Predictable, But Not Easy
INSTITUTIONS LIKE SCHOOLS, hospitals, government offices and libraries represent a $4.1 trillion annual market. They’re mostly recession-proof and very often are predictable product buyers.
But they’re not easy to reach, said Mary English, assistant director of strategic alliances at MCH.
Institutional buyers behave differently from businesses because they’re governed by a different set of accounting principals, English noted last month during DMA06 in San Francisco.
For example, most companies want to save as much money as possible to improve their bottom-line performance. But institutions must spend their entire budgets within the fiscal year or risk losing that money the next year.
For this reason, it behooves catalogers targeting school districts to mail between April and June, when their fiscal year typically ends.
