Abstract: The exhibitions were considered to have only commodity sell, international trade and marketing functions. In the Internet era, these functions have been challenged by e-commerce. In fact, modern exhibitions may also have other functions such as politics, education and innovation. Based on the analysis of relevant research literatures at home and abroad, it is found that the research literatures on the innovative function of transactional exhibitions mainly involve the disciplines of marketing and economic geography. Among them, marketing scholars and economic geography scholars regarded the exhibition as a temporary market and a temporary cluster respectively, and conducted research from various perspectives. Although marketing scholars and economic geographers pay attention to the impacts of information communication and knowledge transfer on corporate innovation at the exhibition site, they believe that international exhibitions have higher innovation value than national and regional exhibitions, and the relationships between exhibitors and (or) visitors is an important prerequisite for knowledge transfer and information communication. Since the beginning of this century, scholars of the two disciplines (especially foreign scholars) have increasingly studied the innovative function of transactional exhibitions. These studies focus on explaining the innovative function of the exhibitions and exploring the mechanisms by which the innovative function of the exhibition work. The main research results are reviewed from the perspectives of marketing and economic geography in terms of publication time. According to the research objects and suggestions of those authors, four main directions for future research are proposed: (1)Pay more attention to the impacts of the types of exhibitions on the categories or the stages of innovations. (2)the negative effects of knowledge spillover at exhibition on corporate innovations. (3)the collaborative innovation mechanism of exhibition and other events. (4)the contribution of exhibitions to urban industrial and social innovations.