Shopper research is a buzzword today. As the traditional brand building vehicles such as mass media become increasingly saturated and, as a consequence more fragmented, it is theoretically easier to reach a consumer inside a store while he or she is shopping, primarily because of the following:1. A higher proportion of the target audience can be reached with lesser effort. This is not the case with mass media, where the proportion of irrelevant eyeballs is much higher.2. The consumer is more in the relevant frame of mind, they are already purchasing, as against relaxing (watching television) or driving to his work, which is the case with other media interaction moments.3. Better connect possible, therefore making it easier to persuade the consumer to buy your brand more.4. More captive audience as lesser irrelevant distraction present, like thinking about the impending meeting present. Marketers primarily have only other brands to compete with.
In September 2007, following a number of news reports concerning the international liquidity difficulties generated by the U.S. sub-prime problems, the United Kingdom experienced the first sustained run on a major retail bank for over 00 years. Although the causes and consequences of the run on the Northern Rock Bank have been explored elsewhere, this paper provides the first systematic account drawn from the perspective of Northern Rocks customers at that time.
Marketing in India, with its economic and social contrasts, is often likened to dealing with several markets at the same time. The population of more than one billion differs enormously with 15 different languages, social customs and live under varying states of economic development, from the vastly affluent to the destitute.The personal and general insurance market, hitherto dominated by governmental monopolistic monoliths Life Insurance Corporation,General Insurance had to make way for a slew of private players that paired with local financial institutions to revolutionize the insurance market in India.This paper describes the initiatives adopted by ING Vysya life insurance to provide a distinctive and compelling brand experience to consumers.All this had become possible by understanding behavior dynamics, need states, creating rapid segmentation models and developing value based offerings and services to re design their own product life cycles.
This paper shows how two quite disparate banks in culture and outlook - Natwest Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland - came together and evolved a comprehensive CRM strategy. In doing so it will demonstrate why it is necessary to marry the top-down macro approach (e.g. brand and customer strategy) with the bottom-up micro implementational issues 'on the ground' in order to become truly customer centric. Additionally the authors show that a closer relationship is needed between research agency and client if such a CRM strategy is to be delivered effectively within this environment. Lastly, the paper reviews how customers really want to be treated and how this is being translated across all parts of the two banks.
In an environment of increasing product parity, the need to innovate has become critical. The key input for innovation is robust and insightful data from customers. Given this scenario, this paper explores the triggers and barriers that exist within typical companies in the drive to gain better customer insights to fulfil the end need of innovation. This has been illustrated using the simple but interesting scenario of trying to target non-Muslim customers for Islamic banking products and services.
While getting qualitative research into the boardroom of many organisations may be a challenge, the challenge is multiplied several-fold when the organisation is a major bank in the United Kingdom. This paper provides a case study of such a qualitative survey, and discusses why it succeeded and the influence of this research on the banks strategy. This paper also addresses why other research projects do not succeed. In particular the authors discuss when projects should not reach the boardroom and issues relating to board requests for surveys that need to be prevented.