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Archive for the ‘Matt Harrison’ Category« Previous Entries Next Entries »The Cost of Good Market ResearchMonday, July 12th, 2010  ESOMAR recently published the results of its eighth annual Global Prices Study 2010, which evaluates the pricing of different types of market research around the world. One of the interesting points highlighted by the study – which was conducted among 100 countries – was the huge variety, not only of prices, but also of research methodologies favoured or employed in different geographies. For example, online research is not available in every market; similarly, face-to-face interviewing is not conducted everywhere. However, one of the most notable findings from the perspective of B2B International, which researches markets worldwide from its offices in the UK, USA and China, was the fact that the USA topped the rankings as the most expensive market globally in which to conduct research. Matthew Harrison, Director of our New York office, explains why the results of the survey did not come as a surprise to him:
Harrison, however, additionally points to a slightly more unusual contributor to the high prices associated with the US:
These facts aside, Harrison is keen to point out that while the actual price of research in the States may appear on the high side, the return on investment gained from good quality market research should never, ever be underestimated. The danger of over-deliveringThursday, June 10th, 2010
Taking us on a tour of his opulent Beijing hotel, Matthew Harrison this week explains why segmentation of a target market remains crucial. I am writing this latest installment to Thursday Night Insight from my hotel in Beijing. Beijing is a city I know well and I have become accustomed to its hospitality – the faultless service in restaurants, the branch of Subway that delivers my foot-long sandwich for free, and the animated army of traffic lieutenants who bark at passers-by if they so much as lean over the road when the pedestrian light is on red. Sadly they don’t afford the same courtesy to the smoke-belching construction trucks that make it their business to run over pedestrians when the lights eventually change. Variety being the spice of life and ‘adventurous’ being my middle name, I decided to sample a new hotel for this latest visit to our Chinese office. The Japanese-run Jinglun has served me well over the years, but having been charged the equivalent of $10 for half a pint of warm Tsingtao during my last visit, I decided to venture further afield to the Jianguo Hotel – a lengthy 1-minute hike away and self-proclaimed Garden Hotel of Beijing – which for some reason was offering luxurious rooms at knock-down rates. Upon my arrival I was immediately impressed, as I always am when Chinese hospitality is involved. The politest man in the world took my case from the cab without asking. I never saw him again, but by the time I arrived at room 739, my luggage would be waiting for me. The garden theme was plain to see, the labyrinthine corridors snaking round a series of open-air ponds and trellised courtyards. The sight of a French restaurant adjacent to an English pub at the corner of the foyer meant that I immediately assumed I was in heaven, even if the 3 photocopies of my visa, passport and credit card seemed an excessive way of granting me entry. One of the five-strong gaggle of receptionists eventually gave me my room card, contained in a small cardboard booklet advertising the English pub, French restaurant and 3 other onsite establishments, including Shang Court Chinese Imperial Cuisine – or, as its catchy tagline reminded me, ‘The only luxurious restaurant with the imperial palace and feudal official mansion cuisine of the Shang Dynasty in Beijing’. I made a mental note to return later and find out whether the food was as stodgy as the advertising. I headed down 3 corridors, around 4 gardens, under 2 pagodas, through a pond, over a crocodile infested ravine, up 6 floors, down another corridor and into my room. It was a sight to behold. A huge plasma screen looked down on me imposingly. A green velvet sedan-chair lazed seductively in front of the window. Beneath 2 glass shelves stocked with Dragonseal 2008 vintage, the mini-bar hummed its sensuous hum, pouting its lips and beckoning me towards it with come-hither eyes and lovestrewn promises of Heineken straight from the can. The room was as confusing as the hotel itself. As if the boastful attention seeking of the plasma screen wasn’t bad enough, its brash identical twin was suspended just feet away. I counted at least 4 waste paper baskets – why? The bath had 3 taps, one less than the number of telephones dotted around the room. 5 mirrors vied for space with 6 cabinets, a desk, and a mysterious contraption that looked like a zimmer frame for a man with 3 legs. 20 hours after leaving home, I threw the 17 decorative cushions onto the floor and collapsed onto the king-sized bed, determined to let fatigue take its toll. The minibar hummed with dejection whilst the Dragonseal glared its hateful blood-red disapproval. But this room would not let me sleep. It was just too much. Too much attention, too much fuss for a half-asleep Englishman. This beautiful hotel, this monument to sino-european chic, was not for me. I began to long for the wide wildlife-free corridors and blanched, single-screen rooms of the Jinglun hotel. The Jianguo was wasted on me. This hotel was forgetting the basics of segmentation, which divides a target market into groups with distinct needs, the supplier charging each segment a price aligned with the benefits received. In selling me this room, the Jianguo made a crucial mistake – it provided me with a luxury offering at a bargain basement price. The effective segmenter would have dealt with me in one of 3 ways:
