Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Our Survey: Corporate Spending, Not Stimulus, To Drive Recovery
We've just released the results of our first non-scientific survey of our readers and others on the economy and business conditions, and found that the majority of our survey respondents believe that corporate spending--not the government stimulus--is what will drive a recovery in business conditions.
Our survey--conducted from January 19th to January 30th for us by the David James Agency--had 150 respondents, 40 percent of whom thought that it will take longer than on year for business to improve, and 32 percent who think it will take six months before a turnaround. Only 4 percent thought government stimulus would help improve business, with 46 percent instead saying that improved corporate spending would be the biggest driver in business improvement.
Interestingly enough, executives in public companies were a lot more negative than private firms when it came to when a recovery might happen: 10% of people in private firms though business might improve in the next 3 months, with 0% of the people from public companies thinking business would improve in that timeframe. That was also the case with opinions on that recovery would be in the next 4-6 months, with 21% of private company respondents believing so, and only 3.7% of public company responders.
Another interesting data point: despite the economy, there are some companies--all private--who have seen sales growth, with 13.76% of private companies reporting sales growth in recent months, compared with no responders from public companies indicating sales growth. However, around 30 percent of both private and public companies reported seeing recent sales declines of bigger than 20%.