My colleague Ivana Lazovic has been leading some fascinating research to see on which geographies analysts seem to be focusing their work.
As you can imagine, it’s sort of question that some analysts won’t give a straight answer to. They might say that their research is global, or that it has no geographical aspect.
Luckily, it is possible to see where these firms seems to be going their research by looking at the examples they reference in their research, and where they get referenced.
I’ve just been looking at the initial results, which track 727 firms. I’ve calculated the mean scores for those regions in the chart on the right here. The percentage for North America may look high to some readers. It interesting in comparison to the distribution of the AR community. In most information or communication technology (ICT) markets, spending by organisations looks more like the distribution of the AR community than it does like the chart above.
Indeed, you also need to remember that this is an mean. As a median, the results are even sharper: most firms seem to focus on North America at least 89% of the time.
Our opinion is that this shows that most analysts put more weight on experiences in North America than elsewhere, and are more familiar with it. AR managers should anticipate that analysts will tend to be most familiar with solutions (to the problem your technology addresses) that are common in North America.
There are two conclusions for AR managers:
- If you are international firm, you still need case studies in the US market – especially when presenting to analysts with US firms.
- If demand for and use of your technology has significant geographical differences, then you need to be very clear about those. Modalities and use cases need, as far as possible, to be explained and not just asserted.
