5 killer stats to start your week

The growing role of analytics in marketing

CMOs are predicting that spend on marketing analytics will increase by 198% over the next three years.

Just 5.8% of marketing budgets are currently spent on analytics, but CMOs say this will rise to 17.3% over the next three years.

Marketing analytics are also increasingly used in decision making, up from 30.4% five years ago to 42.1% now.

Yet the rate at which marketing analytics has contributed to firm performance has only increased slightly, from 3.7 (out of 7) in February 2013 to 4.1 five years later.

Source: CMO Survey

Global smartphone sales fall for the first time

Global smartphone sales declined for the first time ever in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Sales of smartphones to end users totalled almost 408 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017, a 5.6% year-on-year decline.

Samsung, the number one smartphone marker, saw a year-on-year unit decline of 3.6%, while Apple iPhone sales dropped by 5%.

However, sales across 2017 were up 2.7% year on year to more than 1.5 billion units.

Source: Gartner

Online to account for a fifth of all sales

Online will account for 21% of non-grocery retail sales in Western Europe by 2022, with sales growing 10 times faster than the retail market overall.

The average rate of online sales growth will be 11.9% per year over the next five years.

While the grocery sector will be one of the fastest-growing online retail categories, just 4.5% of grocery sales will occur online in 2022.

Source: Forrester

UK GDP growth revised down

The UK’s economic growth has been revised down to 0.4% for the final quarter of 2017, from preliminary estimates of 0.5% growth,raising doubts that there will be another increase in interest rates..

Growth in the first quarter of 2017 was also cut from 0.3% to 0.2%, although GDP growth for the third quarter was revised up from 0.4% to 0.5%.

However annual growth between the final quarter of 2016 and the final quarter of 2017 was just 1.4 percent, lower than any other company in the G7.

Source: ONS

International consumers more likely to buy products with Union Jack

International consumers are twice as likely to purchase products displaying the Union Jack, highlighting a global love of British products.

The demand in British-made items grew 36% during the past five years, with 47% of people aged between 18 and 34 saying they are more likely to buy products that carry the British flag.

However, just 24% of those surveyed over the aged over 55 agree.

As part of the study more than 8,000 people from France, Germany, India, China, UAE, USA and South Africa were surveyed. It found international consumers listed food as the most in-demand item, with 22% willing to pay premium and buy British.

The fashion and automotive industries are also set to reap the rewards, with cars (10%), clothes (9%) and alcohol (9%) the items international consumers most consider worth paying a price premium for, if they are labelled as being British made.

Source: Barclays Corporate Banking