CNBC and SurveyMonkey Release Latest Quarterly Small Business Survey

Products
Product Overview
SurveyMonkey is built to handle every use case and need. Explore our product to learn how SurveyMonkey can work for you.
SurveyMonkey
Get data-driven insights from a global leader in online surveys.
Features
Explore core features and advanced tools in one powerful platform.
SurveyMonkey Forms
Build and customize online forms to collect info and payments.
Integrations
Integrate with 100+ apps and plug-ins to get more done.
Market Research Solutions
Purpose-built solutions for all of your market research needs.
SurveyMonkey Genius
Create better surveys and spot insights quickly with built-in AI.
INDUSTRIES
Healthcare
Education
Technology
Government
Financial Services
See more Industries
ROLES
Marketing
Customer Experience
Product
Human Resources
Research
See more roles
USE CASES
Online Polls
Registration Forms
Employee Feedback
Event Feedback
Customer Satisfaction
See more use cases
Templates
Net Promoter Score
Measure customer satisfaction and loyalty for your business.
Customer Satisfaction
Learn what makes customers happy and turn them into advocates.
Website Feedback
Get actionable insights to improve the user experience.
Contact Information
Collect contact information from prospects, invitees, and more.
Event Registration
Easily collect and track RSVPs for your next event.
Event Feedback
Find out what attendees want so that you can improve your next event.
Employee Engagement
Uncover insights to boost engagement and drive better results.
Meeting Feedback
Get feedback from your attendees so you can run better meetings.
360-degree employee evaluation
Use peer feedback to help improve employee performance.
Course Evaluation
Create better courses and improve teaching methods.
University Instructor Evaluation
Learn how students rate the course material and its presentation.
Product Testing
Find out what your customers think about your new product ideas.
See all templates
Pricing
Enterprise
Resources

Contact Sales Log in

CNBC and SurveyMonkey Release Latest Quarterly Small Business Survey

Quarterly Survey Finds Confidence of Small Business Owners Continues to Climb, Despite Trade Concerns

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. and SAN MATEO, CA, May 1, 2018 – CNBC, First in Business Worldwide, and SurveyMonkey, the world's leading People Powered Data platform, today announced the results of their quarterly CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey. Each quarter, CNBC and SurveyMonkey poll over 2,000 small business owners aiming to measure the vitality of the American economy as well as the view from Main Street on jobs, taxes and other hot topics. In addition to measuring small business confidence nationwide, the large sample size gives CNBC the power to uncover trends by geographic region and among specific small business cohorts.

Key findings from the Q2 CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey include:

53% percent of small business owners surveyed say overall business conditions are good, up from 47% in the first quarter of 2018 and 38% in the second quarter of 2017. This marks the first time since CNBC and SurveyMonkey began polling small businesses a year ago that a majority say business conditions are good.
28% of small business owners expected changes in trade policy to have a negative effect on their business, up from 17% in the first quarter of 2018.
Recent troubles at Facebook, including public outcry over its use of personal data and the threat of government regulation, have not significantly impacted small business owners’ use of the platform:
- One quarter of small business owners say they have advertised on Facebook in the past few months. Among this group, 45% plan to keep spending about the same amount on Facebook advertising in the coming months, while 28% plan to spend more and 25% plan to spend less.
- Among those who have advertised on Facebook recently, 44% believe social media regulation would “make no difference” in their ads’ effectiveness, while 34% believe it would make their ads less effective and 19% believe it would make their ads more effective.
Overall, a plurality of small business owners (44%) say Amazon is bad for small businesses in general, and 11% say they directly compete with Amazon for customers.
- 5% of small business owner respondents have an Amazon storefront.
- Only 43% of those who use Amazon Storefront say Amazon helps drive customers to their business and 37% of those with an Amazon Storefront say Amazon is bad for small businesses.

CNBC Small Business Reporter Kate Rogers will reveal the results of the CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey today, Tuesday, May 1st throughout CNBC's Business Day programming. For more information on the survey including the full results and methodology and in-depth articles, go to: http://www.cnbc.com/cnbc-survey-monkey-small-business-survey.

“This survey marks a full year since we launched the Small Business Confidence Index, giving us our first look at year-on-year confidence among small business owners,” says Jon Cohen, chief research officer at SurveyMonkey. “With five consecutive quarters of data we’ve seen relative stability in the index itself, but also clear evidence of improvements in assessments of the current business climate and a surge in confidence around revenue and hiring. At the same time, growing concerns over trade policy threaten to upset the upward trajectory.”

SurveyMonkey created a unique Small Business Confidence Index (SBCI), which is a 100 point score based on responses to eight key questions. The index is calculated on a scale from 0–100 and is based on the responses to eight key questions. A zero indicates no confidence, and a score of 100 indicates perfect confidence. The second quarter of 2018’s SBCI has dipped from an overall value of 62 to 61, indicating that small business owners are markedly more optimistic than pessimistic about the direction their business will go in the next 12 months. This quarter’s decline is attributed to a sharp increase in the number of small business owners who expect trade policy to have a negative impact on their businesses in the next year. However, this is a difference within the margin of error for quarter-to-quarter change.

The CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey was conducted using SurveyMonkey's online platform from April 11 – April 17 among a national sample of 2,048 self-identified small business owners ages 18 and up. Respondents for this survey were selected from the nearly three million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. The modeled error estimate for this survey is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Data for this quarter have been weighted to be representative of small business owners nationally, according to business characteristics from the Small Business Administration's 2013 Statistics of U.S. Businesses and owner characteristics from the Census Bureau's 2012 Survey of Business Owners.

*CNBC/Survey Monkey additionally surveyed 10,941 individuals who do not own small businesses. Data for questions asked of the general population have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau's American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States age 18 and over.

For more information contact:
CNBC
Jennifer Dauble
201-735-4721
jennifer.dauble@nbcuni.com

SurveyMonkey
Irina Efremova
650-681-3464
irinae@surveymonkey.com

About CNBC:

With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, and CNBC World, CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to more than 409 million homes worldwide, including more than 91 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.

CNBC Digital delivers more than 50 million multi-platform unique visitors each month. CNBC.com provides real-time financial market news and information to CNBC’s investor audience. CNBC Make It is a digital destination focused on making you smarter about how you earn, save and spend your money by zeroing in on careers, leadership, entrepreneurship and personal finance.

CNBC has a vast portfolio of digital products across a variety of platforms including: CNBC.com; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides live access to CNBC programming, exclusive video content and global market data and analysis; a suite of CNBC mobile products including the CNBC Apps for iOS, Android and Windows devices; and additional products such as the CNBC App for the Apple Watch and Apple TV.
Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBCUniversal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/programming/cnbc.

For more information about NBCUniversal, please visit http://www.NBCUniversal.com.

About SurveyMonkey:

Founded in 1999 and based in San Mateo, California, SurveyMonkey is the world's leading People Powered Data platform enabling curious individuals and companies – including 100% of the Fortune 500 – to have conversations at scale with the people who matter most. Whether it's a trend in the market, opinions of customers, or voices of employees, SurveyMonkey turns them into actionable data. As a pioneer of the industry, SurveyMonkey is a trusted platform for people to express their true feelings and opinions so organizations can uncover the “why” behind the data. SurveyMonkey's 750+ employees throughout North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific are dedicated to powering the curious. For more information about SurveyMonkey, please visit: surveymonkey.com.