Brand Awareness Survey

Telephone and Online Research

Uncovering information that has the power.....to connect corporations with their customers.

Brand Awareness Survey

Understanding customer perceptions of your business and products stands at the heart of brand awareness. Protecting, redefining, and building your brand can pose a daunting task to even the savviest marketers. Our market research surveys provide valuable intelligence as to your company’s marketing presence and the strength of your brand recognition--information that is critical to the success of your business.

Why Conduct a Brand Awareness Research Survey

After spending months or even years developing and introducing products and services to the marketplace, it is tempting to declare "mission accomplished." Corporate inaction at this juncture is misguided and can potentially threaten the time and resources invested in your project. A brand awareness survey can reveal much about the strengths and weaknesses of your products, services, and your company itself, including:

What is the "top of mind" brand in the market? What attributes do you "own" versus the attributes competitors own? What are customer perceptions regarding your brand versus the competition? Who are your prospects working with, and why?

The result of an effective brand awareness survey sheds light on these questions, and results in information that can be used to leverage brand strengths against competitors' weaknesses, allowing successful launch and or re-launch of products.

The concept of brand awareness goes beyond a customer’s ability to recognize your brand and correctly associate it with a particular product. Brand awareness also spans the range of emotions or perceptions associated with a company or product. These intangibles are difficult to gauge, requiring an effective methodology to ensure accurate results.

How to Conduct a Brand Awareness Survey

An effective brand awareness survey needs to go beyond determining if customers recognize your brand and associate it with the correct product. To uncover emotions and customer perceptions requires establishing a dialogue with your customers. While brand awareness surveys are often conducted using online surveys, e-mail questionnaires, or direct mail, the nuanced answers captured during a brand awareness survey lend themselves to telephone based interviews. Our interviewers have years of real world business experience, and are trained to

engage your audience in meaningful conversations designed to elicit detailed, comprehensive, actionable information.

Contact the Brand Awareness Survey Leaders

Your company's brand is a valuable business asset. Developing, growing, and protecting brand awareness as market conditions change can be a daunting task. Do you see the value of a brand awareness survey, but remain confused as to how, or where to start? Since 1983, Direct Opinions has provided business owners and marketing professionals with custom tailored brand awareness surveys designed to achieve their business goals. Contact the experts at Direct Opinions to discuss your brand awareness survey today!

Customer Satisfaction Survey

Telephone and Online Research

Uncovering information that has the power.....to connect corporations with their customers.

The Role of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Knowing what your customers truly think is critical to retaining your customers – and keeping your profits. While companies invest heavily in sales and customer service, too often they cut corners and leave the very important task of understanding what will create loyal, happy customers to an insufficient or informal information collection process. By identifying the needs, wants, and expectations of your customers, your business is able to maximize customer satisfaction and retention. Most importantly, a well done customer satisfaction survey will arm your company with valuable information needed to ensure your hard-earned customers do not go elsewhere.

Why Conduct a Survey to Measure Customer Satisfaction?

Is your company facing a sudden drop in revenue or profits? Is a once solid customer base mysteriously eroding? Do certain business groups or sales teams lag behind company averages? Does the lack of a formal methodology to measure and track the effectiveness of your sales and service staff give cause for concern? Companies facing one or more of these issues may benefit from a customer satisfaction survey. When considering the merits of a customer satisfaction survey, consider the following:

Acquiring new customers is 10 times more difficult and expensive than retaining existing clients.

A 10% increase in customer retention typically increases profits by 30%. The average business does not hear from 96% of their unsatisfied customers. US companies lose 50% of their customers every 5 years

Customer Satisfaction Survey Methodologies

Most sales and marketing professionals appreciate that customer satisfaction is essential to the survival of their businesses but ponder the best means to find out whether customers are satisfied. There are many ways to ask your customers whether or not they are satisfied with your company, your products, and the service they received. Customer satisfaction studies are commonly conducted using face-to-face interviews, or via phone, mail, or online surveys. Knowing which strategy works best given your unique situation, as well as what questions to ask determines the success or failure of surveying customers. The customer satisfaction survey professionals at Direct Opinions have the real world business experience to recommend the right survey for your company's unique situation.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys Utilizing Telephone Interviews Provides a One-To-One Relationship

Although there are many ways to evaluate CSI (customer satisfaction index), we believe that the telephone gets directly to the voice of your customer. It’s a personal interaction that generates the highest level of quantitative and qualitative customer relationship information in a timely manner. Telephone surveys allow us to proactively reach out to your customer base to gather information, providing the opportunity to have a conversation with people versus simply conducting a survey.

At Direct Opinions, we recruit professionals with a business background--individuals who know how to navigate through the business world and obtain the market research results you are looking for.

Contact The Customer Satisfaction Survey Experts

At Direct Opinions, each customer satisfaction survey is tailored to your specific information objectives. We will develop an appropriate mix of custom telephone, and online surveys based upon what you want to know and how this information will be used within your company. Regardless of survey methodology, the results will provide actionable data that will help your business grow. Ready to get started? Contact Direct Opinions today for a quote on a customer satisfaction survey today!

