Strategic marketing decisions call for up-to-date and reliable information about market developments. Information is necessary in order to be able to successfully capitalize on current developments in the environment. Information or rather knowledge is considered by more and more top managers to be the most important means of production. In the information age we now live in a need is arising for instruments that can be used to determine what information or knowledge is necessary for making decisions. This paper describes an approach with which one can systematically determine what information marketers need in order to make decisions in the fields of marketing and communications. Completely in keeping with the modern views about marketing this approach has set aside a developmental role for the consumer the user of the information. His/her wishes help determine the construction of an information plan that ensures the organization has useable information for its marketing policy.
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 this paper the process of large-scale quantitative research is examined with the aim of finding ways to reduce costs and improve quality. The paper focuses on the role IT plays in fieldwork preparation, fieldwork management, data collection and analysis. These activities usually require most effort in terms of time and manpower and are critical for the quality of the output of the process. The Brand Power Experience study is used as a "worst case" to illustrate the way NIPO uses IT in these stages. The case is chosen for it's extremity: in an international face-to- face survey, carried out in tens of countries all over the world, more than 1.000 brands per country were tested for awareness, image, and many more aspects. NIPO carried out fieldwork in the Netherlands and was the only participant using CAPI. As opposed to many participants, NIPO's standard procedure appeared to hold out very well. During the exploration NIPO's information processing strategies (standardization, decentralisation and information systems) are discussed. Especially the benefits of electronic information systems become clear. Besides the known methodological advantages and high data quality they offer, they improve communication between research, service and fieldwork departments. Better integration opens up possibilities for a more efficient research process. An investigation into the profits and costs of NIPO's research systems shows that the return on investment in information technology can be considerable. Finally new challenges for information technology are identified, which are currently being evaluated by NIPO. These challenges relate to systems for paying out and checking interviewers, fieldwork management and using audio and video in face-to-face interviews.
This paper will show that qualitative research methods can contribute to an increased effectiveness of traditional market research and can offer a solution to a variety of management problems related to the development and implementation of a (new) strategy within the organization. The effectiveness of market research can be increasedby combining traditional research designs focussed on the external market (consumers and end-users) with research on the internal market (employees of the organization). The application of qualitative research methods and techniques to the decision making process involved in developing a new strategy, can be very helpful in providing a certain integration of internal and external markets. This aspect is very important since many marketing desicions have an impact on various elements of the companys structure, the organization and its employees. Strategies fail due to a lack of acceptation and problems with the implementation of the strategy. This creates new challenges and opportunities for research managers: for researchers at agencies: the effectiveness of research is enhanced, new markets are opened up and longer-term consultancy can be assured, for researchers at companies; their role changes from information supplier and/or marketing consultant to internal agents of change.
This paper demonstrates that those random procedures for selecting individuals in households will lead to enormous shortcomings in the representativeness of the individual sample while the agencies will need a second or third wave to obtain a minimum of representativeness. This is a costly sampling procedure which can easily be avoided. The basic assumption underlying the study presented in the paper is that nowadays one-person households and two-person households are in the majority in most European countries. This means that individuals living in such households have a far greater chance of being drawn in random individual samples than persons living in three-or-more person households. As persons living in smaller households have different socio-economic characteristics from persons living in larger households, random samples of individuals lead to wrong results - not only in terms of socio-economic characteristics, but also in the results of practically every market research study based on individuals. The study described was performed in NIPO's Telepanel where a questionnaire was used by applying different selection procedures. The paper describes the results of a few questions about political preference by applying the various methods. Finally an extremely practical solution will be discussed. This selection method - whose value is borne out by the results - is to select within the household: in a panel situation: youngest person (from a certain age) in a cross-section situation: youngest male and if not present youngest female (from a certain age).
In May 1991 six European telecommunications companies agreed to develop a European-wide videophone service, promoting the use of international standards (ITU: H.320), through the European Video telephony (EV) programme. The main part of the programme consisted of a large scale trial. In this trial each participating country distributed about 50 ISDN videophones over a selected number of companies. The results of this trial will be presented in this paper. There were two main objectives in the EV trial. The first objective was a purely technical one. By setting up an international videophone network it was possible to: 1) test the maturity of the technology; 2) test the performance of the equipment and the networks; 3) test the interworking between countries, ISDN and PSTN, terminals of different manufacturers and PBX exchanges; and 4) to learn from the technical organisation of such a large trial. The other main objective was a more social or marketing one. The trial aimed at: 1) discovering the added value of using videotelephony, 2) the identification of new applications and 3) to learn how to introduce this technology within organisations and companies. In the following sections we will focus mainly on the social or marketing objectives.
In this paper we go into the relations between Quality of Advertising, Brand Awareness, Perceived Quality and finally Brand Loyalty, on the basis of the large number of studies we did in this field. Our empirical evidence shows that advertising can produce brand awareness which is a necessary but of course not sufficient condition to have (a lot of) loyal buyers. A simple model is sufficient to describe these causal relations. We based on the strong empirical relationship between Brand Awareness and Brand Loyalty we further more derive the Brand Value Index. This shows both the value of the brand and functions as an overall measurement of advertising and other marketing effects.
