Survey reveals optimism for print's future

A new survey has found that those in print are more optimistic for the industry's future than previously, printweek.com reports.

Xerox Premier Partners Global Network surveyed 485 of its members and discovered that 70 per cent felt strongly that print would remain a strong part of the 'marketing communications mix'. This comes after recent speculation - wrongly - that the print industry would lose out to digital rivals. 

Many also said that the outlook was far better than in 2010 and 2011, with more opportunities for growth and increasing revenue available.

To capitalise on this optimism, many of the respondents said that they would be transforming their offering from just printing to more-inclusive marketing services providers. Three-quarters of those polled said that the 'transition from monochrome to colour print' was showing promise too and that there is real growth potential in wide-format printing.

Xerox's global marketing manager, Mary Roddy, commented on the survey findings on the digital printing blog at xerox.com: "The common threads from partners is that everyone is looking at where print can fit into their customer's new business outreach or integrated marketing campaign.

"The other [growth area] I would add in there is wide-format applications, whether those are poster size or point of sale type printing. We've seen that wide format has some new growth potential for our members as well."