Net Promoter Score ™

Uncovering information that has the power.....to connect corporations with their customers.

Net Promoter Score ™ – NPS® Measurement

While many companies claim to have a good idea of overall customer loyalty, most only employ very basic and informal tactics, such as evaluating unsolicited customer feedback. Businesses relying solely on

unsolicited feedback to assess customers’ loyalty, likely are not getting information they need.

Our customer loyalty phone surveys often use the concept of Net Promoter Score as a baseline measurement of overall customer loyalty. The concept of a Net Promoter Score– or NPS - was developed by Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company, and Satmetrix. The NPS metric helps your organization do a better job building a more customer-centric company.

Net Promoter Scoring is based upon the answer to a single question asked of current customers. Naturally, even in a simple questionnaire, other questions (besides the ultimate one) are used to get at underlying reasons for particular responses. Follow-up phone conversations delve deeper into individual clients’ motivations.

The Net Promoter question asks customers: “How likely would you be to recommend this company to a friend or colleague?” Answers to this question allow your company to track promoters and detractors. Your resulting Net Promoter Score produces a clear measure of your organization's performance as seen through your customers' or clients’ eyes.

How Net Promoter Scores ™ are Measured

Promoters are your customers who are so enthusiastic about your firm or brand that they not only increase their own purchases, but also refer their colleagues or peers. These are customers that give a rating of 9 or 10.

Customers who give you a rating of 7 or 8 are considered neutral and do not factor into the NPS Score.

Detractors are customers who feel so badly treated that they cut back on purchases, switch to your competition, and warn others to stay away from your company. Detractors are customers giving ratings of 6 or lower.

You determine your organization’s Net Promoter Score by subtracting the percentage of “detractors” from promoters to get an overall NPS number as shown below:

% of Promoters - % of Detractors = Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Because results (scores) are tied back to specific individuals, your company can also focus closely on the NPS® results of individual customers.

If your organization is waiting for clients to complain, rather than soliciting their positive or negative opinion of your brand or company, you may not get the feedback until it is too late. Market Research Surveys indicate that the majority of your clients are very unlikely to volunteer negative information - they are much more likely just to go to a competitor.

Ready to get started? Contact Direct Opinions today for a quote on developing a Net Promoter Score for your organization today! For more detailed reading on NPS, visit: http://www.netpromoter.com .

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

New Customer Welcome Survey

Telephone and Online Research

Uncovering information that has the power.....to connect corporations with their customers.

New Customer Welcome Survey

Your marketing campaign has done the job, and your team has closed yet another sale. Despite this success, nagging questions remain. Perhaps your company invests heavily in effective marketing and advertising strategies to attract new customers but neglects the importance of formal, consistent follow-up after the sale. As a sales and marketing director, you appreciate how hard new business is to acquire, and you realize it is easier and less expensive to retain existing customers rather than to develop new business relationships. At the same time, with so many available options, it is often difficult to sort through which customer retention strategies work best. If this story sounds familiar, your company may need a new customer welcome survey.

Why Conduct a New Customer Welcome Survey

In today's challenging business environment, a premium is placed on developing and retaining new business. Positive first experiences are critical to retaining new customers. A new customer welcome survey can measure satisfaction at time of sale so that your company can resolves issues without delay and build customer relationships on strong foundations.

A new customer welcome survey can provide a wealth of information, offering insight into a number of areas that are vital to the continued success of your company. New customer welcome surveys can reveal what is required to gain the loyalty of new customers and identify and resolve issues leading to dissatisfaction. Studies show that 70% of dissatisfied customers are likely to return if their issues are addressed and resolved in a timely manner. New customer welcome surveys also increase positive, word-of-mouth marketing. Conversely, if a new customer has a poor first experience, they are unlikely to return. Disgruntled customers typically share their negative experience with nine or ten colleagues or friends. This too, is word-of-mouth advertising--it undermines all the hard work that went into the sale--and it can have a detrimental effect on your company's bottom line.

How To Conduct a New Customer Welcome Survey

Customer satisfaction levels are gauged in a number of ways, including e-mail, direct mail, and online surveys, but at Direct Opinions, we believe that there is no substitute for the telephone

when performing new customer welcome surveys. The phone provides greater depth for understanding customer needs and defining attributes that comprise overall value and customer satisfaction. New customer welcome surveys conducted via telephone are more effective for gathering qualitative data and in-depth insights than direct mail, e-mail, and online surveys. Telephone interviews are more flexible, allowing interaction and exchange between interviewer and respondents. In addition, a telephone based new customer welcome survey provides a personal touch that is sure to gain the attention of the customers you have worked so hard to acquire.

