DHL 2012 Annual Report Download - page 56

 division
BUSINESS UNITS AND MARKET POSITIONS
The postal service for Germany
Deutsche Post DHL is Europe’s largest postal company. We deliver more than
 million letters every working day in Germany alone. We oer all types of products
and services to both private and business customers, ranging from physical, hybrid
and electronic letters and merchandise to special services such as cash on delivery and
registered mail. Availability for our customers is always our number one priority: today,
our customers can purchase stamps at retail outlets, points of sale, stamp dispensers,
online and via text message.
Our -Postbrief product provides a secure, condential and reliable platform for
electronic communication. It can be used for everything from personalised customer
communication to bulk mailing. -Postbrief allows companies, public authorities and
private individuals not only to meet high security standards but also to reduce process-
ing costs.
Our mail business is focused on Germany, where the mail market has been fully
liberalised since the beginning of . Since July , we have been required to apply
value added tax to revenues generated from business customers. Competition has inten-
sied considerably as a result, whilst at the same time the increasing use of electronic
communication is resulting in a continuing shrinkage of the German mail market. In
the year under review, the market for business communications was approximately
. billion (previous year: . billion). In order to more precisely reect actual mar-
ket conditions, we report on the competitive business customer market. We therefore
indicate those companies that are service providers to business customers, i. e., both
competitors who oer end-to-end solutions as well as consolidators who oer partial
services. Our market share declined slightly from .  to . .
Targeted and cross-media advertising
Companies can use our solutions to design and print advertising mail themselves
and send it at reasonable rates via our company. Dialogue marketing is only eective
if addresses are updated constantly without breaching data protection regulations. We
provide our customers with online tools and services to ensure the quality of their
addresses and for the ecient identication of target groups. Companies may rent the
addresses of these identied target groups from us for their own advertising campaigns
as needed. We also oer customers a broad range of digital dialogue marketing solutions
to use for cross-media and targeted advertising.
e German dialogue marketing market comprises advertising mail along with
telephone and e-mail marketing. In the reporting year, this market shrank by . 
year-on-year to a volume of . billion (previous year: . billion). Some companies
considerably reduced advertising expenditure, especially in the mail-order business –
which included, for instance, the insolvency of Neckermann. We were able to maintain
our share of this highly fragmented market at . , despite the dicult environment.
. Domestic mail communication
market, business customers, 
Market volume: . billion
Source: company estimate.
37.3 % Competition
62.7 % Deutsche Post
. Domestic dialogue
marketing market, 
Market volume: . billion
Source: company estimate.
13.5 % Deutsche Post
86.5 % Competition
Deutsche Post DHL Annual Report 
52