One in three BAU exhibitors looks to Asia and North America

As well as Europe, BAU´s exhibitors are very much interested in Asia and North America. In an anonymous online survey one in three exhibitors named the countries of Asia and North America as current or future target or sales markets.

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This survey was the third anonymous, representative poll (after 2011 and 2013) conducted at BAU, the World´s Leading Trade Fair for Architecture, Materials and Systems, to gather data on the sales markets of its exhibitors. The idea behind it is that the PR and marketing activities for BAU 2019 can then be better tuned to the needs of the participants. This time a total of 561 exhibitors took part in the survey, which is considerably more than in 2013 (478). 59 percent of those surveyed have their headquarters in Germany.

This emphasis on Germany is not surprising: Almost all (94 percent) of the exhibitors at BAU sell their products in German-speaking countries, 71 percent of them in the rest of Europe, too. The most important countries in Europe, after Austria, Switzerland and the Benelux countries, are the large construction markets of France, Italy and the UK. One in two BAU exhibitors is also already exporting, or is intending to export their products to Scandinavia.

What is surprising is that one in five exhibitors said Oceania and Australia are current or future sales or target markets for their company. In 2013 that figures was only 16 percent. The relevance of the African continent has remained more or less the same in the view of BAU exhibitors. 16 percent (2013: 17 percent) see the countries of Africa as important target or sales markets, with South Africa and the North African countries playing the main role. Around half the exhibitors who are interested in the African countries are already active there, the other half first has to prepare the ground.

Another result of the survey: The USA is currently important as a sales market for considerably more BAU exhibitors than China. 32 percent of the exhibitors named the USA as a target or sales market, only 22 percent quoted China. The majority of the exhibitors at BAU (85 percent) who identified China as a sales market are already represented there, for the USA that figure is only 76 percent.

Asked about the target groups of their companies, 77 percent of the respondents named architects, which again confirms the reputation of BAU as “the architects fair”. The second most mentioned group was the building and fitting-out trades (68 percent), followed by building supplies (54 percent) and building companies and project developers (46 percent each).

To conclude the survey, the BAU exhibitors were asked to give their assessment of which themes and trends would dominate the building sector in the next five years. In the view of the companies surveyed, these are: high-quality building products (96 percent), renovation and modernization (95 percent), energy (94 percent), security (93 percent), customized solutions (92 percent), digitalization (89 percent), urbanization (79 percent), BIM (77 percent) and mobility (75 percent).

The online survey was conducted between November 21 and December 14, 2017 by the IfaD Institut für angewandte Datenanalyse and Gelszus Messe-Marktforschung. Multiple nominations were possible. The return quota was 35 percent.