Our Green Industry team is fortunate to have an economist, Dr. Ariana Torres, as part of our group. In addition to her business and marketing background, she also has experience in the greenhouse and floriculture industry, as well as a grower for several years. She’s been developing programs and publishing in scientific journals about the Green Industry, including this paper examining the business and marketing practices of landscape firms across the U.S. A brief description of the results and a link to the article are included below.
Little information has been published on the business and marketing practices of landscape firms, an important sector of the green industry. We profiled the product mix, advertising, marketing, and other business practices of United States landscape firms and compare them by business type (landscape only, landscape/retail, and landscape/retail/grower) as well as by firm size. Herbaceous perennials, shade trees, deciduous shrubs, and flowering bedding plants together accounted for half of all landscape sales; 3/4 of all products were sold in containers. Landscape businesses diversified their sales methods as they diversified their businesses to include production and retail functions. Landscape businesses spent, on average, 5.6% of sales on advertising, yet large landscape companies spent two to three times the percentage of sales on advertising compared with small- and medium-sized firms. The top three factors influencing price establishment in landscape businesses were plant grade, market demand, and uniqueness of plants, whereas inflation was ranked as the least important of the nine factors provided. https://journals.ashs.org/horttech/view/journals/horttech/27/6/article-p884.pdf
