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]]>Gartner’s latest global forecast for spending on information security products and services shows spending across the world is set to increase 12.4 percent this year to more than US$114 billion.
But in Australia, security spending this year is expected to grow by just six percent – less than half the global rate – to reach around A$3.5 billion, Gartner reports. Next year that’s tipped to rise 9.8 percent to almost $3.9 billion – but that still remains well below the global trend,
No reason for the lag by Australian entities has been given at this stage, but it seems certain to arise next week when the lead analyst on Gartner’s global forecast, Sid Deshpande, is due in Sydney to speak at Gartner’s Security and Risk Management summit on August 20-21.
In his global report, Deshpande said that highly publicised data breaches, like a recent attack that compromised the personal health records of 1.5 million patients in Singapore, had reinforced the need to view sensitive data and IT systems as critical infrastructure.
“Security and risk management has to be a critical part of any digital business initiative,” he said.
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According to an ADNews story “The online general advertising market continues to enjoy solid growth and is not only well placed to weather the current slowdown in overall media budgets but is set to benefit from its increasing cost effectiveness in tight economic conditions,” said Darryl Nelson, Frost & Sullivan senior research manager of digital media.
“Advertisers continue to see the increased lead generation and sales coming from the online channel, but are also now looking online to get more bang for their brand marketing buck. The current tightening of marketing budgets overall strengthens their commitment to their digital strategies.”
Growth slowed dramatically in the first half of 2008, growing by less than 1% from the second half of 2007, according to Frost and Sullivan’s Australia Online General Advertising Market 2008-2012 report. However, solid growth has returned and is expected to continue strongly throughout 2009.
The study confirms site display advertising continues to decline as a share of total revenue, dropping from 69% in financial year 2007 to 64% in financial year 2008. Instead, growth is dominated by “next-generation” brand marketing, including video and integrated content, and performance marketing, such as email direct marketing and cost-per-click or cost-per-action campaigns.
Although a number of new industries are engaging in online advertising, spending continues to be dominated by traditional advertisers including the banking, finance and insurance industry, the automotive sector and communications industries. Together, these segments accounted for just over half of all online advertising revenues in the 2008 financial year.
“The online general advertising market continues to enjoy solid growth and is not only well placed to weather the current slowdown in overall media budgets but is set to benefit from its increasing cost effectiveness in tight economic conditions,” said Darryl Nelson, Frost & Sullivan senior research manager of digital media.
Although a number of new industries are engaging in online advertising, spending continues to be dominated by traditional advertisers including the banking, finance and insurance industry, the automotive sector and communications industries. Together, these segments accounted for just over half of all online advertising revenues in the 2008 financial year.
For more on this story go to ADNews.
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]]>23% of all retailers have sacked staff or closed stores a new research study conducted by the Australian Retailers Association has revealed, yet despite this retailers are optimistic about an economic recovery .
The March Australian Retailers Index reveals that 23 per cent have sacked staff during the past three months while 11% have hired new employees. Among those known to be hiring are JB Hi Fi and Woolworths who own Dick Smith stores.
65% have have maintained staffing at the same levels as when the economic downturn first kicked in. Executive director of the ARA Richard Evans says the figures show consumer confidence is hitting retailers hard.
The Index also revealed that retailers are suffering with falls in sales performance at negative 18% were doing the right thing by adjusting their business paradigm, reducing other expenses and trying to stimulate consumer spend before letting staff go.
“Although a decrease in employment levels was being considered by 14% of SME retailers in the past quarter, over 35% were reducing other costs as a result of current economic conditions. Almost 20% were adding new products and 18% were advertising more to try and stimulate consumer spend.
“Usually, employment costs are the easiest overhead for managers under pressure to cut, but SME retailers are showing responsible understanding of the importance holding onto staff to stimulate consumer spending and economic recovery.Said Evans.
“We’re urging employers right through the supply channels to hold onto their staff who have the key to economic recovery in their pockets. If unemployment levels remain under six percent , the retail sector can expect to see improved growth by the September quarter.
“If they’re still working and they’ve got a mortgage, they’ve got more cash now available to them than they had 12 months ago,” he said.
