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2024 Tech Buyer Behavior Survey Results

Laurie Buczek — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey addresses tech buyer digital behaviors while balancing their preferences for personalized communication. The survey examines how digital and AI are impacting the buying journey. The survey seeks to further define the role of human interaction in the buying journey as the acceleration of digital buying preferences occurs. The survey explores trust factors and the impact of trust and customer experience on the buyers' willingness to purchase vendor products. It examines tech buyers' propensity to switch vendors and the main underlying reasons. The survey highlights factors impacting tech buying and tech spending. This document is intended to help B2B tech vendor executives better understand their buyers and therefore adapt their experience and marketing and sales practices to improve customer experience and business results.

"The accelerated pace at which B2B buyers are shifting their buying behavior, adopting digital and AI, and changing their search habits is a wake-up call for marketers," says Laurie Buczek, research vice president, CMO Advisory Practice at IDC. "The standard marketing playbook is no longer effective, leaving marketers to quickly evolve their strategy, organizational structure, skill sets, and tactics."

Shortcomings in Managing Third-Party Software Risks: Lack of Oversight, Software Bill of Materials Generation

Christopher Tozzi — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Tech Buyer Survey Spotlight answers the following question: What are the shortcomings in managing third-party software risks?

Flaws in software used by third parties have been vectors for a number of high-profile breaches in recent years. Yet IDC's CIO Sentiment Survey shows that the bulk of IT organizations are not actively assessing third parties for risks. Most are also not automatically generating software bill of materials (SBOM).

These gaps pose major challenges today, and they will likely grow worse in the future, unless CIOs and their IT teams take action.

Consumer Social Media Survey Results: Beyond Content Sharing to Researching Travel, Dining, Wellness, and Other Topics

Greg Ireland — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey examines selected results from IDC's Consumer Behavior Survey fielded in 2Q24. Results and analysis focus on consumer engagement with social media. Areas of focus in this presentation include the share of survey respondents engaged in specific categories of social media apps, average time per week spent by consumers on social media, share of consumers that post content and frequency of posting, and how social media is used by consumers as a source of information across a wide range of topics. Generational differences are also highlighted.

"Social media remains a vibrant and significant part of the consumer digital landscape as all survey respondents report at least some level of social media use," said Greg Ireland, senior director for IDC's Consumer research. "Social media is used by many consumers to research travel and dining, health and wellness, and product information and to follow news."

Consumer Video Entertainment Survey Results: Streaming, Social Media, Smartphones, and Sound Quality in Focus

Greg Ireland — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey examines selected results from IDC's Consumer Behavior Survey fielded in 2Q24. Results and analysis focus on consumer engagement with video entertainment. Areas of focus in this presentation include the share of time spent by consumers on video entertainment relative to other entertainment services and the share of time spent viewing video from traditional pay TV, streaming, and social media. Also covered is the share of viewing time spent on different devices, including the television and the smartphone, and how consumers view the importance of sound quality and personalized entertainment experiences. Generational differences are also highlighted.

"Gen Z and millennial consumers continue to reshape the consumer video entertainment market," said Greg Ireland, senior director for IDC's Consumer research. "While attention has been placed on how streaming continues to disrupt traditional pay TV services, Gen Z and millennial consumers are spending more time viewing video on social media platforms than on streaming services, with Gen X not far behind."

What can Retailers Glean from How Consumers Shop Online?

Filippo Battaini — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Survey Spotlight provides an overview of consumers' online shopping behavior, showing where shoppers research products before purchasing and what channel mix they use to buy online. Based on IDC's 2024 Consumer Sentiment Survey, it shows that online shopping is a key element of the customer journey, and that brands and retailers should ensure consistency and quality of product information across different online channels.

