August 29th, 2008
In his most recent Thursday Night Insight post, Matthew Harrison ponders how advancements in technology have impacted on – and continue to affect – the way we live our lives and conduct our business.
My colleagues may laugh, but I’ve always considered myself relatively in-touch with the latest technological developments. I’ve never been the sort of person to buy Stuff Magazine, prance around the living room with a Nintendo Wii or stay up all night in my anorak cyber-scuffling with a student from Malaysia, but nor am I a technophobe. In fact I like to think that I use technology as and when it enhances my life, but within the realms of social acceptability.
Indeed, deep within the bowels of the B2B International website, you may find that I ‘pioneered’ our online focus groups. I was also the first person in our organization to own a Blackberry, much to the derision of my colleagues, many of whom are now putting their marriages at risk by becoming full-time Crackberry addicts themselves. I must admit to a complete inability to attach a projector to a lap-top and make it work first-time, but from what I’ve observed this is true of most market researchers.
A technology we all now regard as a basic tool of the workplace and our social lives is, of course, email. How would we market researchers cope if we still had to print and bind reports, and courier them through to our clients? How would we or our clients feel if every update had to be by phone or face-to-face, with fieldwork updates out-of-date as soon as they were produced and questionnaires faxed back and forth until they were finalized? There is no doubt that email has improved not only the speed and ease of communication, but also – as a general rule – the quality of communication.
As with my professional life, my social life and personal interactions used to rely heavily on email communications. Weekends away, news on the latest engagements and pregnancies, photographs of friends on exotic holidays – every communication of any substance was performed through email, with short-term arrangements and snippets of information communicated through cell-phone.
But some time around last Spring, something strange started to happen. I was living in China at the time, and I noticed the steady stream of social emails start to diminish. This left me perplexed and a little worried. Had someone decided to firewall the endless news of weddings, births and christenings on the grounds that it was too tedious for human consumption? Had I offended somebody? Had everyone forgotten about me? As the weeks passed and the stream of emails became a trickle, I genuinely started to fear that the word had got out – that it was Matthew Harrison who spoiled that wedding in 2003 by insisting the DJ play The Locomotion.
But one night, as I lay awake plagued with self-doubt, it struck me. Was it a mistake to ignore all of the invitations? Was I wrong to dismiss this phenomenon as a silly fad indulged in by teenagers in low-slung trousers and nosey twentysomethings who should know better?
“THAT’S IT!” I yelled, leaping out of my depressed slumber and cart-wheeling across the bedroom.
“IT’S FACEBOOK!! I knew I wasn’t a social pariah! I knew Dave and Liz wouldn’t forget to send me the pictures from their long weekend in Budapest! Where’s my laptop?”
That very night I joined the masses and became a Facebook User.
Fourteen months later, I have a grand total of 57 friends, ranging from my nearest and dearest through to childhood friends that I haven’t laid eyes on for two decades. There is something about the public dissemination of ‘personal’ information that I feel uncomfortable with, and something not quite right about a 31-year old having what is effectively a homepage. But the truth is that this is how my peer-group (even my parents) – my ‘audience’ – is now communicating, and that, therefore, is how I have to communicate. To reject this means of communication would be social suicide.
In the market research industry and more generally across business markets, the latest consumer technologies tend to be watched with a mixture of interest and wariness, before they become adapted for business use and then accepted by the wider business community. Just as B2B International looked at online discussion forums being used mainly by teenagers and turned them into a market research technique, so Facebook and similar social networking tools are now evolving into business applications. I now work at B2B International in the USA and yesterday subscribed to LinkedIn, the business networking tool allowing businesspeople to make contact, recommend and communicate with each other. Four clients within a month had asked me for my LinkedIn details, and I wasn’t going to risk my communication from clients and potential clients drying up.
How far this type of application will replace existing means of communication for businesses, or even evolve into a technique that can be used for market research purposes, is unclear. However, doing business depends on communicating with those whose needs we can profitably fulfil, and those who shut out messages that are being transmitted through new and innovative means risk more than a few sleepless nights.
Matthew Harrison is a Director of B2B International, based in New York. He can be contacted at matthewh@b2binternational.com, on +1 914-761-1909, or on LinkedIn.
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Market Intelligence, LinkedIn, Matt Harrison, Thursday Night Insight, Online Research, Online Focus Groups |
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August 27th, 2008
Today we’re publishing the eleventh (and final!) chapter from our eBook - Questionnaire Design, by Paul Hague.
This week’s closing segments looks at some "Examples Of Questions", which provide illustration of all the principles outlined in the rest of the eBook. These questions can also act as a useful template for constructing different types of questionnaire and include:
- Questions for starting a questionnaire
- Questions for testing awareness
- Questions for gleaning behavioural information
- Questions for obtaining attitudinal information
- Questions looking at buying motivations
- Customer preference and satisfaction questions
- Price testing questions
- Classification questions
As always, this week’s chunk of the eBook is available both as a pdf and as a podcast. To download each, just click on the appropriate links below.