Contact The New Customer Welcome Survey Experts

An effective new customer welcome survey is more than compiling a group of questions and soliciting client feedback. The core of the research is the analysis and interpretation of results. No software can do this job, and without the benefit of neutral, third party analysis, there is always the risk that the research will be skewed to what you want to see rather than the current situation as it exists in the field. At Direct Opinions, each new customer welcome survey is tailored to your specific information objectives. We will develop and recommend an appropriate approach based upon your company's information needs and project budget, and provide expert analysis. The results of your new customer welcome survey will provide actionable data that will help your business grow. Ready to get started? Contact Direct Opinions today for a quote on a customer feedback survey today!

Competitive Analysis

Telephone and Online Research

Uncovering information that has the power.....to connect corporations with their customers.

Competitive Analysis Survey

In order to understand how an organization or business is performing, it is necessary to consider its position in relation to other organizations in its industry. At Direct Opinions we can help identify the critical factors that impact customer satisfaction. Our studies can determine the key drivers of customer satisfaction and their importance on a regional, national or international level. Areas of strength and weakness for each company are identified including attitudes, customer experiences and behavioral characteristics, and perceived images. Once these organizational traits are identified, valuable comparisons can be made with other competitors in the market.

Why Conduct a Competitive Analysis Survey

Identifying customer expectations that impact satisfaction such as product quality, price, customer experience, and level of technical support can result in new marketing strategies and tactics to capitalize on organizational strengths and improve standing in the market. Data from our studies can provide the tools necessary to leverage information into a blueprint for success, resulting in direct action that improves satisfaction levels of your customers. A competitive analysis survey is likely to address some of the following:

Who is the competition? What are the products or services that compete with our offering? What is the competition's market share? Why do customers buy from our competition instead of us? What do customers like and dislike about the competition versus our products and

services?

While most business owners and product managers agree this type of information is valuable, they lack the time and resources to conduct an effective competitive analysis survey.

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis Survey

Success or failure of your competitive analysis hinges on the convergence of three basic factors. If any element of the survey's design, implementation, or analysis is faulty, the validity of results will be questionable. First, the survey needs to be written in a manner that elicits useful information. The competitive analysis survey must also poll a statistically valid sample. If the sample group is too small, chances are good you will not uncover the true voice of your customers. Finally, well constructed survey questions reaching appropriate audiences are only as good as the methodology used to implement your study. While direct mail, online surveys, and focus groups are often utilized to conduct competitive analysis surveys, we rely most heavily on a telephone based approach. A telephone approach is economical, efficient, and tends to provide a depth of quality response not typically found in other survey methodologies.

Contact The Competitive Analysis Survey Experts

At Direct Opinions we have over 30 years of experience crafting competitive analysis surveys for a wide range of companies serving diverse markets. All of our interviewers have years of real-world business experience, possess the proper skill sets needed to implement your survey, and understand your company, products, services and market research objectives. Do you appreciate the value of a thorough competitive analysis survey but lack the time or resources to start? Have you been down this road before, but just want to make sure this time you "get it right"? If learning more about how your company and products compare with those offered by the competition is important to your continued success, look no further. Contact the experts at Direct Opinions to discuss your competitive analysis survey today.

Product Evaluation

Telephone and Online Research

Uncovering information that has the power.....to connect corporations with their customers.

Product Evaluation

Whether you have spent months or years preparing to launch a new product, or are simply looking to refine and improve an established offering, a product evaluation survey can test consumer reaction to your product, and yield actionable data to help achieve sales objectives. Developing a better understanding of customer experiences with your products is the key to improved quality and greater customer satisfaction.

Why Conduct A Product Evaluation Survey

Teams responsible for the development, sale, or promotion of a product often have different understandings of value propositions than actual customers. Proximity to, and familiarity with a product line can cloud objective thinking. Discovering the voice of the customer, including needs, wants, and desires, can radically alter the course of product development. Do customers want your new product? Will they see it as an alternative to a competitor's offering? Might listening to customer feedback lead to refinements that improve product performance and market penetration? A product evaluation survey can provide answers to these questions, informing decision making with actionable data throughout every step of your product's life-cycle.

How To Conduct a Product Evaluation Survey

Many marketing professionals rely almost exclusively on focus groups to perform product evaluation surveys without recognizing this collection process can easily produce flawed data. While a focus group can provide more detailed feedback than the information obtained using an online or printed survey, the validity of the results is always in doubt because sampling a large group of respondents is time and cost prohibitive. Without a statistically valid sample, major strategic business decisions regarding product development are made in a vacuum. Although focus groups can represent a valid, initial starting point in the discovery process, the use of a telephone based product evaluation survey offers the best methodology to produce actionable data needed to inform the decision making process.

Contact The Product Evaluation Survey Leaders

Whether your company is developing a new product or looking to boost sales and market presence of an existing offering, a telephone based product survey represents the best methodology to uncover actionable information needed to obtain your goals. Best of all, with a statistically valid sample, your sales and marketing team can rest assured that strategic business decisions are made on sound information rather than anecdotal evidence or skewed data. If you see value in a product evaluation survey, but remain confused as to how, or where to start, contact the experts at Direct Opinions. Since 1983, we have provided business owners and marketing professionals with custom tailored product evaluation surveys designed to achieve their specific goals. Contact the experts at Direct Opinions to discuss your product evaluation survey today!

