Archive for the ‘Business Decisions’ Category

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The Role of Marketers

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The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), at its recent annual conference, has urged marketers to lead the United States out of the recession. Chief Marketing Officers of various multinationals – among them Walmart, McDonald’s, IBM, MillerCoors and Google – all spoke at the conference to explain how the actions of marketing departments have led to major turnarounds in fortune or fueled record growth. Included were examples of how, by focusing on the customer and having a deep understanding what their brands were about, stronger reputations have been built and impressive growth achieved.

In further news from the ANA, a new study shows that marketers increasingly see themselves as ‘visionaries’. When asked to choose whether they identified themselves as tactician, facilitator, leader or visionary, one-third of the 150 marketers who participated in the online study chose ‘visionary’.

The study found that ‘visionaries’ had a much higher level of influence within their respective organizations than those in other categories. For example, 89% were more likely to be leading strategic dialogue (compared to 11% of non-visionaries), two-thirds were more likely to be leading discussions around reinventing the business (compared to 21%), and 60% were more likely to collaborate with financial functions (as opposed to 22% of the non-visionaries).

Posted in Business Decisions, Growth, Marketing, Recession |
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Short-term Strategies In The Recession

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The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has found that two-thirds of marketers have, in response to the current economic environment, shifted their emphasis to more short-term strategies.  These were some of the findings of a Brand-Building study of 129 marketers, which took the form of an online survey.

Yet in spite of the short-term tactics, marketers are already planning increased activities for when the recession ends.  68% will be increasing their media budgets, 41% increasing social networking/word-of-mouth, and 40% allocating more money to innovation and testing/learning.  Almost three-quarters of respondents admitted that they would ideally like to implement these additional marketing activities three to six months before the recession ends.

The survey found that few marketing initiatives had been postponed or cancelled outright, but many had suffered from reduced budgets.  Those activities that are being maintained during the recession include:

• Research and development (47%)
• Public relations (42%)
• Innovation/test/learn budgets (33%)
• Promotion activities (33%).

A number of activities have been increased over recent months, including:

• Pricing deals (47%)
• Social networking/word-of-mouth (26%)
• Public relations efforts (23%)

When compared to the results of previous surveys, many traditional media channels have suffered:

• Television (down from 80% in February 2007 to 64% in April 2009)
• Magazines (down from 67% to 51%)
• Radio (down from 36% to 30%)
• Outdoor (down from 35% to 26%)
• Newspapers (down from 36% to 19%)

These results are fairly representative of current sentiment in the wider marketing community.  Many organizations are shying away from traditional media and focusing on online opportunities.  Indeed, a recent survey by B2B International showed around half of marketers planning to increase their e-marketing spend in 2009, with many stating that online marketing had already proven itself to be a successful strategy in the face of recessionary pressures.  More than a quarter were planning increases in their PR activity.  On the flip side, around half planned to cut expenditure in the more traditional areas of tradeshows/events and magazine advertising.

Click here to read our white paper on Marketing Strategies in a Recession.

Posted in Advertising Research, Budgets, Business Decisions, Commercials, Marketing, Recession |
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Understanding Cultural Differences Across B2B Markets

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Nick Hague this week takes us on a world tour, explaining why you should never be surprised to get such varied responses to your global customer satisfaction questions.

After spending what seems like the last few months living out of a suitcase delivering research findings to a myriad of companies in countries ranging from Germany, Belgium, Spain and Ireland to the USA and China, it has hit home to me even more so, how important it is to understand individual country differences.  These differences might be cultural, behavioural or attitudinal, but a researcher needs to know what lies behind a given score before making informed recommendations for action.  Carrying out international research is all in a day’s work at B2B International!

Enquiries for customer satisfaction and loyalty research have risen in recent months as the global recession bites harder and companies are turning their attention towards retaining their existing customer base.  We are often tasked with carrying out customer satisfaction studies that cover multiple geographies.  Implementing and evaluating such research requires an understanding of the different cultures and infrastructures within a particular geography; for example will a Chinese respondent answer an unsolicited telephone call or will an e-survey alienate half your target market in Spain? Another complexity that comes up in multi-country studies is making sure a translated questionnaire has the same meaning across multiple geographies.  However, one of the most important aspects of carrying out international research is having the insight to why individuals from different countries around the world convey such different ratings; especially customer satisfaction ratings, when receiving a similar if not identical service from the same global organisation.

