B2B magazines and general business media are the most important information resources for German business
A study from media planning consultancy, agiplan, in association with BiTS University in Germany investigated how and where decision-makers get their information.
Executives still rely on proven ways to inform themselves. But digital media is rapidly catching up.
This is a study of consulting and planning company agiplan with the University BiTS.
Despite digitisation, printed B2B magazines and general business media remain the most important source of information for German industry professional. This is one of the key findings of a study carried out by consultancy and media planning agency agiplan, commissioned by BiTS University.
More than 1,000 executives ranging from small to medium sized companies participated in the study which set out to investigate how and where decision-makers are informed about their industry.
Fifty percent read email newsletter. However social networks like Twitter, Xing or LinkedIn, however, are rarely used to get information. There was a clear rejection of blogs, expert forums, communities, podcasts, audio posts and Web-TV: They are rarely used and play virtually no role in getting hold of information.
Smartphones (81 percent) and notebooks (79 percent) are the most popular devices.
As expected, executives who are under 40 years old use websites, industry forums and blogs significantly more than their older coutnerparts. However, this does not apply to social networks: here both groups use them equally.
Key findings include:
• 79.2 percent use B2B as a source of information
• 5.1 percent use RSS feeds
• 2 percent regularly use QR codes
• 81 percent of executives use their smartphones as a source of information (79 percent laptops, 42 percent tablets)
More information and graphics from agiplan (in German).