Advertising Awareness Survey

Telephone and Online Research

Uncovering information that has the power.....to connect corporations with their customers.

Advertising Awarness Survey

Measurement drives efficiency and improvement in any business exchange; especially in advertising. As a marketing director, you need to measure the effectiveness of your organization's planned or ongoing advertising campaign. Perhaps you need to evaluate awareness of specific promotions. Or your goal may be to generate awareness of your ads and brand across a subset of industry insiders. You may have noticed rivals are beginning to reallocate media dollars and need to understand why.

Objectives of an Advertising Awareness Study

To improve the return on your advertising dollars spent, trust Direct Opinions to partner with your company. Our proven methods for creating ad awareness surveys can help your business in three key areas:

Competitive Ad Analysis -- Assess how your product or service offerings are perceived as compared to your competition. Identify customer expectations that impact satisfaction such as product quality, price, customer experience or technical support.

Creative Testing -- What headlines, value propositions, and call-to-actions have the greatest marketing impact in your advertising? Awareness surveys can help uncover your most influential messaging in print ads, direct mailers, and collateral.

Measuring Advertising Effectiveness and ROI -- You can use ad awareness measurement to determine which advertisements will cut through the clutter and leave a lasting impression.

With expertise in telephone and online research methodologies, we are well equipped to design the most effective survey instrument to provide you with insights and information, not just data. We have developed proprietary best practices for each methodology – and are leaders in providing a mixed telephone and online methodology to ensure maximized response rates. Our interviewers are trained to engage your audience in real conversations to garner the most comprehensive information possible.

Interviewers who will be assigned to complete these interviews are trained and qualified in telephone research techniques, specifically in obtaining information from respondents where no prior relationship exists. Direct Opinions uses The Survey System™ Statistical and Interviewing Software, one of the most highly regarded and commonly used software tools in the survey industry. This software guides the interviewers through the questions and ensures consistency of

question delivery, and provides the tools necessary for survey design and analysis.

We provide in-depth market research to support each and every step of the customer lifecycle – from identifying new potential opportunities, to assessing current customer relationships and developing new marketing strategies.

Contact the Advertising Awareness Survey Leaders

Whether your company is developing a new product or looking to boost sales and market presence of an existing offering, a telephone based ad survey represents one of the best methodologies to uncover actionable information needed to obtain your goals. Best of all, with a statistically valid sample, your sales and marketing team can rest assured that strategic business decisions are made on sound information rather than anecdotal evidence or skewed data. If you see value in an advertising awareness survey, but are confused as to how, or where to start, contact the experts at Direct Opinions. Since 1983, we have provided business owners and marketing professionals with custom tailored advertising awareness surveys designed to achieve their specific goals. Contact the experts at Direct Opinions to discuss your advertising awareness survey today!

Market Intelligence

Telephone and Online Research

Uncovering information that has the power.....to connect corporations with their customers.

Market Intelligence Telephone Survey

As a marketing director, developing critical marketing intelligence requires looking at survey results from a 30,000 foot overview perspective. Sometimes, market research needs to make broad strategic changes in how your organization goes to market. Are your customers in need of a new service to complement a product that you or competitors offer? Can you better understand who in the marketplace you truly compete with? If you could talk directly with engineers using your products would they offer feedback that could create market opportunities for you? These are the kinds of questions that market intelligence surveys can answer.

Analyzing your Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats through Critical Market Intelligence Research.

SWOT analysis is critical in planning out new marketing strategies. Developing market intelligence allows you to thoroughly understand your marketplace:

How do your prospects use your products or services and/or competitor’s products or services in their business?

Which companies are your prospects and customers currently working with? What is their satisfaction level with products, process and services currently offered? What would they improve or change if they could? Where do your customers place the highest value - service, product quality, etc.? What media do they use to inform their decision making (magazines, internet, trade

conferences, etc.)?

Without the ability to understand the role your organization plays in the mind of prospective – and existing – customers, you can’t successfully develop and position products to gain market share.

Be Sure your Market Intelligence Survey is Statistically Valid

A survey of market intelligence must be constructed in a manner that provides you with useful information. To do so, your market intelligence study must also poll a statistically valid sample. If the sample group is too small, chances are good you will not uncover the true voice of your customers. While direct mail, online surveys, and focus groups can be utilized to conduct competitive analysis surveys, we rely most heavily on a telephone based approach. A telephone survey approach is economical, efficient, and tends to provide a depth of quality response not typically found in other survey methodologies.

How Direct Opinions Conducts Telephone-based Market Intelligence Studies

Well constructed survey questions reaching appropriate audiences are only as good as the methodology used to implement your study. We believe that market intelligence studies are most successfully conducted by phone. The telephone survey method for obtaining deep market intelligence offers the most control over the order of questions and how those questions are presented in the survey. Market intelligence interviewers can often connect with hard-to-reach survey participants like CEOs and engineers.