So my Thursday Night Insight rant this week is about response styles and I pose the question: Why do customer satisfaction response styles differ between countries?

Typically, in any customer satisfaction survey the norm is to use a 10 point scale where 1 means totally unsatisfied and 10 means totally satisfied.  When asking this question to customers across different countries I can definitely make the following general observations:

• Anglo respondents e.g. UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Nordic and a number of Western European cultures tend to use all points on the scale
• Across Asia and especially in countries such as China, Hong Kong and Japan, respondents tend to use the middle of the scale and not the extremities of very satisfied or not very satisfied
• Respondents from Latin countries e.g. Italy, Spain, Brazil, Argentina tend to use the end of the scales and are more likely to register higher satisfaction scores overall

However, one point that should be made clear is that these observations are generalizations and what we do see is that respondents from North America typically give higher satisfaction scores than their UK or Western European counterparts.  One reason, I personally believe, is down to cultural differences.  For example, I have an American colleague who works within our European HQ and on his first day at B2B International he greeted me with the question ‘how are you today?’ to which I replied ‘OK’.  He looked aghast and said ‘why, what’s the matter?’ There was no problem or issue but my typical English response led my colleague to think that something was wrong based on our different cultural backgrounds.  Therefore, based on these differences, Americans would typically rate a product or service as a 9 or 10 (totally satisfied or excellent) while Europeans would rate a similar issue as a 7 or 8 (an okay, acceptable, satisfactory score). Another reason for higher satisfaction scores in the US could be that Americans are more likely to respond to a survey even when service levels are good and expectations are being met whilst Europeans only respond if the service is poor or they have a gripe to bear – however, this is a personal point of view and so like any good researcher I wanted to know if any external research has been carried out looking at geographical scoring differences. 

Supporting the internal B2B viewpoint is a piece of research I came across carried out with 116,000 employees of IBM Corporation operating in more than 40 countries.  Using these findings, Geert Hofstede from Maastricht University developed a framework that identified four different typologies based on national culture that impacted on response styles.  These typologies were:

Power distance: The degree to which people in a country accept a hierarchical or unequal distribution of power in organizations.  Therefore respondents would typically score mid-response ratings and countries showing this type of response style include Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Philippines, China, Brazil, Chile and Mexico

Uncertainty avoidance: The degree to which people prefer structured vs. unstructured situations. Cultures high in uncertainty avoidance prefer unambiguous situations and are therefore more likely to use the endpoints of the scale as opposed to the middle, thus exhibiting an extreme response style. Countries showing this type of response include Belgium, Poland, France, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Korea and Japan

Individualism: The degree to which people in a country focus on working as individuals vs. working together. Cultures high in individualism are less likely to exhibit a middle satisfaction score because they would emphasize their individual opinion as opposed to their perception of the group opinion. Among all the response styles, individualistic cultures may exhibit extreme response styles and include countries such as US, Canada, Australia, UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Italy, Hungary and France.

Assertiveness: The degree to which people in a country emphasize traits such as assertiveness and insensitivity to feelings. One could hypothesize that individuals in these cultures would favour more extreme response styles and that “softer,” more “sensitive” cultures exhibit more modesty or middle response styles.  Countries that have been categorized as assertive are the UK, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Japan.  However, it should be pointed out that Geert’s research is inconclusive with regards to the impact of this dimension on response scores.

In conclusion, the key takeaways are thus.  Every business needs a feedback loop to assess their performance and provide an ongoing measurement and benchmark for future progress.  Customer satisfaction surveys are excellent at delivering this feedback, but different country cultures do impact on responses and response rates and so, when analyzing international research findings, a researcher needs to use their knowledge and judgement to whether a response is based on different levels of performance, or simply because of a result of cultural difference. 

In the future, when comparing international customer satisfaction research findings, it might be useful to take the following three steps:

1. Compare internal satisfaction scores for a particular country and avoid cross-country comparisons; for example, comparing county or state satisfaction scores within your country
2. Compare same country results relative to previous waves of research and so benchmarking changes and improvements
3. Make sure that your customer satisfaction survey is not just quantitative in design.  The customer satisfaction toolbox is wide and varied and it is just as important to find out qualitatively what a customer does and doesn’t like and any future changes that need to be made over and above a scalar response to ‘overall, how satisfied are you with the service delivered?’

