DMV-ifo Marketing Barometer April 2018

Restrained mood in the marketing industry

In April, both business expectations for the coming months and the assessment of the current business situation in the marketing industry declined significantly, leading to a decline in the Business Climate Index to 95.1 points. The business climate index was thus below its long-term average for the first time this year (measured since January 2005).

The assessment of the current business situation remained skeptical for the second month in a row, which may be due to increasing dissatisfaction with the current order backlog. Its indicator has slipped back into negative territory with -5.6 points.

In addition, the outlook for the current quarter is also clouded. Respondents expect less room for price increases - after an extremely good month, the balance of price expectations dropped by 14.3 points to 9.6 points. The sales expectations also show that respondents anticipate slower sales growth.

This skeptical sentiment is also in line with judgments throughout the German economy. The Ifo Business Climate Index Germany fell in April from 103.3 to 102.1 points.

The ifo Business Climate is based on approximately 7,000 monthly survey responses from firms in manufacturing, construction, wholesaling and retailing. The firms are asked to give their assessments of the current business situation and their expectations for the next six months. They can characterize their situation as "good", "satisfactory" or "poor" and their business expectations for the next six months as "more favorable", "unchanged" or "more unfavorable". The balance value of the current business situation is the difference between the percentages of the responses "good" and "poor"; the balance value of the expectations is the difference between the percentages of the responses "more favorable" and "more unfavorable". The business climate is a transformed mean of the balances of the business situation and the expectations. Since January 2015, the X-13ARIMA-SEATS seasonal adjustment is used in the calculation of the results series of the ifo Business Survey. For the purpose of calculating the index values, the transformed balances are all normalized to the average of the year 2005.

The whole evaluation you find here. (only available in German)

Link to previous evaluations.