Our interviewers have years of real world business experience, and are trained to engage your audience in meaningful conversations designed to elicit detailed, comprehensive, actionable information. Direct Opinions telephone interviewers are experienced at keeping questions from being avoided and are adept at moving past reluctance to respond to sensitive topics.

Customer Relationship Surveys

In today’s challenging business environment, companies are struggling to maintain a competitive advantage. Much emphasis is placed on developing better products and services, which are vital to continued success. At the same time, a “company centric” approach often overlooks those who buy your products and services—your customers. Successful business owners realize excellent products and services are only part of an effective business model. Maintaining and improving

customer relationships is vital to continued growth. For this reason, more and more companies are turning to companies specializing in customer relationship surveys to achieve their sales objectives.

Why Customer Relationship Surveys are Important

Acquiring new customers is more difficult and expensive than maintaining existing ones. If sales revenue is declining, or if your company is facing the prospect of losing a vital customer, consider the following:

A 10% increase in customer retention typically increases profits by 30%. It costs five times more to acquire a customer than keep an existing one. The average business does not hear from 96% of their unsatisfied customers.

Most business owners recognize the need to develop formal customer retention strategies, but are confused on their implementation. Is an in-house program better than calling in a team of “experts?” What questions should be used in the survey? Should the survey be conducted with an online tool, or with a more traditional offline approach? If you are asking one or more of these vital questions, then consider a consultation with the survey experts at Direct Opinions.

Aligning the Type of Survey with the Customer Lifecycle

Obviously, depending upon where in the client life-cycle your customers are will determine what kind of survey is required. For existing customers, we often develop a strategic customer satisfaction survey to measure the ongoing relationships you have. This type of survey best gives insight into areas for improvement in how your organization handles interactions with your existing customers.

Developing a survey to assess your Net Promoter Score™ will in some cases, provide the benchmark to measure ongoing success and identify areas that need improvement. NPS – Net Promoter Scoring gives your organization a dashboard view of how likely it is that current clients will recommend your firm to others.

For newly-won customers, a new customer welcome survey may be a way to ensure your firm is perceived as getting off to a solid start at the beginning of the relationship. Despite your best intentions, customers can and will be lost. Direct Opinions has pioneered the concept of Re-Winning lost, inactive or former customers. In fact, we have developed expertise specifically around surveying past customers.

Net Promoter is a management tool that can be used to gauge the loyalty of a firm's customer relationships. It serves as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction research.

Net Promoter is a customer loyalty metric developed by (and a registered trademark of) Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix. It was introduced by Reichheld in his 2003 Harvard Business Review article "The One Number You Need to Grow"[1]. The most important proposed benefits of this method derive from simplifying and communicating the objective of

creating more "Promoters" and fewer "Detractors" -- a concept claimed to be far simpler for employees to understand and act on than more complicated, obscure or hard-to-understand satisfaction metrics or indices. In addition, proponents claim the Net Promoter method can reduce the complexity of implementation and analysis frequently associated with measures of customer satisfaction, providing a stable measure of business performance that can be compared across business units and even across industries, and increasing interpretability of changes in customer satisfaction trends over time.

Companies obtain their Net Promoter Score by asking customers a single question on a 0 to 10 rating scale: "How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?" Based on their responses, customers can be categorized into one of three groups: Promoters (9-10 rating), Passives (7-8 rating), and Detractors (0-6 rating). The percentage of Detractors is then subtracted from the percentage of Promoters to obtain a Net Promoter score. A score of 75% or above is considered quite high. At some companies like Apple Inc (AAPL), scores from detractors or promoters generate alert emails either alerting management to the promoter or alerting them to the detractor who they are to call back within 24 hours to resolve the issue. Companies are encouraged to follow this question with an open-ended request for elaboration, soliciting the reasons for a customer's rating of that company or product. These reasons can then be provided to front-line employees and management teams for follow-up action.[2][3].

Proponents of the Net Promoter approach claim the score can be used to motivate an organization to become more focused on improving products and services for customers. They further claim that a company's Net Promoter Score correlates with revenue growth. Discussed at length in The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth by Fred Reichheld, and "Answering the Ultimate Question" by Richard Owen and Laura Brooks, the Net Promoter approach has been adopted by several companies, including Philips, GE [4] , Allianz [5] , P&G [6] , Intuit [7] , American Express, [8] and Westpac Banking Corporation.

Criticism of NPS

Despite its popularity among business executives, the Net Promoter concept is controversial in academic and market research circles. Research co-authored by loyalty consulting competitor IPSOS Loyalty disputes the claims of Reichheld concerning Net Promoter.[9] Furthermore, Hayes (2008) found no scientific evidence that the "likelihood to recommend" question is a better predictor of business growth compared to other customer loyalty questions (e.g., overall satisfaction, likelihood to purchase again). Specifically, Hayes found that the "likelihood to recommend" question, does not measure anything different than other conventional loyalty-related questions. [10]

Environmental factors may exert an influence on customers' response to the "recommend" question—making comparisons across business units or industries difficult in certain cases. Examples include comparing businesses with an associated social stigma (e.g., cigarettes or online dating) and businesses with different levels of service fulfillment (e.g., delivery services as compared to gyms). Moreover, determining when the survey should be delivered may be more obvious in some cases than in others (such as in the case of a gym), where customer attitudes may be likely to change over time.

