Promotional Items

Global Promotional Items Industry Outlook

• The global reminder items market was valued at $88–93 billion in 2023E, and it is growing at approx. 4 percent year-on-year.

• The growth will be driven by the increasing focus of key end-user industries, like food, beverages and CPG, on the emerging markets

• Most of the growth in demand will be from the emerging markets in Asia and LATAM, in addition to the United States (US), Oceania and the Middle East

• The global pharma industry commercial items spend contributed to less than 3 percent of the overall commercial items market, which valued at $1.6–2.1 billion and is expected to fall less than $1.5 billion by 2023E

Global Reminder Items - Industry Trends

• Mature markets are moving toward a centralized procurement strategy for reasons such as better supplier relationships and order management

• Less mature buyers still follow a regional or local sourcing model, and hence, there is a lot of scope for improvement with respect to sourcing maturity

• Wearables are the most popular product category for the promotional products industry In North America

• Being a fragmented supply market, suppliers are increasingly looking forward to expand their service offerings and geographical reach.

• They are constantly in the process of acquiring new capabilities to increase their attractiveness to buyers

• Suppliers are also equipping themselves to provide other value-added services, like market-specific insights and value engineering

Global Reminder Items - Drivers and Constriants

• Strong customer connection and ROI are the drivers of commercial and reminder items category

• Strict guidelines on the usage of plastics are a major constraint

Drivers

• One of the most important growth drivers is the increase in value-added services like design inputs, relevant market inputs and value engineering; and spend/cost structure visibility provided by suppliers, which enables buyers to gain assurance and try new initiatives about promotional/reminder items

• Buyers are working towards reducing their environmental footprint; hence, the demand for sustainable promotional products is also on the rise as buyers attempt to attain a better brand value and image

• According to recent studies, electronic gadgets are gaining more prominence and have become one of the important drivers of the promotional items industry. Hence, buyers are procuring gadgets like power banks, earphones, wearable technology, and other relevant bespoke electronic items in order to gain more prominence among consumers

• Studies indicate that 91 percent of people have at least one promotional product in their kitchen and 74 percent in their offices

Constraints 

• Experts suggest that there is a lack of innovation in the industry. For example, polypropylene tote bags became a sensation eight years ago, and there has nothing been noteworthy since.

• It is also believed that one of the critical reasons for sluggish innovation is pricing pressures among the suppliers and manufacturers

• Many countries are starting to ban plastics, which will become a major constraint in terms of sustainable raw material substitutes, resulting in increased overall costs

• The pharmaceutical industry is strictly governed by codices and regulations, with respect to issuing promotional items to patients, healthcare professionals, etc. Therefore, the spend for the promotional items industry with regard to the pharmaceutical companies is slowly decreasing with just 2–3 percent of the total global spend