Japan 3rd Platform Forecast by Vertical Segment and Company Size, 2024–2028

Ko Shikita, Hitoshi Ichimura — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study classifies domestic industries into 21 industry sectors, including 17 categories of businesses, and 4 categories of nonbusiness: central government, local governments, education, and consumers. It also presents the actual (2023) and forecast (2024-2028) 3rd Platform spending in each sector. Likewise, the document analyzes the market across five employee size segments and provides forecast data for 3rd Platform spending by industry vertical and employee size. The market forecasts used in this document take into account the impact of regional conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, as well as economic trends such as inflation and the weak yen.

In the construction and transportation industries, caps on overtime work, which had been waived because of issues with the nature of work and trade practices, would come into effect in April 2024. Ko Shikita, research manager at Verticals and Cross Technologies, IDC Japan, said, "For these businesses, it is likely that awareness of reducing overtime hours will increase not only among onsite workers but throughout the company. IT suppliers should review their solutions, including those that previously had the primary objectives of reducing costs and ensuring safety, from the perspective of contribution to reducing overtime hours, and seek to expand opportunities for the employee experience solutions business."

This is the English translation of the Japanese document #JPJ52028024.

Evaluating the True Cost of Open Source Software

Karen D. Schwartz, Katie Norton, Michele Rosen — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Perspective evaluates the true cost of open source software. While many organizations choose open source software over traditional software based on the theory that it is less expensive, that's not always the case. While there are specific categories of cost that must be calculated, the result of those calculations will be different for every organization based on the specific requirements and proficiencies of that organization.

For example, every organization should evaluate upfront costs like required infrastructure and customization, but the actual costs incurred will depend on existing infrastructure and the strength of the internal IT team. The same is true of post-deployment costs and security-related costs.

In all cases, calculating the total cost of ownership (TCO) isn't easy. There are TCO calculators available that can help, but they often don't take every variable into account. Every decision is an individual one — for example, just because community-supported database software may work for an organization doesn't mean that the organization should always go the community-supported route.

"While you may never be able to come up with an accurate total cost of ownership because there are so many variables, doing your due diligence will point out your relative strengths and weaknesses in different cost centers and that should inform your decision," says Michele Rosen, research manager, Open GenAI, LLMs, and the Evolving Open Source Ecosystem at IDC.

Storytelling Will Enhance AI, Collaboration, Communities, and Trust

Wayne Kurtzman — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC Market Perspective highlights the growing importance of storytelling in enterprise collaboration and communities, emphasizing its role in enhancing communication, knowledge management, and AI context. It outlines the C-CAST framework (collaboration, communities, AI, storytelling, and trust) as essential for grounding AI in relevant content. The research also discusses the evolution of the collaboration market, driven by trust, AI integration, application optimization, increased visualization, and the significance of human dynamics and culture in adopting new collaborative technologies.

"Technology has reached the point where things that are old are new again. This is the case in using storytelling mechanics to improve collaboration, communities, AI, and other enterprise content," according to Wayne Kurtzman, research vice president, IDC's Social, Communities and Collaboration. "Multimodal stories provide greater depth to collaborative and community content and add context for the workforce, partners, and customers, as well as help train implementations of AI."

IDC's Worldwide 3rd Platform Spending Guide Taxonomy, 2024: Manufacturing — Release V1, 2024

Tue, 28 May 2024 04:00:00 GMT

This IDC study provides a detailed description of IDC's Worldwide 3rd Platform Spending Guide for Manufacturing methodology and taxonomy. It should be used as a companion piece for IDC's Worldwide 3rd Platform Spending Guide for Manufacturing. Technology suppliers may utilize this approach and structure to help them build an industry- and subindustry-focused organization to refocus products and services within the evolution from 2nd Platform to 3rd Platform technologies.

"IDC's Worldwide 3rd Platform Spending Guide for Manufacturing presents a comprehensive view of the 3rd Platform opportunity across the manufacturing subindustries," says Karen Massey, research manager of IDC's Customer Insights and Analysis Group. "This is an invaluable resource to help vendors define and standardize their vocabulary and approach to this expanding and dynamic market."