Daniel Schneider, Jon Krosnick, et al. found that out of four scales tested, the 11-point scale advocated by Reicheld had the lowest predictive validity of the scales tested.[11] Others have taken issue with the calculation methodology, claiming that by collapsing an 11-point scale to three components (e.g., Promoters, Passives, Detractors), significant information is lost and statistical variability of the result increases.[8] The validity of NPS scale cut-off points across industries and cultures has also been questioned.[12]

On the other hand, other independent research confirms the fundamental claim of a relationship between relative competitive Net Promoter Scores and competitive growth rates.[13] Proponents of the Net Promoter approach point out that the statistical analyses presented prove only that the "recommend" question is similar in predictive power to other metrics, but fail to address the practical benefits of the approach, which are at the heart of the argument Reichheld and SatMetrix put forth.

Proponents of the approach also counter that analyses based on third-party data are inferior to analyses conducted by companies on their own customer sets, and that the practical benefits of the approach (short survey, simple concept to communicate) outweigh any statistical inferiority of the approach.[8]

Industry examples

General Electric uses NPS to evaluate process excellence for its customers, and plans to use NPS as a metric to decide the compensation of its leaders;[14] Procter and Gamble uses NPS to measure consumer reactions to its brands;[6] Allianz uses NPS to maintain what it calls "customer-centricity";[5] and Verizon Wireless uses NPS in all business channels including their call centers and retail stores.[15] Other companies using NPS include American Express, BearingPoint, and Intuit

Brand awareness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to:navigation, search

Brand awareness is a marketing concept that measures consumers' knowledge of a brand's existence. At the aggregate (brand) level, it refers to the proportion of consumers who know of the brand.

Contents

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1 Measurement driven conceptualization

2 Research on metrics 3 Stability of responses 4 References

Measurement driven conceptualization

Brand awareness, In general, means the extent to which a brand associated with a particular product is documented by potential and existing customers either positively or negatively. Creation of brand awareness is the primary goal of advertising at the beginning of any product's life cycle in target markets. In fact, brand awareness has influence on buying behaviour of a buyer. Brand awareness can be measured by showing a consumer the brand and asking whether or not they knew of it beforehand. However, in common market research practice a variety of recognition and recall measures of brand awareness are employed all of which test the brand name's association to a product category cue, this came about because most market research in the 20th Century was conducted by post or telephone, actually showing the brand to consumers usually required more expensive face-to-face interviews (until web-based interviews became possible). This has led many textbooks to conceptualise brand awareness simply as its measures, that is, knowledge that the brand is a member of a particular product category, e.g. soft-drinks. Examples of such measures include:

Brand recognition - Either the brand name or both the brand name and category name are presented to respondents.

Brand recall - the product category name is given to respondents who are asked to recall as many brands as possible that are members of the category.

Top of mind awareness - as above, but only the first brand recalled is recorded (also known as spontaneous brand recall).

Research on metrics

There has been discussion in industry and practice about the meaning and value of various brand awareness metrics. Recently, an empirical study appeared to put this debate to rest by suggesting that all awareness metrics were systematically related, simply reflecting their difficulty, in the same way that certain questions are more difficult in academic exams [1].

Brand recall

Brand Recall is the extent to which a brand name is recalled as a member of a brand, product or service class, as distinct from brand recognition.

Common market research usage is that pure brand recall requires "unaided recall". For example a respondent may be asked to recall the names of any cars he may know, or any whisky brands he may know.

Some researchers divide recall into both "unaided" and "aided" recall. "Aided recall" measures the extent to which a brand name is remembered when the actual brand name is prompted. An example of such a question is "Do you know of the "Honda" brand?"

In terms of brand exposure, companies want to look for high levels of unaided recall in relation to their competitors. The first recalled brand name (often called "top of mind") has a distinct competitive advantage in brand space, as it has the first chance of evaluation for purchase.

Brand Recognition

Brand Recognition is the extent to which a brand is recognized for stated brand attributes or communications

In some cases brand recognition is defined as aided recall - and as a subset of brand recall. In the case, brand recognition is the extent to which a brand name is recognized when prompted with the actual name.

A broader view of brand recognition is the extent to which a brand is recognized within a product class for certain attributes. Logo and tagline testing can be seen as a form of brand recognition testing. For example, if a product name can be associated with a certain tagline, logo or attribute (safety and Volvo; "Just do it" - Nike) a certain level of brand recognition is present.