“But what we’re not seeing is consumers coming back in heavy demand. One of the reasons for that is the narrative currently is putting fear through people in Australia, and what we need to save jobs is that fear to turn around.”
Employment growth figures for small and medium retailers were the lowest within the sector over the past three months.
But Mr Evans says if the unemployment rate remains below 6 per cent, retail growth can be expected to pick up towards the end of the year.
“We need to start putting some confidence back into the community, and that is that unemployment less than 6 per cent is good news for Australia,” he said.
“We still have a strong balance sheet and we need everyone to be working together.
“That means that consumers need to re-enter the market place, and if they do, there’s some good deals on at the moment.”
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Several retailers including Clive Peeters, Harvey Norman and JB Hi Fi claim that they also expecting big sales between Boxing Day and the New Year. However retailers have been warned to not “Overdo the offers or incentives”.
GFK data shows that 1-in-7 Australians now own an LCD TV, with 1-in-13 owning a Plasma TV. They are also investing in home theatre systems and other attach devices claims the research Company.
Evidence of this they claim is 1 in 5 now owns a DVD player. 1 in 9 a DVD recorder and 1 in 3 a games console.
GFK claim that DVD players have the largest penetration of Australian households despite DVD recorders being the newer technology. However Games Consoles are, by far, the fastest growing of these three major component categories.
In the first six months of 2008, Games Consoles recorded sales of a$224 million, an increase of 45% on the first half of the previous year. In contrast, DVD players and DVD recorders registered decreases of 16% and 8% respectively for the same period.
In response to the demand for TV components, some retailers and manufacturers have been giving them away for free as part of the sale of a TV, in an attempt to attract flat panel consumers and this has proved very popular they claim.
However, when it comes to these offers influencing the actual decisions made by flat panel buyers, the effect is far from predictable.
Recent data from GFK’s Australia ConsumerScope study shows, that although many people are influenced by giveaway promotions, around 40% would have made the same purchase decision without the incentive. This does not suggest that such promotions are failing, but it is clear that they are not all equally as persuasive says the researcher.
They say that the consumer response to giveaways is category-sensitive and also depends on the free product. Some giveaways tend to steer a consumer towards alternative models within a selected brand’s range, whereas others are powerful enough to instigate a brand switch.
At least one trend, however, appears to be consistent across product categories: as the price of the “paid for” item increases, giveaway promotions become more effective at switching consumers to a different model within a preferred brand’s range, and less effective at switching consumers to a completely different brand. Although a select few giveaway promotions are able to contradict this trend, the overall implication is, that compared with lower-end consumers, big spending consumers are less likely to switch brands because of a giveaway.
These high spending consumers are more inclined to respond to giveaway promotions by being up-sold to another model within their favourite brand’s range. Retailers and manufacturers have already begun unveiling their latest promotions designed to encourage cautious consumers to celebrate Christmas as usual and, in an uncertain economic environment, it will be more critical than ever to select and target such promotions accurately.
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]]>Vendors, retailers and distributors of consumer technology are turning to online marketing due to the sheer volume of consumers who search for goods and services online say Price Waterhouse Coopers.
They also report that Internet ad revenues rose 11% in the third quarter from the same period a year ago, and 2% from the second quarter. The research was conducted in partnership with the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).
In both Australia and the USA online ad revenue have risen significantly as advertisers search out niche markets and easy measurement of their campaigns.
During the past 12 months web sites like SmartHouse and ChannelNews which are independently measured by both Nielsen Digital and Google Analytics have witnessed significant growth. SmartHouse has grown by 18% to over 3,500,000 unique visitors this year to date. ChannelNews which is a trade only web site has risen by 14%.
“The growth of interactive advertising that we’ve been experiencing over the past few years has stabilized due in large part to the difficult current economic climate,” said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB.
David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.” The Internet should be better poised to withstand the current economic storm given its ability to combine performance-based advertising along with broad-based branding.”
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]]>As the going gets tough vendors and retailers are looking to the bottom line as opposed to getting a sale for the sake of a sale says David Ackery the General Manager orf Electrical at Harvey Norman and if the latest research from GfK is anythig to go by some vendors are making big returns with the product tracking Company reporting record growth in several key categories.
