Charlottesville, VA - INTERQUEST, a leading market and technology research and consulting firm serving the digital printing and publishing industry, has released a comprehensive assessment of transactional printing in North America. The report is based on in-depth interviews with leading transactional providers and focuses on the near-term and long-term impact of the recession on the market as well as other recent developments.

According to David Davis, Director of INTERQUEST, "When we last studied the market in 2008 the economic downturn was just beginning to take hold. A great deal has occurred since then, not only on the economic front but with numerous product and market developments as well. We felt this was a critical time to reassess the state of the market."

The study is based on in-depth interviews with leading commercial and in-house transactional providers. These providers generate well over one-quarter of all transactional impressions produced in North America. The study includes monochrome, highlight, and full color production printing on laser and ink jet devices. In addition to providing market size and forecasts through 2014, the study analyzes the impact of the recession on the market, the current and future outlook for promotional transactional ("transpromo") printing, the role of high-speed continuous-feed full-color production printers (ink jet and electrophotographic), the electronic diversion of printed documents, USPS issues, MICR printing, and recent developments in transactional hardware and software.

"The down economy has clearly impacted transactional printing, including the adoption of transpromo, just as it has impacted all other print markets," said Davis. "But digital print providers have in general fared better than conventional ones, and among the sectors served by digital production printing, transactional printing has fared better than others such as direct mail. But we believe for a number of reasons documented in this study that the long-term implications of this recession for the transactional market may be more damaging than the near-term impact."

The study finds that despite the ongoing decline of black-and-white transactional output, the installed base and combined output of full-color systems has grown steadily over the past five years. High-speed ink jet devices are also generating an ever-growing share of transactional output, accounting for more than one-third of the total impressions produced by the survey respondents. Although most of the providers surveyed report some degree of impact from the recession, in-house operations appear to have taken the hardest hit; in addition, the study finds strong evidence that over the past 18 months more transactional impressions have been shifted to third-party providers as corporations step up efforts to cut costs.