Feature
Issue No. 27 - February/March
Business prefers print to Net
A Canadian survey taken across eight years has demonstrated the surprising dominance of business to business publications as the favoured information source for the business sector.
The three-part survey by Starch Information Services — reprinted in the Australian Business and Specialist Publishers magazine, Publish — surveyed between 1,200 and 2,000 respondents in 1996, 2000 and 2004 to discover how they informed themselves about the products and services available to them.
Responding companies fell into IT, retail, automotive and trucking, manufacturing, resources and construction, agriculture and medical fields. They were asked about 14 different media types.
Business publications continue to rank first as the most useful sources of information on products and services.
Business publications continue to out-rate the Internet and are well ahead of individual salespeople in popularity.
The emerging picture is that business publications have several significant advantages over their closest competitors, individual salespeople and the Internet, as advertising vehicles.
Reaching more potential buyers than the Internet and costing less than person-to-person contact are two mundane advantages business publications enjoy.
Individual salespeople have increasing trouble with the tyranny of distance. Customers are getting harder to contact directly, and the cost of face-to-face meetings continues to spiral, including attendance at t...