Stability of responses

While brand awareness scores tend to be quite stable at aggregate (level) level, individual consumers show considerable propensity to change their responses to recall based brand awareness measures. For top of mind recall measures, consumers give the same answer in two interviews typically only 50% the time [2]. Similar low levels of consistency in response have been recorded for other cues to elicit brand name responses

Competitor analysis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Competitive analysis (marketing))

Jump to:navigation, search

Competitor analysis in marketing and strategic management is an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors. This analysis provides both an offensive and defensive strategic context through which to identify opportunities and threats. Competitor profiling coalesces all of the relevant sources of competitor analysis into one framework in the support of efficient and effective strategy formulation, implementation, monitoring and adjustment.[1]

Given that competitor analysis is an essential component of corporate strategy, it is argued that most firms do not conduct this type of analysis systematically enough. Instead, many enterprises operate on what is called “informal impressions, conjectures, and intuition gained through the tidbits of information about competitors every manager continually receives.” As a result, traditional environmental scanning places many firms at risk of dangerous competitive blindspots due to a lack of robust competitor analysis.[2]

Contents

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1 Competitor array 2 Competitor profiling 3 Media scanning 4 New competitors 5 See also 6 References 7 External Links

Competitor array

One common and useful technique is constructing a competitor array. The steps include:

Define your industry - scope and nature of the industry Determine who your competitors are Determine who your customers are and what benefits they expect Determine what the key success factors are in your industry Rank the key success factors by giving each one a weighting - The sum of all the weightings must

add up to one. Rate each competitor on each of the key success factors Multiply each cell in the matrix by the factor weighting.

This can best be displayed on a two dimensional matrix - competitors along the top and key success factors down the side. An example of a competitor array follows:[3]

Key IndustrySuccess Factors

WeightingCompetitor

#1 ratingCompetitor#1 weighted

Competitor#2 rating

Competitor#2 weighted

1 - Extensive distribution .4 6 2.4 3 1.2

2 - Customer focus .3 4 1.2 5 1.5

3 - Economies of scale .2 3 .6 3 .6

4 - Product innovation .1 7 .7 4 .4

Totals 1.0 20 4.9 15 3.7

In this example competitor #1 is rated higher than competitor #2 on product innovation ability (7 out of 10, compared to 4 out of 10) and distribution networks (6 out of 10), but competitor #2 is rated higher on customer focus (5 out of 10). Overall, competitor #1 is rated slightly higher than competitor #2 (20 out of 40 compared to 15 out of 40). When the success factors are weighted according to their importance, competitor #1 gets a far better rating (4.9 compared to 3.7).

Two additional columns can be added. In one column you can rate your own company on each of the key success factors (try to be objective and honest). In another column you can list benchmarks. They are the ideal standards of comparisons on each of the factors. They reflect the workings of a company using all the industry's best practices.

Competitor profiling

The strategic rationale of competitor profiling is powerfully simple. Superior knowledge of rivals offers a legitimate source of competitive advantage. The raw material of competitive advantage consists of offering superior customer value in the firm’s chosen market. The definitive characteristic of customer value is the adjective, superior. Customer value is defined relative to rival offerings making competitor knowledge an intrinsic component of corporate strategy. Profiling facilitates this strategic objective in three important ways. First, profiling can reveal strategic weaknesses in rivals that the firm may exploit. Second, the proactive stance of competitor profiling will allow the firm to anticipate the strategic response of their rivals to the firm’s planned strategies, the strategies of other competing firms, and changes in the environment. Third, this proactive knowledge will give the firms strategic agility. Offensive strategy can be implemented more quickly in order to exploit opportunities and capitalize on strengths. Similarly, defensive strategy can be employed more deftly in order to counter the threat of rival firms from exploiting the firm’s own weaknesses.[2]

Clearly, those firms practicing systematic and advanced competitor profiling have a significant advantage. As such, a comprehensive profiling capability is rapidly becoming a core competence required for successful competition. An appropriate analogy is to consider this advantage as akin to having a good idea of the next move that your opponent in a chess match will make. By staying one move ahead, checkmate is one step closer. Indeed, as in chess, a good offense is the best defense in the game of business as well.[2]

A common technique is to create detailed profiles on each of your major competitors. These profiles give an in-depth description of the competitor's background, finances, products, markets, facilities, personnel, and strategies. This involves:

Background o location of offices, plants, and online presenceso history - key personalities, dates, events, and trends

o ownership, corporate governance, and organizational structure Financials

o P-E ratios, dividend policy, and profitabilityo various financial ratios, liquidity, and cash flowo Profit growth profile; method of growth (organic or acquisitive)

Products. o products offered, depth and breadth of product line, and product portfolio balanceo new products developed, new product success rate, and R&D strengthso brands, strength of brand portfolio, brand loyalty and brand awarenesso patents and licenseso quality control conformanceo reverse engineering

Marketing o segments served, market shares, customer base, growth rate, and customer loyaltyo promotional mix, promotional budgets, advertising themes, ad agency used, sales force

success rate, online promotional strategyo distribution channels used (direct & indirect), exclusivity agreements, alliances, and

geographical coverageo pricing, discounts, and allowances

Facilities o plant capacity, capacity utilization rate, age of plant, plant efficiency, capital investmento location, shipping logistics, and product mix by plant