Mystery shopper research (or mystery buyer research) is an often underestimated instrument with respect to its various applications. In industries where personal selling is the most important or one of the most important marketing mix variables, MSR can provide the management with a practical tool for control-purposes. It can be used very adequately for evaluating marketing objectives and specific marketing action programmes. MSR for instance can show whether the employee of a travel agency uses its sales tools ( e.g. computerterminal) in the prescribed way and whether he/she follows under certain circumstances the procedures set by central management. Evaluating the performance of the employee c.q. the branch office in an adequate way by questioning customers is quite an impossible task, because it is very difficult to operationalise the standards set by the central management in a questionnaire. There are however some strict rules under which MSR has to take place. This paper will give recommendations for using the instrument MSR and shows some overall results ending with some remarks with respect to the ethics involved. Finally it presents some results of our research about the validity of the instrument and gives a quantitative view on interviewers-bias in MSR.
The number of women with a paid job in the Netherlands is growing rapidly. Of course, having a job has implications on the amount of money, time and contacts one has. But the list of topics that are affected is much larger.To study what implications these changes in the lives of women may have for both marketeers, government and market researchers NIPO has done a number of studies starting in 1988. The findings of these studies are reported here. The first study concerns the survey of Women '88 conducted by NIPO in 1988. This is a study on the process of individualisation of women in the Netherlands. Five categories of women were distinguished segmented to the attitude towards individualisation and with respect to the individualised behaviour. The five types of women described in the study are: the pioneer, the supporter, the in between, the counterpart and the traditionalist. These five segments differ to a number of characteristics: education, marital status, employment, activities in the household, opinions about role patterns, independence and opportunities for women in society, leisure activities and consumer behaviour. It can be expected that women will combine jobs with family life and household tasks to a larger extent than is the case at present. The second part of the paper describes a qualitative study which NIPO conducted m 1990 on women in the Netherlands who combine their professional jobs with a family life. Points of interest in this study were: attitude towards individualisation, the psychological aspects of work, the consequences regarding consumer behaviour and the needs of women with regard to products and services.The women all worked full- or part-time and were aged between 18 and 65. The results of the study show that these women have special needs with regard to shopping facilities and that marketeers should pay more attention to women as being equally serious prospects as male clients.
In this paper we will discuss the quality of the data obtained by using computerised interviewing in a panel situation. For this form of research some extra advantages of computerised interviewing can be obtained. It will first be shown for data on income that the quality of the data is already on a high level, with important advantages because of the panel character when compared to ad hoc research. However from the same analysis follows that for policy relevant conclusions the quality of the data, and therefore of the questionnaire should be improved further. Another equally important aspect for panel research is that interviewees will become bored and irritated by exposure to similar questionnaires on a regular basis. Especially when they perceive little or no change in the answers they are providing. This may affect increased dropout and panel mortality, thereby reducing the usefulness and lifecycle of the panel. In the last part of the paper we will go into the improvements that may be obtained in computerised panel research by using information retained from previous interviews, when collecting new data.
From telephone interviewing and then computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) the last few years have brought along two new systems of datacollection by means of personal interviews. One is the Telepanel-system, which consists of a random sample of 1.000 households, of which the members answer questions that appear on their television set. The latter is connected to a home-computer they were supplied with by the research institute. By means of a modem and very userfriendly software the questionnaires are transmitted from the central computer to their home-computer and after the responses have been typed in, the data of the different members that were requested to respond in that particular weekend are transmitted back to the central computer. The data can then be processed immediately. The other development is CAPI, computer assisted personal interviewing in cross-sectional research. A group of specially trained interviewers visit homes or business addresses with portable personal computers. Questionnaires appear on the LCD-screen and the respondents themselves punch in the replies. In this paper we will focuss on extra advantages these methods have over existing procedures such as CATI and face-to- face interviews with paper and pencil. The first is obviously that the number of different response possibilities is more limited when using a telephone, the respondent will comprehend the question better if it can be read instead of heard and the third and in our opinion more decisive advantage is the reduction of the influence of the interviewer. The effects of these advantages will be shown to be of great value in: - getting more information concerning sensitive topics. - getting more and more valid information on difficult research topics. - getting more reliable data - enabling collection and analysis of non-sensitive data that write-in panels cannot produce.
This paper describes the application of a new technique for data-collecting in the field of quantitative research into financial services. Researchers know that quantitative research into financial services mostly creates relatively more fieldwork problems than research for other consumer goods. In the first part of this paper a number of these problems will be discussed. the CAPI-system (Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing) has been used for a research study on behalf 6 main Dutch banking corporations. This method will be discussed in the second part of the paper. The third part of this paper deals with the results of the pilot study carried out by means of the CAPI-method and compared with the traditional methods of data-collecting. In this study, using the same questionnaire, data were collected by means of the traditional face-to-face method, the CATI-system and the CAPI-method. Comparison of the results coming from these data-collecting methods leads to a number of conclusions.