The findings of our newly released 2002 ceramic study, when compared to the benchmarks established by the 1999 and 2001 ("The Ceramic Tile Market for 2001: A Comprehensive Study" May, 2001) editions of the survey, reveal that we were pretty much dead on in our prognostications.
Slightly more than half of this year’s respondents (54 percent) expect that increase to be in excess of 10 percent. And 15 percent anticipate sales growth of more than 20 percent (see chart 1). These results remain fairly consistent with the findings of previous NFT ceramic studies. In 1999, 58 percent of participants expected a better than 10 percent sales boost. Last year, 57 percent forecast a sales increase of at least 11 percent.