Produced by the editors of Electrical Wholesaling, CEE News and Electrical Marketing newsletter, the ElectroForecast 2002 survey is intended to offer a quick snapshot of the issues that will confront electrical contractors, electrical distributors, independent manufacturers' reps and electrical manufacturers during the next year. It's not intended to be a statistically verifiable piece of research, but it does offer some interesting insight into what's on the minds of electrical professionals. Here are the key issues that surfaced in the survey:
Causes for Concern
- Lingering concern over Sept. 11 and the possibility of more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
- Massive corporate layoffs.
- Many of the survey's respondents are skeptical about e-business.
- Unemployment and a lingering recession could sour the residential construction market, one of the few bastions of strength in the U.S. economy over the past year.
- Electrical distributors have to focus more on service basics if they want to improve their business relationships with electrical contractors.
Reasons to be Cheerful
- Most respondents think the recession will end by mid-year.
- Despite the recession, the voice/data market continues to be good business for electrical contractors.
- Some electrical contractors have found alternative energy sources such as wind energy and photovoltaics to be profitable avenues of business.