November 27, 2007 - As a process, digital printing has gained widespread adoption. But the shops adopting these technologies have unique challenges and needs that are often hidden, even from themselves.
By looking into The Industry Measure data for digital print shops, and comparing it to the data for graphic arts firms overall, valuable insights can be gleaned into meeting the needs of these service providers. The Industry Measure Special Report “Digital Printing 2007: Key Issues for Vendors” takes a detailed look at digital printers' sales opportunities, business challenges, and planned investments to provide insights for serving this important customer base. The report is available in the WhatTheyThink.com store.
Planned investments provide another benefit to vendors, as well. All of IM's planned investment categories for hardware and software are listed, with results for both digital printers and graphic arts firms overall. By understanding where digital printers' planned investments are higher than average, this provides important insights for marketing and targeting.
Also included in the report are the current investment projections for a variety of digital printing equipment, both black-and-white and color. These projections have been created by The Industry Measure twice yearly since the inception of its Printing surveys. Historically, however, the projections have been available only for subscribers to IM's large Printing market surveys. Now, they are being made available in the Special Report format.
The third component of “Digital Printing 2007” is the Industry Measure's look at digital print volumes, both in dollars and pages, generated by commercial printers and creative firms.  Data is gathered by output device, and in the case of creatives (ad agencies, corporate designers, graphic designers, commercial photographers), market projections are created based on available demographic data. Gathering these data is far more challenging than other market topics, so they are to be considered more as an industry poll than projectible figures, but they still provide interesting insights for vendors looking to understand and serve this key customer base.
The price for the 136-page report is $695. The Digital Printing 2007: Key Issues for Vendors Report is available for immediate purchase by visiting the secure WhatTheyThink.com store at http://wttstore.com/dipr20keyisf.html