That’s all for now, but be sure to check back very soon, as we’ve plenty more podcast (and eBook) goodness lined up. Watch this space…
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Research Design, Questionnaire Design, eBook, Paul Hague |
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August 26th, 2008
A recent online survey conducted by BtoB found that more than half of business-to-business marketers are increasing their overseas marketing budgets. This is in the face of global economic tightening, which is being felt in the United States as much as – if not more than – anywhere.
Although the survey only questioned a relatively modest 274 marketers, it should come as no surprise that organizations are increasingly turning to non-US markets for business opportunities. Indeed, over the past 12 months, US companies have commissioned B2B International to conduct competitive intelligence studies and to research market assessment opportunities in more than 60 different countries worldwide.
Of those respondents to the BtoB survey who indicated that they expect to be increasing their non-U.S. marketing spend:
- 60.0% plan increases of between 1% and 10% this year over last
- Around a quarter plan increases of between 11% and 20%
- 8.8% plan to up spend between 21% and 30%
- 6.4% plan increases of more than 30%.
Of those companies who are not expecting to see any increase in their international marketing budgets, the vast majority (87.8%) plan relatively minor negative adjustments of between just 1% and 10%. 12.2% are decreasing non-U.S. budgets by more than 10%.
Of all the b-to-b marketers responding to the survey:
- 25.9% said non-U.S. business makes up between 1% and 10% of total company revenue
- 9.1% said non-U.S. business makes up between 11% and 20% of total revenue
- A further 11.7% stated that non-U.S. business makes up 21% to 30% of their total revenue
- Approximately one-quarter confirmed that more than 30% of total revenue comes from outside the U.S.
- By contrast, approximately a quarter of respondents indicated that none of their revenue comes from outside the USA.
In spite of looking to increase international marketing budgets, many companies highlight the difficulties associated with this, including the challenges of entering new markets, handling different languages, and coordinating global efforts. To read about BtoB’s survey in full, please click here.
Posted in
Marketing, Global Research, Recession, Market Intelligence, Market Assesment, International Market Research |
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August 22nd, 2008
Jason Zhang was a little surprised when the five shirts his friend had bought for him arrived in the mail; he had been expecting to receive long-sleeved shirts and yet found his new garments had short sleeves. Although he thought he had been clear in his request, Jason discovered to his detriment that effective communication is not always as easy as you think…
Last summer, during my visit to Tianjin, I bought a couple of long-sleeved shirts in a department store. These shirts fit me very well and I really love this particular brand. Unfortunately, they’re not available in Beijing, where I live.
A week ago, I rang my friend who lives in Tianjin and asked her to buy five shirts on my behalf. During our conversation, I briefed her in detail on the particular brand name, the size, my favored style and color, and certainly what was an affordable price for me. I thought that was all the information she needed to make the purchase. However, I was wrong as I didn’t communicate to her one of the key pieces of information – long sleeves! In the meantime, she didn’t check this information with me either as she took for granted that short sleeves would fine with me. This is understandable, as Beijing is pretty hot in summer – with daytime temperatures as high as 38 degrees centigrade. Most people on the street have short-sleeved shirts, but my preference is long sleeves.
This is a real example to illustrate the importance of effective communication in our life and our workplace. Basically, in the workplace, at any given time, we all have to communicate in some way with our internal or external clients. As an effective communicator, you can bring real concrete benefits to your work and your organization. At the very least, you avoid having to do things twice, as you get it right in the first instance.
In our capacity as professional consultants, perfect communication – both internal and external – is a crucial factor in building our sustainable competitive strengths, like efficiency, productivity, and a comfortable working environment.
As a business-to-business market research agency, our typical clients are marketing and business development professionals from national and international organizations. They come to us for help in making difficult and expensive decisions. At every point in the process, these clients’ expectations for effective communications from their suppliers are very high.
You would agree with me that the foundation to effective communications is precise information via an appropriate medium at the right time. At each contact point with clients in our work, effective communications are vitally important, from taking enquires, RFQ/RFP (request for quote/proposal), briefing, commissioning meeting, project design, through to the final reporting. It is our company’s normal practice to deliver an interim presentation, to ensure all the parties involved in the project have the same level of understanding of the exact project deliverables.
Within the marketing research and consulting business sector, to ensure client liaison in an effective and efficient way, your essentials skills are listening, plus market insight, to understand a client’s particular business and needs.
In any communication, trying to use easy-to-understand expressions rather than special terminology or abbreviations, is a good idea. Let me give you an example. Last year, we conducted a market assessment study for a leading American industrial valve maker, to help them penetrate Asia’s pharmaceutical markets. For this market entry study, we used PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) analysis to review the attractiveness of the opportunity and the barriers to entry to each individual market in Asia. When our project team leader and myself co-delivered the final presentation to the Client, we kept talking about PEST and IPR (Intelligence Property Right) issues in China. When we approached the end of presentation in the Q&A session, one of the audience asked the question, "What do you mean by PEST and IPR?" I then realized we should have clarified the abbreviations we had used.
