Marketers expressed concern on how a recession would impact priorities moving forward, and half of the executives believe their marketing budgets will decrease in 2009, while 56% indicated their staffing plans will either stay the same or increase.

The Top Five Trends:

I  Insight and innovation are viewed as keys to combat down economic and business cycles. 72% of respondents indicated that innovation efforts would stay the same or increase, while 39% say their use of market research will increase in the next year. This is significant given that most marketing experts agree it's imperative to innovate and mine insights during a recession, Anderson Analytics said.

II   Customer satisfaction and customer retention remained the top two marketing concepts followed by marketing ROI, brand loyalty and segmentation, which represents a "Back to Core Principles" approach to marketing. Of the 62 identified marketing concepts, faith-based marketing, six sigma, game theory, anti-americanism and immigration were viewed as the least important.

Of the 62 identified marketing concepts, faith-based marketing, six sigma, game theory, anti-Americanism and immigration were viewed as the least important.

• 55   Selective Outsourcing   10%
• 56   Text Analytics                10%
• 57   Off Shoring                     8%
• 58   Immigration                    8%
• 59   Anti-Americanism          7%
• 60   Game Theory                5%
• 61   Six Sigma                      5%
• Faith Based (Religion)         4%

Source: MENG & Anderson Analytics, January 2009

Among the marketing concepts rated as important by more executives, Customer Retention, Marketing ROI, Lead Generation and Alternative Energy showed the largest increases from last year.

III  The issue of global warming showed the largest decrease in importance (dropping 14 places in the rankings), while green marketing showed a statistically significant 5% drop.

IV  Twice as many marketers are "sick" of hearing about Web 2.0 and related buzzwords such as "blogs" and "social networking" compared to last year's survey; however, marketers still admit they don't know enough about it. This was evident in the results of a social media study MENG released on November 6, 2008 showing 67% of executive marketers consider themselves beginners when it comes to using social media for marketing purposes.

V   Despite well-publicized quality issues over the last year, China ranked the number one greatest area of opportunity for 53% of the marketers with international responsibility. India was a distant second with only 17% of respondents.

Offshoring, however, has significantly diminished in favor as more executives this year (58% vs. 49% in 2008) agreed that offshoring ‘is not as profitable as others think, and is fraught with risk'. Marketing executives also still feel Boomers represent the best opportunity for customer targeting, while the perceived importance of Generation X and Generation Y grew significantly compared to 2008.

The main sources of marketing inspiration remained practically the same this year. Good to Great remained the most widely read and most recommended book. However, several new books appeared on the reading list this year including:

Groundswell, Hot Flat and Crowded, The Black Swan, Predictably Irrational, Mavericks at Work, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, The Art of the Start, Purple Cow, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, and Our Iceberg is Melting.

Similarly to the books, the number one business Guru last year, Seth Godin, remained the favorite marketing guru for 2009. However, Warren Buffet and Malcolm Gladwell increased significantly in popularity and now occupy second and third place, respectively. Jim Stengel also made the Marketing Guru list for the first time this year. Seth Godin was mentioned by most executives as the most important marketing/business Guru for two years in a row

Tom H.C. Anderson, managing partner of Anderson Analytics, concludes by saying "This year we saw an increase in importance in several areas, not just ‘customer satisfaction' and ‘retention'. There were also significant increases in the importance of marketing concepts like ‘CRM', ‘Data Mining', 'Leading Through Analytics'... together with interest in books like The Black Swan and optimism on Market Research budgets... signals marketing executives realize that in a down economy it's even more important to utilize information efficiently and keep the customers you have."

Anderson Analytics conducted the Marketing Trends Survey among current MENG members between November 15 and December 2 of 2008. The responses yield overall statistics with a confidence interval of +/-3.86% at the 95% confidence level.

For more from the release by MENG, visit here, or for a complete copy of survey results, please visit here.