Chart E
Percentage of responding consultants who have recently done work for:
• Investor-owned companies 18%
• Privately held companies 30%
• Both types of companies 52%
Chart F
Has the downturn in the U.S. economy affected clients’ facility plans?
• No – Still plan to open new facilities 47%
• No – Still plan to increase hiring 16%
• Yes – New facility plans put on hold 50%
• Yes – Closing/consolidating facilities 28%
• Yes – Reducing current employment 12%
• Yes – Hiring plans deferred 16%
Chart G
Consultants’ clients who expect to open new facilities plan to do so within:
• 1 year 32%
• 2 years 56%
• 3 years 6%
• 4 years or more 5%
Chart H
The number of facilities these companies plan to open:
• 1 64%
• 2 23%
• 3 3%
• 4 4%
• 5 or more 6%
Chart I
Types of new domestic facilities to be opened by consultants’
clients (as of total new domestic projects):
• Manufacturing 27%
• Warehouse/Distribution 27%
• Headquarters 14%
• R&D 10%
• Back Office/Call Center 14%
• Other 9%
overseas, including regulatory and social/cultural issues
(each type seen by 29 percent of the respondents), utility
infrastructure ( 25 percent), and legal ( 22 percent) among
others (Chart P).
What Are Their Clients’ Site Selection Priorities?
The consultants were asked to rate the same site selection and quality-of-life factors as the Corporate Survey-takers as either “very important,” “important,” “minor consideration,” or “of no importance.” We once again added the
“very important” and “important” ratings together and
rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent in order to rank
the factors in priority order (Chart Q).
This year the consultants ranked state and local incen-
tives as the number-one priority of their clients, with 96.1
percent of the respondents rating this factor as either “very
important” or “important (up from 90.9 percent last year,
and compared to the 87.2 percent combined rating given
this factor by the respondents to our 2008 Corporate Sur-
vey). The increased need to reduce costs in these tough
economic times, as well as the fact that consultants consid-
er incentives negotiation one of their primary responsibili-
ties, is probably reflected by the heightened importance of
state and local incentives.
In fact, more than half of the respondents to our 2008
Consultants Survey said they believe incentives have
always been of great importance to their clients, and more
than a third of the respondents felt incentives were more
important now than in the past (Chart R). Nearly 60 per-
cent of the responding consultants thought tax incentives,
exemptions, and the like were more important (up from 39
percent last year); and nearly half said other financial
incentives such as grants, bonds, and loans were para-
