The needs for safety and security
Exhibitions are “dangerous” because visitors feel disorientated, vulnerable and a little lost. Necessary tablets and sign-boards persuade visitors that they’ve got to the right place. This is actual even for the regular exhibition visitors because the general exhibition plan, pavilions’ location and entrance are sure to be changed. Entering the exhibition after long journey can often cause stress though just some exhibitions think over the moment of entrance. Discomfort can proceed during the procedure of registration and security check.

Belongingness
Visitors like to belong. This is proved by our research when almost all the companies preferred to visit their real suppliers before looking for new once, or meet with people they used to work with or attend seminars with their acquaintances. Even in cycling and car exhibitions visitors explore and try the exponents they already have or ever had. This makes them feel at ease. Besides, lots of new visitors explore the exhibition topics beforehand not to look silly when surrounded by experts.

Self-esteem
Person-card system used in the exhibitions ranges customers in accord with their purchasing ability. Though the majority of the consumers don’t know that blue badge means absence of purchase rights, they are sure to feel superior attitude of personnel and request to step aside in advantage of “red badge” which represents leading buyer.

Cognitive needs
Despite the fact that exhibitions are perfectly organized, navigation can cause some difficulties and frustrations especially for a new visitor. Taking into consideration physiological needs, hunger and thirst the attention is defused. Being tired and distressed even the best exhibition-guide will be useless.

Aesthetic needs
Lots of exhibitions despite beauty suggest noise, crowd and discomfort. Order and symmetry are realized through typical white stands and plain planning. All the decoration elements like flowers are usually expelled from budget as needless leaving the exhibition ugly and cold.

Self-actualization
Growing richer we feel strong desire for self-actualization. When basic needs are satisfied exhibition is the ideal place to integrate people of common interests; that turns to be a perfect opportunity for the world where traditional means of communication become ineffective.

Conclusion
Exhibitions like the other shows give the unique possibility of combining mind, body and soul of a person all together. We think that attention to psychological problems will let unusual connection means attract and secure audience which is necessary for survival and further development.

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