Virtual reality of some kind would seem to be a natural tool for market research. It has the potential to help the marketing decision maker in that it can allow him to model what people do rather than rely simply on what people say they will do. The marketing decision maker is surrounded by experts advising him on what to do; the design expert who tells him new packaging will refresh his brand, the agency expert who tells him new advertising will increase brand share, the pricing expert who tells him that if he drops his price it will result in increased sales and increased profits overall and the marketing research expert whose job is to convince him as to the best course of action. With all of these experts often with different agendas, sometimes offering conflicting advice, it is no wonder he has a healthy scepticism. We now have new tools at our disposal. It is up to us to be proactive, to change, to try new technology. If we want the marketing decision maker to use research fully we need to convince him that we have the means to get at the truth. And if at first we donât succeed then we should try, try, try again. In the ideal world, Marketing will trust all research results implicitly and have full confidence in anything that we propose. To achieve that goal we must have amongst other things the right tools. Researchers within a marketing organisation cannot rely only on suppliers to provide those tools. We have to understand the needs, then if the tools are not available, develop them ourselves and find a supplier who can work with them. Then and only then will market researchers on the client side gain the confidence of marketing decision makers leading one hopes to the ultimate goal of increasing profits for our companies.
This paper is subdivided into three sections. In the first section, which provides a historical overview of organizational structures through time, the advantages and disadvantages of the various models will be discussed and used to provide an explanation of the change in organizational structures. The second section of the article describes the development of market research through organizational changes until the present day. In the third section, the gauntlet is thrown at market researchers: to determine their own direction; to choose their own way. What is needed is a market research department with a vision. The foundation for this article comprises a literature study, expert interviews and IPM's own insight into this theme.
The unprecedented economic boom in China has resulted in a high demand for local managerial talent, as most multi-nationals have recognised that in order to sustain their business growth, they need to localise fairly rapidly. Consequently, the young, educated Chinese seeking employment today, have opportunities that even a decade ago were unthinkable. This has led to a situation where recruiting local talent is a big management challenge. This paper examines, via a case study involving conjoint analysis technique, how this very valuable and sought after target group makes decisions regarding which job to choose, and the trade-offs that they are willing to make. Further, it examines the application of the conjoint analysis technique to market segmentation. The findings suggest that the potential managerial pool in the PRC is more likely to choose a job that offers instant gratification (such as a quick promotion) over one that is likely to provide a more long term career or personal growth prospects. However, there are segments (albeit in the minority) of the student population who are give greater emphasis on issues such as training and job content - and therefore are likely to be a better long term bet for prospective employers.
In this paper, first the relevance of packaging and its colour is discussed. Though this subject has been a research topic before, a methodology for researching this subject systematically and thoroughly, which is moreover based on theoretical assumptions is not available. Such a method, however, will be helpful for a better, more reliable and valid understanding of the effects colour on packaging has on consumer information processing and decision-making. A methodology is described, which can be used in the process of developing market communication but also for researching the effect of executional cues conveying a 'meaning', such as colour on packaging, on consumer decision-making. The methodology provides more sensible and reliable results than obtained with current used methods, and will give the marketing manager more insight into the decision-making process and behaviour of the consumer, due to an explicit, standardised and systematic way of examining 'meaning' and using new technologies making the process directly 'visible'. Though we acknowledge that this method is still at it's beginning, we hope it is a step further towards an interdisciplinary, theoretically founded, and thus more reliable and valid approach for researching consumer decision-making.
Three Dutch orchestras approached Intomart and SEO for a demand analysis regarding concerts of classical orchestral music in the Amsterdam area. The main object was to determine the attributes that constitute concerts of classical music, as well as the relative weights of these concert attributes. The problem has been approached by a hybrid mix of conjoint measurement and a strongly generalized own brand of logit analysis (ROA). Some 1100 respondents have been offered varying subsets of 32 vignettes of concert offers, most of them fictitious but not unrealistic. From the analysis it is possible to determine the change in demand for classical concerts as a consequence of a change in an attribute value, as well as the price compensation necessary in order keep the level of demand unchanged. According to our knowledge this is the first study on the demand for classical concerts making use of vignettes. Furthermore, it is one of the first applications where the collection of data by supplying vignettes is blended with fairly sophisticated econometric techniques for discrete choice analysis.
Electronic Point Of Sale (EPOS) data from grocery store scanners have led a revolution in the way manufacturers and retailers use data for strategic and tactical decision making. The industry continues to change, with more robust, actionable applications becoming available as scanning data are used to guide the salesforce and marketers in seeking out the efficiencies of the marketplace. A wide variety of EPOS applications to enhance the marketing plan have been developed in the USA and have changed the way that retailers and manufacturers look at their businesses. In Europe, the scanner revolution is now taking hold, and opportunities to better target marketing mix understanding are growing concurrently. This paper provides examples of applications available in the USA including applications of promotion effectiveness and geo-demographic based micro-marketing. Uses of EPOS data in Europe for better marketing decision making will also be illustrated.
