A small third-quarter deterioration (0.1%) in aggregate customer satisfaction continues a decline that began in 2007, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)

The ACSI is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States, which is updated quarterly.

The recently-reported decline in buyer satisfaction has precipitated a softening of consumer demand, with household spending actually falling in the third quarter for the first time in 17 years. Yet in spite of the overall fall, a lot of companies have actually been working hard to improve their customer relationships.

Professor Claes Fornell, who is the founder of the ACSI and author of The Satisfied Customer notes:

To find out more about how B2B International can help you to measure and improve your customer satisfaction levels, click here.

As one of the principal b-to-b markets we research, how is the drinks industry faring in these troubled times?  Well, since you ask, pretty well indeed!

Whilst other sectors may be reporting tough trading conditions, it would appear that business is better than ever for beverage manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.  One of the possible reasons for this is that whilst consumers are cutting back on the number of meals out they eat, they are instead opting for cooking at home accompanied by an alcoholic beverage or two.  Similarly, when consumers do venture out, they seem to be cutting back on more expensive tipples such as cocktails in favor of a cold beer.

According to a recent survey by the Beer Institute trade group:

A mature industry, with around $50 billion in annual sales, beer is America’s favorite alcoholic drink, with more than half the available market share.  However, trade groups for the liquor and wine industries have reported similar increases in consumption so, all in all, things are looking good for the US drinks sector.

To read more about this industry trend, please click here.

A new study by B2B International for Stanley Tools examines the use of certain hand tools within various trades, how tradespeople choose tools and what features they look for.

The Importance of Brand

Quality and robustness are the key requisites for tradesmen when purchasing hand tools but equally, how the tool feels when held is of equal importance – for instance, the weight for hammers, and comfort for knives and screwdrivers. Brand and perceived performance are also important drivers that impact on the purchasing decision, but this is dependent on the value of the hand tools.

When it comes to replacing old favourites, lower value tools such as saws and tape measures are replaced most frequently (every 3-6 months), whereas higher value tools such as hammers and spirit levels are only replaced every 2-3 years. For these items, brand plays a large part in the purchasing decision.

The Strength of Stanley

The Stanley brand is over 160 years old and still has a DNA that reflects its origins. Measuring and hand tools were some of the earliest products made by Stanley and they are an important feature of the company’s portfolio today. Since its formation, the Stanley brand has been synonymous with quality tools (and the ubiquitous Stanley knife), so it is no surprise to find that they are still the preferred choice for knives, tape measures and screwdrivers.

For many years, Stanley’s competitors have concentrated on specialist tools for the trade; e.g. Estwing for hammers and Stabila for spirit levels. However, with Stanley’s recent brand marketing offensive via their Fatmax range, we have seen Stanley closing the gap on tools such as saws, spirit levels and hammers.

B2B International Director Nick Hague was in charge of the research and was impressed with the brand infiltration of Stanley:

“The Stanley brand itself is a super brand – well-known to most people and positioned as a quality product. It certainly still stands for quality tools in the marketplace. Each trade has its specialist tools, yet the research shows that nearly every tradesperson has a Stanley tool in their bag. In fact, only 7 out of 516 tradesmen interviewed didn’t own any hand tools made by Stanley.�

After one and a half centuries in the marketplace, and with younger tradesmen continuing to choose Stanley tools, the brand seems to be going from strength to strength.

The B2B Blog has been live for around 18 months now. Although many blogs have been around a lot longer, it is the past 2 years that have seen the biggest increase in the number of blogs, as web 2.0 grows at a phenomenal rate. This article from Research World magazine, written by Poornima Vijayan, looks at different types of blogs that are out their.

Mining For A Living
Poornima Vijayan
Market Research World – May 2007-05-22

The inundation of facts, data, figures, opinions and insights that blogs deliver daily are unsystematic and chaotic, yet immensely valuable in the right context. To monitor and capture information from this chaos, we can use a combination of text mining, data mining, linguistic and statistical analysis, and latent semantic indexing techniques. A computer program hunts out blogs and explores the relevant content such as content and social network information, product likes and dislikes, recent purchases, opinions and attitudes which we can structure for more systematic insights.

Blogs give us a source of real-time information, but this means that market research firms need to develop an internal structure that can react at the same speed.

Here are some examples of the most popular blog models:

Advertising: as a general revenue model it’s clearly the most popular. Adsense has made it possible for even the most low-traffic, un-commercial blog to make money, but professional bloggers have taken contextual advertising to new heights with seriously targeted blogs and well integrated ads.

Affiliate Marketing: almost a subset of advertising but when well implemented this is marketing not advertising! A typical affiliate-marketing-based blog will either be a niche product/product groups or specialised audience blog and can generate sales by sending traffic to selected merchants via in-post text links, banners and special offers.

Consultancy: gurus in fields relevant to market research and consultancy can extend their reach and generate leads for their consultancy offerings by blogging on their areas of expertise. Pr, market research and marketing agencies as well as web-based services providers offer business blog consulting.

PR vehicle: Usually compliments existing models. Spreading the name of your company or products on a blog can create a great way for customers, potential customers, other bloggers and the press to interact with your company, its products or services.

Subscription: Market researchers can publish an ‘expert blog’, luring in subscribers by publishing a teaser with more detailed blog posts/reports or sections of the site available by subscription only.

Traffic: Make sure your titles and headlines convey what you want to say, and make it search-engine-friendly. Ways to drive more traffic are to comment on other successful blogs in similar or related areas, or to use incentives to encourage people to participate.