Finally, to wrap up this week’s ramblings I should point out that when it comes to customer service and customer satisfaction, one issue that transcends all geographies is that it is imperative that the customer is listened to, and feels valued and cared for.  Relationships are key in any business to business market throughout the world, and so invest in your people as they are the face of your business and typically are the driving force behind excellent satisfaction scores whether you are based in Torquay, Tokyo or Timbuktu.

Posted in Business Decisions, Customer Satisfaction Research, Global Research, International Market Research, Nick Hague, Research Design, Research Methods, Thursday Night Insight, Tracking |
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Never Underestimate Intelligence

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New York’s Westchester County Business Journal, in its weekly business advice column, has just run an article entitled ‘keeping abreast of the competition’.  For us, as market research and competitive intelligence experts, we can never read enough articles that encourage organizations large and small to recognize the importance of quality, up-to-date business intelligence.

As anyone who is familiar with Porter’s Five Forces will be well aware, very few, if any, companies operate alone in their given marketplace.  Each company’s specific micro environment consists of forces that affect its ability to serve its customers and make a profit.

Competition is out there in the form of direct established rivals, as well as the threat of new entrants to the market or the threat of substitute products.

Any change in any of these forces normally requires a company to re-assess the marketplace, hence the need to regularly review your competitive intelligence.  Even the decision of a competitor to get out of your chosen marketplace, for example, should be viewed with a degree of caution rather than unbridled celebration.  Why does your competitor no longer wish to be in your market?  Do they know something important that you don’t?

Intelligence is, of course, available from a wide range of sources.  In its most basic forms there is much you can do yourself: talk to your suppliers, customers and employees; keep abreast of developments by reading industry periodicals or industry reports; scour the internet for news.

Yet much information – especially that of a sensitive nature – can be difficult to come by, and not all companies have the necessary people resources to conduct a thorough and comprehensive competitor analysis.  In many cases, they may require the help of an external research consultancy who will be adept at sourcing data – from mystery shopping, to competitor pricing research studies, through to conducting structured interviews with customers, suppliers, distributors, industry experts and even competitors themselves.
Of course, it’s one thing to have pages and pages of intelligence; it’s a whole other matter knowing how to pick out the most pertinent information and use it to draw up a plan of action.  How do you decide which competitors and which markets you want to take on and which you want to avoid?  Sometimes an independent, objective expert can help to sift through the masses of data, separate the wheat from the chaff, and highlight the most salient points.

There is no doubt that there is a whole world of information out there, and that competitor intelligence at your fingertips enables you to make intelligent future business decisions.

Find out more about how B2B International’s competitive intelligence work can enhance your own knowledge by clicking here.

Posted in Business Decisions, Competitive Intelligence, Interviews, Market Intelligence, Mystery Shopping, Porter's Five Forces |
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The ROI Of Market Research – New Podcast

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ROI is an oft-repeated business mantra for any kind of major strategic investment, and market research is certainly no different from other business expenditure in this respect.

Market intelligence studies are often commissioned with laudable intentions – principal amongst these being the development and growth of the organisation concerned. However, for all the lofty ambitions and expectation that may be placed behind a market research project, without careful planning and management, the end result can all-to-easily disappoint. A study may fail to target the original objectives from the market research brief or the report may be too far divorced from the actions that will effect real change within an organisation.

In effect, the question that companies should ask when commissioning market research is "am I getting my money’s worth?" – A query that should be asked of major investments at any time, not least during a recession.

In B2B International’s latest podcast, we broach these very issues: How can we ensure market research delivers value for money? How can this be verified or measured? And, perhaps more fundamentally, what is the value of market research in the first instance?

The podcast is based upon a white paper written by Paul Hague and Julia Cupman of B2B International entitled "Making effective business decisions: Measuring & maximising the return on investment of market research". Links to both versions of this paper can be found below:

	Making Effective Business Decisions in pdf
	Making Effective Business Decisions from The Market Research Podcast

Posted in Budgets, Business Decisions, Julia Cupman, Market Intelligence, Market Research, Paul Hague, Podcast Audio, ROI, Return On Investment |
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