Relationship quality and exhibitors' sustainable willingness to participate in exhibitions: A sociocultural perspective

Exhibition is a new economic business form in China. From a stakeholder perspective, all important roles in the context of hospitality and tourism are talents. From a socio-cultural perspective, interpersonal relationship quality plays a vital role in business and industrial operations. This constructs a causal model of relationship quality between exhibitors and exhibition organizers, and examined its influence on exhibitors' willingness to sustainably participate in exhibitions. Data collected from a total of 251 exhibitors from 4 nation-representative exhibitions in Beijing were analyzed. The results found that the four antecedent variables-guanxi (as distinctive from relationship quality), service quality, communication, and exhibition effectiveness-have significant impacts on the relationship quality between exhibitors and exhibition organizers, which in turn, affect exhibitors' willingness to participate in subsequent exhibitions (i.e., exhibitor loyalty). These findings provide a theoretical basis and policy recommendations talent management in exhibition context.