DMV-ifo Marketing Barometer March 2018

Restrained mood in the marketing industry

Driven by a poorer assessment of the current business situation in the marketing industry, the business climate index fell by 3.8 points in March to 103.2 points. Despite this revision, the business performance indicator was above its long-term average (measured since January 2005).

The more skeptical assessment of the business situation can be noticed in the current order backlog evaluation: After two extremely good months, the indicator slid into negative territory with -2.7 points. The number of positive assessments also declined with regard to the development of sales and the number of employees - in particular the recruitment plans were heavily revised downwards.

However, the slight increase in business expectations to 96.4 points suggests that respondents are optimistic about the development of business over the coming months. This could be because respondents increasingly expect prices to rise in the next three months. The balance of price expectations rose sharply to 29.4 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.