For the second consecutive year,
AV Business & Communication, a full-service incentive and
marketing company based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, conducted a
wide-scale study of incentive use in Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.
The firm surveyed 250 corporate
executives, ranging from CEOs to human resources managers, via an
online survey last fall. Among the findings:
* More than half (59 percent) of the
executives polled held incentive programs for internal staff.
That’s an increase from last year’s survey, when just 52 percent
had internal programs.
* At the same time, the number of
incentive/loyalty programs for their external clients decreased,
from 65 percent to 55 percent.
* The majority of internal incentive
programs targeted small groups: 55 percent said their programs were
for 100 or fewer participants. But more than one-quarter (27
percent) had programs with 400 or more participants.
* Most companies (84 percent) used
their internal incentive programs to motivate their sales forces;
the next-largest group recognized was back-office workers, cited by
a quarter of respondents.
* Among external programs, 42 percent
targeted distributors’ sales forces.
* Half of the survey respondents said
their incentives were outsourced. Incentive houses (cited by 29
percent) and promotional marketing firms (19 percent) most often
handled the programs.
* Interestingly, 40 percent of
executives polled said their corporations did not have a dedicated
incentive budget.
* Most survey respondents saw room for
improvement in their incentive programs. Key areas of weakness:
measurement of return on investment (55 percent), communication
with participants (47 percent), proposal creativity (38 percent)
and budget size (32 percent).