HotTopics: Enterprise Buyers Provide Feedback – 2006 Product Satisfaction Scorecard

Author: Mary Corcoran, Vice President, Client Solutions

This HotTopics presents the results of Outsell's annual satisfaction data for dozens of information products in 13 content categories. Responses from 372 enterprise buyers from the corporate, not-for-profit, government, education, and healthcare sectors show no great improvements in satisfaction ratings over the previous year, with most respondents giving similar above-average ratings to products in many categories, a sign of intense competition in most product segments. Providers with the highest scores continue to be government and not-for-profit publishers such as MEDLINE or OCLC FirstSearch, and the Internet-based providers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The data measures satisfaction with the depth/breadth of content, pricing, and ease of doing business, in addition to evaluating loyalty as a function of respondents' willingness to recommend each product to colleagues. Detailed analysis of ratings in the News & Trade, Company & Financial, Books & eBooks, Document Delivery, STM Journals, IT Research, and Market Research segments allows side-by-side comparisons. Buyers report pricing as their top issue with vendors, but other factors such as contract negotiation, ease of access, and multi-site access rank high as problem areas; this suggests that buyers have leverage with information providers in these aspects of their relationships. This data underscores the need for publishers and information providers to focus on the attributes that drive loyalty by fine-tuning their relationships with clients and creating more flexible licensing models. By Mary CorcoranVice President and Lead Analystmcorcoran@outsellinc.com