Manufacturing marketing people remain upbeat

The latest Mori marketing trends survey from The Chartered Institute of Marketing, has found that despite marketing people in the manufacturing and engineering sector being increasingly concerned about the outlook for the UK economy, they remain upbeat about their own prospects. Despite the survey showing them to be overwhelmingly pessimistic about the performance of the UK economy over the coming year (only 9 per cent think the economy will improve, while 56 per cent believe conditions will worsen) confidence in their own organisation’s prospects remains resilient. Asked whether they thought business for their organisation would improve in the next 12 months, a surprisingly high 40 per cent in the sector said they believed it would. Only 15 per cent thought conditions for their own business would worsen in the year ahead. Such confidence is reflected in attitudes towards staffing levels, with 30 per cent planning to increase the number of marketing staff. Anticipated sales performance figures in the sector have also held up well – the average figure of 6.7 per cent is above the UK average of 6.2 per cent, but lower than the 9 per cent growth they expected in the Spring 2007 survey. Commenting on the survey’s findings, David Thorp (pictured), 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.”