B2Bridge

Technology buyers in developed countries have access to a wide variety of information sources. Therefore, the finding where US technology buyers get their information is surprising:"

...72% of technology buyers claimed that up to 75% of their knowledge of technology comes from vendor-sponsored content."

Where buyers obtain information will strongly depend on industry and country.

For example, in Germany has a culture of strong industry associations and high quality trade press. It will not come as a surprise that professional associations and their magazines are a prime source of information.

But in Turkey, in-house training by suppliers is much more important. We can speculate that in the absence of a strong professional association and trade press, buyers need to rely more on vendor information.

Apart from these local factors, a few general trends emerge:

1. The days of reaching a target group with a single approach are over. This has probably never been the case, but with the increase in number of communication channels, a broadening mix of information carriers and communication channels is expected by customers.
2. The strong decline of information trade fairs, and the rise of internet will come to nobody as a surprise.
3. Whereas before on trade fairs, visitors were eager to obtain information, nowadays they are saturated. The 'market' for technical communication has become extremely competitive.

All this has resulted in better informed customers. Selling becomes truely on merit. Markets as 19th and 20th century economists envisioned them (perfect information, no transaction costs) have never been closer to reality.

The distinction between consumer and business marketing is fading. Business marketeers can use mass marketing techniques previously out of reach. As consumer marketeers use direct approaches that were not economically feasible before.