Information Needs of Marketing Staff in Europe

At this week's Online Information 2001 conference in London, Outsell, Inc announced the release of a landmark multi-client study summarising the information needs, habits, and preferences of 500 European sales and marketing professionals across 10 industries in the UK, France, and Germany.

The first of its kind, the comprehensive European I-AIM(SM) study follows on the heels of Outsell's pioneering Super I-AIM(SM) study of over 6,300 US knowledge workers completed earlier this year.

The study reveals that sales and marketing professionals are major users of external information, spending around 15% of their work week engaged in gathering and analysing information, half of which is spent searching and retrieving. Productivity costs for using external content average $7,500 per year per employee.

Initially sponsored by Factiva, European I-AIM reveals clear differences between how free and paid-for content is perceived and valued in Europe versus the US. Although free sources on the Internet are frequently used for many day-to-day decisions, Europeans still rely heavily on trusted paid-for services to support critical, high-risk decisions. While more than 67% of European users give fee-based services the competitive edge, only 50% of US respondents expressed a similar preference in Super I-AIM.

'The European I-AIM study shows the extent to which European corporate end users differ in their patterns of content use and purchases,' said Mary Corcoran, vice president at Outsell. 'Europeans have less autonomous purchase authority than their U.S. counterparts, and there is less use of corporate intranets for embedding external information. Information portals remain a clear target for development by content providers inside the firewall.'

European I-AIM may be purchased directly from Outsell. For more information, visit www.outsellinc.com

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.