Marketing Forecast from Ad-ology

For anyone who has ever dreamed of having a personal robot to clean the house or shovel snow, the future has arrived. ABI Research, which tracks developments in a number of fields, notes that robotic technology is finally ready to break into the mainstream marketplace. This development follows years of commercial and military use of robotic technology.

Technology firms, perhaps sensing an end to the recession, are beginning to increase ad spending. Many of these companies have new products and services to tout. And a recent Wall Street Journal article notes that the increase in advertising is designed to win new customers in a tough market.

Marketers that spend heavily on research and development (R&D) to bring new products ranging from computer software to pharmaceuticals have been hurt as much as other companies during the recession. Yet the majority of large public firms with track records of research and development activity continued to invest in innovation. According to a new report by Booz & Company, these companies, on average, added 5.7% to their R&D budgets despite extreme profit pressure.

Consumers are becoming increasingly less willing to wait for pages to load on e-commerce sites, despite the addition of more rich features such as video, zoom and animated content. Today’s online shoppers expect sites to be faster than ever. While most online shoppers said in a 2006 survey they would wait 4 seconds for a site to load, when the survey was repeated this summer, 47% said they grow impatient when web pages take more than 2 seconds to load. Improvements in technology, however, are allowing proactive companies to improve site performance. With the holiday season approaching, online retailers can tweak and test their sites to improve site performance.

Purchasing agents in the technology industry have long been accustomed to being educated on the latest version of a product or service before they sign on the dotted line. The industry standard for the educational process has long been the white paper. Eccolo Media, in its recent B2B Technology Collateral Survey, reports that decision makers read white papers even before they issue an RFP (request for proposal).

Ad-ology Research recently updated their Industry Marketing Insights report for Electronics Stores.