The ABN AMRO bank has outsourced the Consumer Marketing Research Department. The NIPO the major Marketing Research company in the Netherlands handles all the marketing research for the consumer market. The NIPO consultant has responsibility for the marketing research budget and operates while staying within the NIPO organisation as a member of the ABN AMRO organisation. This construction is seen as most profitable by both ABN AMRO and NIPO. In this paper we will discuss the way this remarkable construction works in practice. This paper focuses on the instruments created to solidify the marketing research importance in the ABN AMRO organisation. One has to keep in mind that this is a very unusual construction and that therefore these instruments partly are created out of necessity: the consultant not being able to be in the organisation for a great amount of time. First of all attention is paid to the research agenda. The research agenda serves the need to economise on the research budget while at the same time bringing more structure to it. The research agenda describes in a most detailed form the scope and goal of all the research projects that cater to the information need of the ABN AMRO organisation.
In order to develop and implement effective marketing strategies, Western companies entering the East European countries should be well acquainted with the in-depth social and cultural processes that are taking place in these societies and how the markets are related with and influenced by them. The study and correct interpretation of these processes requires a change in the currently established relationships between research buyers and suppliers, on one side, and between Western research companies, coordinating projects in East Europe, and East European research companies, on the other. The general conclusions of the paper are based on the results of a marketing research project (1994), conducted by MAP - a Bulgarian full service marketing research agency, for Mobikom (a Partnership between Cable&Wireless, Bulgarian Telecommunications Company and Radio-Electronic Systems). The research project had to answer the question whether the current skimming marketing strategy should be retained or replaced with another strategy. During the execution of the project both parties, the Client and the Researcher, worked in close collaboration, from formulating the objectives and hypotheses, through detailed discussions of the questionnaire, till the interpretation of the results and the formulation of recommendations. This close âopenâ relationship allowed the interpretation of the results to leave the restrained frames of the empirical data from the research project and to apply the extremely useful background and semiotic information that the researcher had.
Changes in marketing environments have, in many cases, rendered traditional company-to-consumer marketing and communications strategies insufficient, as the need to target, communicate, and address the needs of different constituencies has increased. Marketing departments need to identify when marketing decisions have broader internal and external repercussions that may have a significant impact on a firm's image and positioning both among its immediate body of target consumers and society at large. In today's increasingly complex marketplace, corporations are also faced with the challenge of developing products designed to appeal to multiple consumer populations, with different and sometimes competing expectations. Qualitative research is needed to fully understand how different constituencies may approach one issue or respond to one product with radically different needs and expectations. Quantitative research can compare how different groups answer the same question, but it fails to take into account that the same question may mean different things to different people. This paper presents two different case studies involving corporations attempting to market a single product or service to different consumer groups. It illustrates how in-depth qualitative research can be applied to develop and integrate marketing and communications toward different audiences.
At the beginning of the 1990âs, it was recognised that the existing information on the volume and value of tourism and the characteristics of the visitor market was inadequate as an input to the forward planning and development of tourism on Guernsey. The response was to establish a continuous survey of visitors departing from Guernsey at the end of their visit to provide this basic market information. This paper will examine, first of all, the role of this programme of market research in the development and execution of an innovative promotional campaign for the island of Guernsey. The central feature of this promotional campaign was the free distribution of a twenty minutesâ video to all those responding to a schedule of press advertising in the United Kingdom and also in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The paper will highlight the role which this extensive programme of research has played in the evolution of the promotional campaigns for holidays in Guernsey in the last few years. The Tourist Board can now make informed decisions on both the design and content of these campaigns and also for product enhancement initiatives based on consumer information. In relation to the current debate about researchers gaining access to the boardroom, this paper provides an example of the researchers becoming established as an integral part of the strategy team. Finally, the paper will provide evidence of the impact of the use of a promotional video on converting potential visitors to holiday in a particular destination. The cost of the campaign will be set against estimates of the expenditure by these "converted" visitors on Guernsey in comparison with the more traditional forms of promotion.
The present article is the description of applied research, conducted by the Scientific Research Center "V-Ratio" (Moscow) by the order of one of the largest financial companies in Russia. The first chapter of the article gives a brief spetch of the development of the financial market in Russia, and the private investment situation in autumn 1994 within the research period. It was the period when the most agents of the given market faced the problem of sharp decrease of return from investments into advertising. To clarify this question and to work out practical recommendations were the primary objectives of the research project. The second, third and fourth chapters present the results of the three most important blocks of the research, obtained by qualitative and quantitative methods: focus-group, expert estimation of commercials, and surveys. The main conclusion of the research is as follows: the content of advertising campaign of a customer firm does not correspond to the type of its potential clients from the market. Besides during the research one could make a conclusion about the relative depletion of the demand at the segments of the market being researched. Recommendations developed on the basis of the conducted research allowed to stabilize sale at reducing of advertising budget of a customer three times.
Market research definitely contributes a great deal to certain kinds of decisions but leaves a lot to be desired in certain other kinds of decisions. Unfortunately, the marketing decisions where it does not add too much value are often the more fundamental ones - the ones which have a more profound and longer term impact on the clientâs business. In short, the more strategic decisions. This paper discusses three action areas which will help market research to contribute more forcefully in this area Action area I : Improved skills (and respect) for problem definition Action area II: Understanding the business context of the decision Action area III: Learning to look at the future rather than describe the present.