December 2023

Print Buyers Purchasing Trends

On Friday 8th December BPIF members joined German Sacristan, Group Director and Principal Analyst at Keypoint Intelligence for an enlightening webinar on one of their recent research projects - Print Buyers Purchasing Trends.

In the webinar German provided on overview on their research covering budget and product expectations, omnichannel campaigns, and the importance of measuring and displaying a return on investment (ROI). A structured approach involving segmentation, profiling, engagement, testing, and tracking & analyis  - is one way companies are able to emphasise ROI; and German goes into further details on this in the webinar.

Executive Summary

• Respondents are marketers from larger companies covering 8 vertical markets (largest vertical retail) that average 300 employees per company.
• Capturing responses from bigger companies with larger marketing budgets will provide helpful insights on how marketing budgets impact print.
• Most of the respondents have an online/digital marketing duty within their total marketing responsibility, which provides helpful insights on how marketers see print within their total marketing strategies.
• Respondents' average marketing budgets are €500K and are expected to grow 7.5% in the next 2 years (on average).
• Print represented an average of 28% of those budgets, but it is expected to see flat growth in the next 3 years.
• Most common job run lengths for direct mail is 7K, brochures are 5K, and catalogues are 1,300 pieces (44 pages each).
• All these run lengths could be in the range of many PSP's digital print crossover points.
• Direct mail is expected to grow 5%, catalogs at 3%, while brochures and newsletters will be flat in the next 2 years.
• 27% of omnichannel campaigns are expected to use print.
• 25% of printing campaigns are customized beyond name and address, and are expected to grow 4% in the next 3 years.
• Time and cost are the biggest objections for a 1:1 campaign, which shows that there is still strategic work to be done in this area; otherwise, time and money should not be an issue.
• 95% of marketers are interesting in some type of specialty print, with the most popular being 1:1 and e-enablers like quick response (QR) codes, near-field communication (NFC) tags, and augmented reality.
• 92% of print buyers buy online, with many using online and offline channels.
• Most online purchases are through a customized e-portal, with most print buyers remaining loyal to their existing PSPs vs. purchasing from an online printer.
• Purchasing locally is favored over nationally.
• Online represents 62% of the print purchasing revenue and it is expected to grow 13% in the next 3 years.
• Most common buying criteria are price, quality, and service.
• Price is the strongest with 59% of marketers saying that they are willing to compromise quality for a lower price in applications like direct mail and business cards.
• Print buyer consolidations are expected to happen, making the bigger PSPs even larger; this should create a demand for larger printing equipment with lower TCOs to fulfil pricing buying criteria.
• This also should reduce the number of PSPs in the market.
• Because of the trends of localization and sustainability, it is expected that some smaller PSPs might be bought by larger ones.

The slides and webinar recording can be accessed on the links below.