PUBLICATION CENTER

By Eileen Fritsch

Have you ever taken the time to respond to an industry market research survey? If not, you should consider doing so. Your honest input can influence the range of products and services available to help your business grow.

Companies that sell equipment, materials, and services to digital-imaging companies often base their marketing plans on the data gathered through associations and market-research surveys. For instance, if the survey data suggests that the installed base of a certain type of inkjet printer will grow significantly from one year to the next, the suppliers may respond by boosting the development and production of the appropriate types of substrates, inks, and finishing materials.

But what happens if market forecasts turn out to be wrong? What if the installed base of printers doesn’t grow as quickly as anticipated? It has happened in the past, and has created some major headaches for manufacturing companies to fill a demand that didn’t materialize as quickly as expected.

That’s why it’s so encouraging to see that SGIA has begun tabulating its Business Growth Plans survey in a manner that compares previous predictions with current realities. For example, in the 2006 Business Growth Plans survey, 44.2% of respondents predicted that they would purchase a UV-curable digital flatbed by the end of the year. But in the 2007 survey, only 14.8% reported actually making the purchase. That’s a whopping 29.4% difference, and SGIA deserves credit for calling attention to it. At least business planners now have some sort of benchmark for figuring out to what extent they should rely on market-growth forecasts.

Could some of the equipment purchases planned for 2006 simply have been postponed to 2007? Perhaps. In SGIA’s 2007 survey, 38.3% of the respondents said they plan to buy a UV-curable digital flatbed. It will be interesting to compare the results of the 2008 survey with the 2007 results.

But the gap between “planned” and “actual” purchases may also reflect that demand for certain types of graphics isn’t rising as quickly as many business owners had anticipated. Or, survey respondents may have encountered competition from new, unexpected sources, making it harder to justify a major equipment purchase as soon as they had originally planned. It’s hard to bring on new equipment until you’re confident that you can keep it running at a profitable rate. 

In SGIA’s survey, UV-curable flatbed printers weren’t the only type of printer in which actual purchases in 2006 lagged behind what survey respondents indicated they planned to buy that year. Significant differences also existed in roll-to-roll UV-curable printer category (16.9% planned vs. 3.7% actual); and roll-to-roll solvent printers (32.5% planned vs. 14.8% actual).

The only category in which respondents actually bought more printers than they had originally planned was roll-to-roll aqueous inkjet printers less than 96 in. wide. In this category, 5.2% of survey respondents said they planned to buy a new one in 2006, while 13% of respondents actually did.

Vendors aren’t the only ones who can benefit from studying what types of equipment purchases are planned. As a business owner, the survey results can give you a heads-up on where your next wave of competitors might be coming from,  and comparing actual to planned purchases provides a useful reality check.

SGIA members can access the full 2007 Business Growth Plans report in the Surveys and Statistics section of the SGIA website. The 2008 Business Growth Plans Survey will be conducted next spring.