InfoTrends’ Survey on Digital and Conventional Printing

What do customers want?

Regarding the specific sentiments of converters today, ones we interviewed personally say their customers want short runs of print for two main reasons: (1) to be lean in their own manufacturing; and (2) to be able to target markets precisely with particular versions. These two items are megatrends for brand owners and, in turn, for converters. Besides underlying priorities, the research uncovered and measured converters' main pain points. Figure 1 charts the total responses of each group of converters in the survey when asked to rank up to five out of 12 possible sources of frustration or concern about their conventional press technology. (By total responses, we mean the total votes for each response option, whatever the ranking by each respondent.) We focus first on the results to this "pain-points" question because conventional presses are so dominant for all types of label and package converting, and are thus the print technology that color digital presses must compete against.