Marketing solutions
Marketing research instruments may be successfully applied throughout business environments of majority of organizations. Some instruments, like face-to-face interviews, are universal, and can be applied to solve multiple marketing projects. Other tools, like advertisement concepts, are very problem-specific, and may be applied to particular areas.
Internal organizational environment
1. Employees are considered by many organizations as key asset. To keep the satisfaction on a high level, to be aware of existing or potential problems your employees are facing, to measure effectiveness of managerial efforts – these are examples of questions that may be addressed via employee satisfaction surveys.
Employee satisfaction surveys help employers measure and understand employees' attitudes, motivation, satisfaction, opinions and ideas.
2. Products. New Product Development process involves multiple stages. Marketing research techniques are applied under almost every stage of this process.
There are several stages in the new product development process:
-
Idea Generation
-
ideas for new products obtained from customers, the R&D department, competitors, employees [focus groups, ideation sessions]
-
Idea Screening
-
Concept Development and Testing
-
Business Analysis
-
estimate likely selling price [trade-off methodologies]
-
estimate sales volume [desk research; trade-off methodologies]
-
estimate profitability and breakeven point
-
Beta Testing and Market Testing
-
produce a physical prototype or mock-up
-
test the product in typical usage situations [hall test, application tests, usability tests]
-
make adjustments where necessary
-
produce an initial run of the product and sell it in a test market
-
Technical Implementation
-
Commercialization
-
launch the product
-
produce and place advertisements and other promotions [advertisement perceptions, campaign effectiveness]
-
fill the distribution pipeline with product
[Cited from New product development; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_product_development]
3. Role of branding in Russia becomes more and more significant due to the stabilization of production processes and developing consumer behavioral patterns.
Obviously, a brand on its own can become a financial asset of a company when it is well recognized and has positive associations. Brand selection and positioning is an important decision for almost every company. That is why Bazis IG offers an array of techniques to assess brand awareness, positioning and loyalty.
Getting the voice of the customer about the associations that come to mind related to a brand name, verbal representation, trademark styling and color selection helps to choose quicker way to consumers hearts. This is particularly important when a company operated in a multi-lingual markets, which causes different transcription and pronunciation of a brand name. Not to mention instances when brand name must be spelled in different alphabets such as Cyrillic’s, Arabic characters, hieroglyphs.
When it comes to advertising campaigns development, here again one should start with getting target audience’s assessment of an advertising tool. This is typically done in a focus group environment.
ON a short-term basis, effectiveness of each ad campaign is usually measured by an increase in aided and unaided awareness, as well as in purchase intent. To obtain these measures, more and more companies in Russia launch pre- and post-campaign surveys. |
|
External organizational environment:
1. Customer research probably takes up around 70% of all research work done by presently commissioned by Russian business. Product satisfaction studies can be implemented via simple paper and pencil questionnaires as well as via complex concept evaluation projects. The latter applies when it comes to complex products as machinery, automotive, medical equipment, etc. Product satisfaction studies determine customer’s level of satisfaction with a product or service in general, as well as in particular aspects of quality, service and design. Ability to compare customers’ assessments of a particular product overtime has helped many companies to detect and eliminate quality problems, improve the level of service and establish closer contact with customers and dealers.
Questions related to product pricing, competitive price levels, actual transaction prices, price level for a new product introduction are voiced by our clients every day. This area is one of the most sensitive ones in research, and at the pricing research is crucial for variety of B to C and B to B markets. Questions about price make customers feel uncomfortable and under pressure.
We offer our clients several pricing research techniques that help to understand the relationships between product and price and individual product attributes and price.
Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter
The van Westendorp model was developed by Dutch economist Peter H. van Westendorp to examine patterns of price-consciousness. The typical pricing block in the survey includes four questions for each product profile, including respondent’s prices for the product:
-
for a bargain – a great value for the money,
-
starting to get expensive, but still worth considering,
-
so cheap that quality is doubted, and
-
so expensive that it would not be considered.
PSM can also be used to:
-
compare the price perceptions and sensitivities of different market segments by data analysis
-
relate price perceptions and sensitivity to likelihood of purchase - by asking additional questions about interest in the product and propensity to purchase.
2. Competitive analysis is an area just as sensitive as pricing research. These two are very inter-related, and it takes a lot of professional skills of research analysts and interpersonal skill of interviewers to approach this research in a successful manner.
Effective implementation of competitive intelligence requires not only information about the competitors, but also information on other environmental trends such as industry trends, legal and regulatory trends, international trends, technology developments, political developments and economic conditions.
The relative strength of the competitor can be judged accurately only by assessing it with respect to the factors listed above. In the increasingly complex and uncertain business environment, the external factors are assuming greater importance in effecting organizational change.
Every company is supposed to know about its main opponents to be competitive and profitable. That is why we offer to study market structure, perceptual mapping, customer choice modeling.
