Industrial marketers bullish about own prospects
June 27th 2008

·          More than half expect economic conditions to worsen in the year ahead

·          Two fifths believe business for their own organisation will improve

·          Almost a third looking to add marketing staff

The latest Marketing Trends Survey from The Chartered Institute of Marketing, conducted by Ipsos MORI, has found that despite marketers in the manufacturing, engineering and infrastructure sector being increasingly concerned about the outlook for the UK economy, they remain upbeat about their own prospects.

Marketers in the sector are overwhelmingly pessimistic about the performance of the UK economy over the coming year. Only 9% think the economy will improve, while 56% believe conditions will worsen in the year ahead.

Despite this, confidence in their own organisation’s prospects remains resilient – although down sharply from a year ago.

Asked whether they thought business for their organisation would improve in the next 12 months, a surprisingly high 40% of marketers in the sector said they believed it would – though this is a significant drop from the 65% who expected business to improve this time last year. Only 15% thought conditions for their own business would worsen in the year ahead.

Such confidence is reflected in attitudes towards staffing levels, with 30% of marketers in the sector planning to increase the number of staff; though 11% anticipate a reduction in the number of marketing staff in their organisations.

Anticipated sales performance figures in the sector have also held up well – though again they are down sharply from this time last year. The average figure of 6.7% is slightly above the UK average of 6.2%, but much lower than the 9% marketers in the sector expected in the Spring 2007 survey.

Commenting on the survey’s findings, David Thorp, director of research and information at The Chartered Institute of Marketing said, “Despite the end of the ‘nice’ decade, industrial marketers remain remarkably upbeat about the prospects for their own organisations. This may be because they are confident in their own abilities to help their organisations’ exploit the opportunities an economic downturn brings.”

The Institute’s marketing trends survey also looked at attitudes towards sustainability: Two thirds of marketers in the sector believe that a company’s sustainability practices affect customers’ buying decisions (66%). When asked whether in an economic downturn, sustainability would drop down consumer’s concerns, more than half (51 per cent) agreed that it would.