Geographical aspects of organizing industry exhibition activities in the Northwestern Federal District of Russia

Abstract

The exhibition industry is a relatively new and dynamically developing type of economic activity. It has a great influence on the development of trade and economic relations, promotes goods, services, technologies, forms the image of the region and generally helps the development of individual sectors of the economy, regions and the country. The author sees the main task in identifying the geographical aspects of exhibition activities in the Northwestern Federal District as one of the most vulnerable in the conditions of modern sanctions policy. The article formulates the results of the study, which are based on a database created by the author of 195 exhibitions held in the Northwestern Federal District and containing comparable information about each exhibition (venue, number of domestic and foreign exhibitors, visitors, specialization, trade policy, etc.). Its analysis made it possible to determine the region’s position in the country’s industry exhibition activities; industry structure based on the comparative geographical characteristics of exhibitions in the service sector, industrial exhibitions, exhibitions of the agro-industrial complex (the leadership position of industrial exhibitions is noted in terms of the ability to influence the economy of the region), the geographical features of industry exhibition activities in the region are identified based on the ranking of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation according to the studied indicators. The calculation of the coefficients of specialization, localization and shower production in the sectoral exhibition activities of the district made it possible to develop a classification of subjects of the Russian Federation according to the level of activity of exhibition activities.