The U.S. Commercial Fleet Market Forecast: 2004 - 2008

The commercial fleet market is diverse with products in various stages of their life cycles.  Some trends, like wireless communication, telematics, and the Internet, are changing the way many businesses manage their fleet.  Most trends are interrelated with one new technology, hybrid vehicles as an example, affecting other businesses, like maintenance and fuels. 

Suppliers to the commercial fleet market need a clear vision of these occurring changes to chart their business strategies and market executions.  Research from numerous proprietary surveys conducted over the past several years indicates that many fleet operators have gone through an assessment period and are now ready to implement their resulting plans.  For these reasons, we are now launching a new industry survey to benchmark current practices and forecast market behavior over the next four years.

Since we began our commercial fleet market research series over a decade ago, we have recognized the need to improve targeting.  With direct marketing response rates down and fewer RFPs flowing through the sales pipeline, it has become even more imperative for our clients to focus resources on real opportunities in order to maintain sales productivity.

Our solution for more accurate targeting is to build a research database that replicates the commercial fleet market.  From the Department of Commerce, we know the number of commercial vehicles by class, type of business and fleet size.  From our multi-client studies, we know the products and services these fleets consume.  As we add fleets to our database, we append consumption data from our research where possible.  Today, this database contains over 730,000 fleets, which is about 10 percent of the U.S. population of businesses with one or more vehicles.

This database would not be very useful if it was not accessible by our clients, their sales reps and channel partners in the field.  Accordingly, we have built an Internet interface to our research database, called FleetLeads.  This interface enables clients to access the database, target opportunities identified by the research, administer marketing campaigns, support sales prospecting, and distribute leads to sales associates and channel partners in the field.  

 

Study Prospectus The market study, the research database, and the FleetLeads interface are all detailed in this prospectus.  By becoming a charter subscriber, your company will participate in the questionnaire design, ensuring that planning issues important to your company are covered in the scope of the research and that your products and services are included in the research database. The fleet marketing and sales support tools provided with this research are the result of a three-year development program by our company.  We at Havill & Company are confident that the deliverables from this prospectus will give subscribers a meaningful competitive advantage.  We welcome your participation in this important new study.   View and Print Prospectus Prospectus Purchase Agreement

Survey Questionnaires Because of the diversity of issues reported on the ballots submitted by industry participants, the decision has been made to conduct three individual surveys.  Accordingly, the 2004 U.S. Commercial Fleet Market Study will be published as three separate reports covering the following topics: 1.  Vehicle Procurement and Advanced Vehicle & Fuel Technologies 2.  Refueling and Payment Methods 3.  Leasing, Maintenance & TBA, and Fleet Management There are several advantages to this approach.  Since our first multi-client study was published over a decade ago, subscribers have asked if they could purchase individual sections of the report.  Now that is possible.  Each survey questionnaire will cover a narrow range of topics, enabling a more in-depth focus on the research topic.  Subscribers to each section of the report will have greater influence on questionnaire design.  In fact, each charter subscriber has the opportunity to suggest questions to be included in the research.  Even if you have not yet made the decision to become a study subscriber, your input will ensure that planning issues important to your company are covered in the scope of the research.  We invite you to review the questionnaires of interest to your company and submit any suggestions by email (jzohn@havillconsultants.com) or by fax (419) 841-2211.  View and Print Questionnaire     Havill Survey Questionnaire (Rev. 08/18/04)