It is quite normal in all walks of life and in all ways of communication to expect the audience to have the same level knowledge as we do. However, on many occasions, this is not the case. This is the reason why our project team always has detailed briefings, commissioning meetings and interim presentations with our Client. With these efforts, we can ensure both sides have the same level of knowledge and expectation from the marketing research and consulting project.
The other day, I got an email enquiry forwarded by our New York office. There were merely two sentences in the email: "We’re from Brazil looking to acquire a Chinese company. What is the cost and time frame for you to research this target company?"
How do you find the communication of this email enquiry? If you were sending out an enquiry for this sort of buying and acquisition study, what information do you think you need to provide to your agency?
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Jason Zhang, Thursday Night Insight, Market Research China, Acquisition Research, Market Research |
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August 15th, 2008
A recent house move has given Chrissie Hague, IT Support Manager, the ammunition to put pen to paper to write her first Thursday Night Insight post to highlight the complexity of service provider evaluation and selection.
I moved from the heart of bohemia to the extremes of suburbia. From Didsbury, in inner city Manchester, to Mellor, on the edge of the Peak District.
In Didsbury I had all my shopping needs on my doorstep. 24-hour Tesco, M&S Food and the Co-op, all within strolling distance. Day-to-day needs were satisfied by all and I switched between the three without any thought. Running out of the staples - milk, bread and queen green olives stuffed with guacamole and feta was never a problem.
Then a culture shock – I moved to Mellor. In Mellor, I struggled for the basics. You can’t even get a paper on a Saturday morning, never mind trying to satisfy my olive fetish! The quality of what was on offer fared no better. The only milk I could find was sour. And before unwrapping my 3-year-old’s weekly toy treat, I had to shovel the dust off the wrapper like snow from the car! (The shops here don’t cater for a demographic under 60, never mind 3 year old children!). The weekly shop did not lift the gloom. The only option was the Co-op - teaming with blue rinse, poorly stocked shelves and checkout queues the length of airport security.
It was getting me down to say the least but I adapted. I got a milk man and invested in a bread machine. But there was still no alternative to the dreaded Co-op. If I could just find a replacement for the weekly shop I could enjoy my new idyllic rural life. Then it happened. My daughter Lily shouted “there’s the egg van!” The egg van turned out to be Sainsbury’s internet home delivery service which was soon followed up the lane by Tesco and Ocado equivalents. I (or rather Lily) had discovered online grocery shopping.
Ocado was the first store I signed up to and it was brilliant. The website was fast, responsive and intuitive. There were no annoying pop-up windows, it was well thought out and the navigation clear and uncluttered. There were lots of nice touches, like receiving discounts for delivery by selecting a slot when the van was in the local area. A courtesy call ten minutes before arrival to say they are on their way. Arrival on time – I’m used to waiting all day for a gas man/fridge delivery, etc. that never comes! A helpful, friendly, polite driver who was informed enough to recognise it was my first time (I instantly felt valued). And, to top it all, the goods were sorted into colour-coded bags indicating freezer, fridge or cupboard. This was shopping heaven – I swore undying loyalty to Ocado.
A week passed by and it was time for another order. But to my frustration Ocado didn’t deliver on a Sunday and our fridge was bare. I almost felt a slight twinge of guilt for considering another provider but “needs must” and Ocado didn’t satisfy them. It was time to try another store. First I tried Tesco. Again the interface was fine and I was drawn to the gimmicky ‘quick shop’ feature. Great I thought…Ocado but quicker. I went to crisps first but this generated a huge text list with no images. I scrolled through the pages desperately trying to find Seabrook’s but gave up on page 5 with a headache (I had never realised pictures were so important in shopping)! At this point I gave up and made a conscious decision never to use Tesco online again (now I was getting fussy).
It was time to try another. I signed up to Sainsbury’s. An instant perk was the loyalty scheme (being able to collect loyalty points was a bonus not offered at Ocado). The site followed a similar format to Ocado’s. It was easy to navigate and included bright and enticing images of the products. The product range was excellent (better than Ocado) and even offered fresh bread (not available at Ocado). The delivery arrived on time and it made Lily’s day when she saw the “apple van” on the drive! I was a happy customer.
The moral of this story is that this experience has made me recognise the complexities of the service provider selection process. Even a simple shopping task triggered several evaluation criteria, which on reflection were unique to me (and many of which I was previously unaware of). On the face of it all providers seemed the same, but in reality it was those subtle differences (e.g. delivery days, loyalty points, fresh bread, etc.) that proved decisive.
The difficulty for any business is to recognise and understand these differences, though understand them they must in order to survive. The difficulty for us as a market research company is to provide this understanding to serve our clients. It’s at times like this that I am thankful to be part of the IT team at B2B and not one of the researchers who have to deal with these complexities on a daily basis.
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Chrissie Hague, Market Intelligence, Thursday Night Insight, Customer Satisfaction |
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