The document discusses National Mine Service Company's use of trade shows for marketing. It describes the company's divisions and product lines. National Mine Service Company actively participates in annual trade shows, especially the large American mining congress international coal show. Management previously saw trade shows as important for launching new products and boosting employee morale but were losing interest in their effectiveness. However, trade shows provide personal selling opportunities, allow exhibiting new products, and help maintain the company's image and access to key decision-makers.

1. Trade Shows: National Mine Service Company
The given case typical situation of how trade shows can be used for the Business to Business
Market. The case highlights the selling and non selling benefits that are noticed by the upper
management and what the upper management think about the trade shows. The case talks about
the various ways of promotion during the trade shows, the influence of the trade shows on
customer retention and customer acquisition. The case at hand discusses that the traditional
image of trade shows should be removed and the company should look beyond the image or
reputation building and concentrate more on launching new products and boosting morale of
younger executives and also its sole objective.
National Mine Service Company
The National Mine Service Company is U.S based mine equipment seller that is headquartered in
Chicago’s McCor-mick place. The company has three major divisions
The Mining Machinery Division (MMD)- consisting a line of underground extraction
machinery (Marietta Drum Miner and Boring Miner, Shuttle Cars, Mine Locomotives
and Longwall Systems
Distributor Products Division (DPD)- Consisting of mine safety and rescue equipments,
Miner’s cap lamps
Hydraulics Division (HD)- Repairing and Manufacturing the hydraulics components
Approximately 90% of the sales were from the U.S coal industry and remaining substantial sales
from domestic and foreign countries
Marketing Communications
Marketing communications program consisted of three main activities- Personal Selling, Trade
Shows and Advertising/Sales Promotion
Personal Selling
Personal selling was headed by Mr. William Hennessey (VP sales) and dealed in major capital
equipment sales such as continuous miners. MMD’s sales force structure is as follows:
MR William Hennessey, VP Sales
Mr. William Carter, MMD’s SM
4 District Sales Managers
9 Sales Force

2. The salesperson job here was to generate interest at the mine level among mine superintendents,
maintenance officers and machine operators.
DPD mostly sold small dollar volume orders. DPD’s Sales structure was as follows
DPD’s sales structure
Ware house
Mr. D C Ponzeline
4 District SM
23 Sales representatives
and 7 Sales Engineers
The DPD maintained a broad product line containing 27000 products.
The HD wing used a different sales and service approach called driver-salespeople where they
visited mines with pickup trucks to deliver new mine hydraulic machines and pick up hydraulic
machines meant for servicing.
Trade Expositions and Corporate Advertising Programs
National mine service company took active participation in annual trade shows and expositions,
but majorly concentrated on much important ‘American mining congress international coal
show’ which was held once in four years and attracted exhibitors and potential customers
worldwide. This trade show exhibited and promoted various mine machineries, coal processing
equipment, transporting equipment, supplies or services. This trade fair is not for profit
educational activity where selling is prohibited and booth sales personal where allowed
information gathering and giving about new advances in technology, machine design and new
products.
National mine service found this trade show to be a perfect and special place to launch its new
product ‘Marietta 2460 Drum miner’. But the problem was the fading interest of upper
management towards efficiency and potentials of these trade shows. This perspective needs to be
looked by a new angle of profitability and customer awareness.
Trade shows facilitated three major marketing communication activities: Personal selling, trade
exhibition and advertising/promotions. This trade show NMS spent highly on sales promotions
and gifting to existing and potential customers.60% of advertising budget was spent on MMD
products. Objective of NMS’s marketing communication was to maintain companies image and
gain access to decision influencer’s not available to company’s sales force easily. This trade also
witnessed various other promotional methods being adopted, for example- Various advertising
inserts and describing the products and other notifications and emails being sent to the

3. Strengths
An open source of Education, Promotion
Focused at target customers, prospects
generating new leads in terms suppliers
Low Cost – Medium of connecting with the
prospective clients
A platform to gauge the competitors strategy
Read about the customer’s expectation
Weakness
Effectiveness is difficult to measure
Products are not sold and only demonstrated
Information of the competitors may be
manipulated later
To further understand the concerns of the top management, the below mentioned figure mentions
some of the key points:
Mr. Mac
Vean
Mr.
McElhattan
•Low attendance
•Desired buyer awareness is achieved
•Trade shows are meant for educational and promotional
purpose
•Competitors are available
•Visibility of people with top management in the buying
companies
•Convince the current and prospective customer
•Major Concern is the - Spent the right amount of money in
the event- ie. the accountability is to be maintained
Certain key points to understand are
-
According to MacVean backing out of the trade shows hampered the image of the
company in the eyes of the customer
At the same time the Trade shows help rebuild the image, gains new prospects and reach
to a wider audience

4. Comparative Advantage
According to the case, we can identify the core competence of the company. The various product
lines that the company has and the specialized sales force that it has allocated to each is one of
the key strengths that the company can leverage upon.
Trade shows as a promotional mix has many opportunities that the company can leverage upon.
In such a B2B scenario, Trade shows present a right platform for the company to leverage upon
the product line that it carries. It would enable the company to display its latest technology to the
target audience as well as generate newer reach to the customer. Hence in the customer lifecycle
stage, trade shows work at various points- Right from generating awareness to the point of
retention. At the same time this promotional tool is also useful for the company to shift up the
Product Life Cycle stage of Decline by identifying newer markets and innovating the product.
Trade shows can serve the major purpose of the organization to boost the morale of staff
members and give opportunity for sales members to rub shoulders with top management.