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It’s no surprise that the consultants ranked state and local incentives and tax exemptions so high — sixth and seventh place, respectively (with 90.9 percent and 88.5 percent ratings) — when we consider that incentives negotiations are one of the consultants’ primary functions. In fact, 37 percent of those responding to our 2007 Consultants Survey said incentives are now more important than in the past to their clients who are making location decisions, while 48 percent of the respondents said incentives have always been of great importance to their clients. And nearly 40 percent of the responding consultants consider tax credits, exemptions, and the like to be among the most important incentives sought by their clients (Slideshow, Charts S and T).

Additionally, more than half of those responding to the Consultants Survey said that today more communities are instituting investment and/or job-creation criteria that must be met by companies receiving incentives and, if the companies do not satisfy the investment or job-creation projections, the incentives will have to be paid back to the communities (clawbacks) (Slideshow, Chart U).

Two factors showing the largest increases in importance ratings in our Consultants Survey on a year-over-year basis are proximity to technical university (+16.8 percent) and training programs (+9.4 percent). Perhaps the responding consultants are finding that their clients need access to these resources in order to meet their future work force requirements. The responding consultants also ranked ratings of public schools first among the quality-of-life factors — with a 78.5 percent rating and tied with low crime rate. Continuing this focus on education, they placed colleges and universities in area in fourth position among the quality-of-life factors, with a 65.8 percent rating. This factor was ranked eighth among the nine quality-of-life factors by the respondents to our 2007 Corporate Survey, with only 47.3 percent rating it as “very important” or “important.”

Finally, according to the consultants, an “unranked” location factor considered by their clients is whether or not there are businesses performing activities similar to theirs in the area of search (Slideshow, Chart X). More than 90 percent of the respondents to our Consultants Survey said this was a consideration, although only 65 percent of those responding to our 2007 Corporate Survey made a similar claim. And 45 percent of the responding consultants also said that their clients meet with representatives of similar businesses, with nearly two-thirds saying their clients also meet with community representatives (Slideshow, Chart W).

Consultants’ Sources of Information
The respondents to our 2007 Consultants Survey are more computer-savvy than the respondents to our Corporate Survey. Fully 80 percent of the responding consultants said they use the Internet to obtain site selection information (as compared to just 55 percent of the corporate respondents). Thirty percent of the responding consultants also use CDs and other software (as compared with just 8 percent of the corporate respondents), and 56 percent of the responding consultants use site magazines like Area Development (Slideshow, Chart Y).

Additionally, two-thirds of the responding consultants find economic development websites to be most useful, and a third find online site magazines (like Area Development Online) and online property databases (like FastFacility.com) to be most useful.

Three quarters of the consultants using the Internet for site information get website addresses from search engines like Google or Yahoo, and a third also get them from ads in magazines like ours (Slideshow, Chart Z).

As in past years, there are similarities and differences between the responses of the corporate group and consultants group taking our surveys. As noted, a larger percentage of those responding to our Consultants Survey have worked with warehouse/distribution (50 percent), financial services (39 percent), information technology (21 percent), and other types of firms that are not well represented among the respondents to our Corporate Survey. And let’s not forget that more than half of the respondents to our 2007 Corporate Survey said they do not use consultants when making location decisions — hence the disparate factor ratings and differing perspectives. Nonetheless, both groups’ responses provide insight into industries’ overall location priorities and plans for the future.