Personnel o number of employees, key employees, and skill setso strength of management, and management styleo compensation, benefits, and employee morale & retention rates

Corporate and marketing strategies o objectives, mission statement, growth plans, acquisitions, and divestitureso marketing strategies

Media scanning

Scanning competitor's ads can reveal much about what that competitor believes about marketing and their target market. Changes in a competitor's advertising message can reveal new product offerings, new production processes, a new branding strategy, a new positioning strategy, a new segmentation strategy, line extensions and contractions, problems with previous positions, insights from recent marketing or product research, a new strategic direction, a new source of sustainable competitive advantage, or value migrations within the industry. It might also indicate a new pricing strategy such as penetration, price discrimination, price skimming, product bundling, joint product pricing, discounts, or loss leaders. It may also indicate a new promotion strategy such as push, pull, balanced, short term sales generation, long term image creation, informational, comparative, affective, reminder, new creative objectives, new unique selling proposition, new creative concepts, appeals, tone, and themes, or a new advertising agency. It might also indicate a new distribution strategy, new distribution partners, more extensive distribution, more intensive distribution, a change in geographical focus, or exclusive

distribution. Little of this intelligence is definitive : additional information is needed before conclusions should be drawn.

A competitor's media strategy reveals budget allocation, segmentation and targeting strategy, and selectivity and focus. From a tactical perspective, it can also be used to help a manager implement his own media plan. By knowing the competitor's media buy, media selection, frequency, reach, continuity, schedules, and flights, the manager can arrange his own media plan so that they do not coincide.

Other sources of corporate intelligence include trade shows, patent filings, mutual customers, annual reports, and trade associations.

Some firms hire competitor intelligence professionals to obtain this information. The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals [1] maintains a listing of individuals who provide these services.

New competitors

In addition to analyzing current competitors, it is necessary to estimate future competitive threats. The most common sources of new competitors are ==

Companies competing in a related product/market Companies using related technologies Companies already targeting your prime market segment but with unrelated products Companies from other geographical areas and with similar products New start-up companies organized by former employees and/or managers of existing

companies

The entrance of new competitors is likely when:

There are high profit margins in the industry There is unmet demand (insufficient supply) in the industry There are no major barriers to entry There is future growth potential Competitive rivalry is not intense Gaining a competitive advantage over existing firms is feasible

Market research

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Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy.[1] The term is commonly interchanged with marketing research; however, expert practitioners may wish to draw a distinction, in that marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes, while market research is concerned specifically with markets.[2]

Market research,as defined by the ICC/ESOMAR International Code on Market and Social Research, includes social and opinion research, [and] is the systematic gathering and interpretation of information about individuals or organizations using statistical and analytical methods and techniques of the applied social sciences to gain insight or support decision making.[3]

Contents

1 History 2 Market research for business/planning 3 Financial performance

o 3.1 Top 9 of the Market Research Sector 2009 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

History

Market research began to be conceptualized and put into formal practice during the 1920s,[4] as an offshoot of the advertising boom of the Golden Age of radio in the United States. Advertisers began to realize the significance of demographics revealed by sponsorship of different radio programs,

Market research for business/planning

Market research is for discovering what people want, need, or believe. It can also involve discovering how they act. Once that research is completed, it can be used to determine how to market your product.

Questionnaires and focus group discussion surveys are some of the instruments for market research.

For starting up a business, there are some important things:

Market information

Through Market information one can know the prices of the different commodities in the market, as well as the supply and demand situation. Information about the markets can be obtained from different sources, varieties and formats, as well as the sources and varieties that have to be obtained to make the business work.

Market segmentation

Market segmentation is the division of the market or population into subgroups with similar motivations. It is widely used for segmenting on geographic differences, personality differences, demographic differences, technographic differences, use of product differences, psychographic differences and gender differences.

Market trends

Market trends are the upward or downward movement of a market, during a period of time. The market size is more difficult to estimate if one is starting with something completely new. In this case, you will have to derive the figures from the number of potential customers, or customer segments. [Ilar 1998]

Besides information about the target market, one also needs information about one's competitors, customers, products, etc. Lastly, you need to measure marketing effectiveness. A few techniques are:

Customer analysis Choice Modelling Competitor analysis Risk analysis Product research Advertising the research Marketing mix modeling

Financial performance

Top 9 of the Market Research Sector 2009

Rank Company

Sales in 2009

(million USD)

Growth in %

1 Nielsen Company 5,000.0 2.6

2WPP Group - Kantar Group, TNS, Millward Brown, BMRB, IMRB International and Ziment Group

2,000 2.5

3 IMS Health Inc. 1,958.6 8.9

4 GfK AG 1,397.3 5.4

5 Ipsos 1,077.0 6.5

6 Synovate 739.6 9.5

7 IRI 665.0 6.6

8 Westat 425.8 0.8

9 Arbitron 400.0 5.9