GFK have reported that the overall “value” growth in the consumer electronics market is 3.3 per cent for February 2009 versus the same period last year and YTD growth of 5.9 per cent. In the appliance market maket fans and air conditioning retailers benefitted from the recent bout of hot weather with GFK reporting that the sector had combined growth of 83 per cent according to GfK Retail and Technology Strategic Planning Manager, Gwenno Hopkin.
GFK have also said that the the home office segment grew by 14.6 per cent, driven by notebook growth of 26 per cent, storage growth of 31% and networking growth 53 per cent. IT Peripherals had growth of 22 per cent with Ihe Ink Cartridge category up by 10 per cent.
In the digital still camera market year on year value growth has been14 per cent however flat panel TV have declined year on year by 4.7% with several vendors claiming that this has been caused by a shortage of display panels. While set-top boxes grew by 21.5 per cent DVD players declined by 10%.
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]]>They also claim that drawing conclusions about the “average” Australian can be dangerous. Only 35% of Australian households have a mortgage. 29% are renting and 45% of Australian households are families with children, while 20% are retirees.
They say that families with children are better off by $119 a week because they have benefitted from Government handouts. Retirees and renters have a substantially smaller benefit.
Citigroup’s recent report claims that retail sales growth was solid in January with the strongest growth recorded in food retail. Supermarkets, takeaway food outlets plus restaurants and cafes were all stronger. The sharpest slowdown was in appliance retailing and footwear sales.
They say that mortgage debt is concentrated within 35% of Australia’s population however they do predict that Australian households are facing a number of challenges with rising unemployment and falling asset prices.
However, both the RBA and Federal Government are cushioning the average household through interest rate cuts and tax cuts, especially for families.
The say that the recent Federal Government fiscal stimulus for households will boost household income by an average of $2,000 per household because of income tax cuts, tax bonuses and payments for seniors.
Citigroup say “We estimate the average Australian household’s income will be $75 per week higher in 2009 compared with 2008 (+$3,881 per year). Families with children are even better off, with an increase in income of $119 each week. We arrive at these estimates by rolling forward the expenditure that each demographic group had in FY04, as reported in the ABS Household Expenditure Survey.”.
The net increase in income is highest for families with children (45% of all households) and smallest for those retirees reliant on investment income with fewer benefits from mortgage rate reductions and tax cuts.
Currently unemployment is at 4.8% and is likely to rise to at least 5.4% by the end of 2009. Each 1% rise in the unemployment rate reduces income dramatically for a family, but the overall impact on household income is 1%. The bigger concern with unemployment is weaker consumer sentiment and a fall in the willingness to spend.
While disposable income is rising for households, the high level of debt and uncertainty has resulted in an increase in savings, detracting from retail spending. The household savings rate jumped to 8.5% in the December 2008 quarter compared with virtually no savings in 2007.
They conclude by saying “Consumers have never had it so good. For the past fifteen years, retail prices have not kept pace with overall inflation.” They also conclude that Companies like Harvey Norman and consumer electronics retailers will benefit from Government stimulus programs however appliance sales are expected to remain flat.
Dowload the full report here.
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]]>A survey by Bloomberg of 20 economists predicted a rise of 0.5%.
Australia was one of the few major economies, to expand in the first quarter following hand outs by the Federal Government. Also helping is the lowest interest rates in 49 years. Retailers like David Jones Ltd. and JB Hi-Fi Ltd, have both raised their profit forecasts in recent weeks.
According to Bloomberg “Interest-rate cuts have worked their magic, together with the stimulus applied by the government,” Craig James, chief equities economist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney, said ahead of the report. “The lift in consumer confidence is translating into greater activity at cash registers, and tax cuts will give consumers more reason to visit shopping malls.”
A recent Westpac consumer sentiment report said that consumer confidence jumped by the most in 22 years in June and business sentiment in May had the biggest gain since 2001.
Sales at department stores advanced 5.5 percent from the previous month and spending on clothing gained 2.9 percent, today’s report showed. Sales at restaurants climbed 1.4 percent.
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