Segmentation should be regarded as a strategy, not a tactic. Whilst it is tempting in the short term to ‘leave value on the table’ in order to ensure a sale and increase cashflow, in the long term this is just as self-defeating as raising costs too high. High costs will eventually erode margins and alienate the target audience that is prepared to pay for the benefits you offer. In The PressMonday, March 29th, 2010  What Can Marketers Learn From English Seduction Techniques?Friday, March 12th, 2010
This week Director Matthew Harrison draws the key marketing lessons from his (now dormant) seduction techniques. Each and every year, the month of March is a joyous occasion for me. The brutal New York winter dissipates and makes way for 8 months of glorious sun. The English football season reaches its climax, as along with the rest of the Western world I fix my attention on Nottingham Forest’s promotion challenge. Most importantly and joyously of all, the month of March marks the anniversary of my wedding, which I should highlight (just in case she’s reading) was a day of unparalleled perfection. And so this week my mind took a surreptitious walk down memory lane to a warm September day in 1997, a lucky 13 years ago. This was the day when I targeted my now-wife and (eventually) convinced her that I would fulfil her every need. Now, as a marketer first and lady-magnet second, thoughts of this distant time got me thinking. What, if anything, could my seductive exploits of the late 90s teach me and the wider marketing community about appealing to their target audiences? If I can successfully target that most notoriously demanding of audiences, the attractive female, surely there is no limit to my marketing prowess? That sunny day in 1997 had been an inauspicious one, at least from a professional point of view. My finest achievement had been to break the photocopier and spend 90 minutes failing to fix it. As I returned home at 5.30, I frankly needed a beer. I delicately broached the subject with my housemate Dave, who pondered my request before suggesting we go to the pub immediately. Two hours and 5 pints of Kronenbourg later Dave and I were deep in discussion, our agile minds flitting between the meaning of life and whose turn it was to buy the next drink. I was just about to walk towards the bar when I noticed the door open and two girls in their early twenties walked in. I salivated, ordered another round and began plotting my next move. My mission: to make the blurred, dark-haired girl on the right fall in love with a drunken photocopier-wrecker. Mercifully, Dave told me a joke about Camilla Parker-Bowles, distracting me for the rest of the evening. Several evenings later, a group of friends and I decided to meet up in the same bar. Word was that a selection of females would be present, some of whom would be more than happy to meet the man of their dreams this evening. Even better, one or two discrete enquiries amongst the local cognoscenti revealed that the blurred girl was called Caroline and would be making an appearance along with her friends. I sensed my chance, and quickly set about polishing my shoes, getting Dave to iron my shirt, and splashing myself in enough Fahrenheit to make a cactus wilt. I donned my leather jacket and, fusing debonair cool with rugged Anglo-Saxon masculinity, unbuttoned the top 2 buttons of my shirt. It would be no exaggeration to say that I looked irresistible. Scanning the bar as I arrived mid-way through the evening, I immediately saw Caroline, chatting with her friends in the far corner. She was tall and slender with long, dark brown hair. Her dark knee-length skirt and tailored jacket clung enticingly to her figure and her top revealed a hint of décolletage. Her outfit reminded me of the perfect hors d’oeuvre: just enough to keep the interest; not quite enough to make me feel queasy and rush for the exit. I wonder if anyone’s ever delivered a finer compliment than that to her? I do hope so. Rather than striding confidently towards her and delivering a killer chat-up line in front of her friends, I bravely decided to wait until she was on her own and then pounce. This must have been my lucky day because a few minutes later I found myself standing next to her at the bar. We started talking. Now when I talk to attractive ladies, I have something of a magic touch – I start talking and they immediately disappear. Strangely, however, for an apparently sane woman with all of her faculties intact, Caroline responded – and not with a restraining order. She laughed at my jokes. She nodded as I told her all about my big-shot job in the photocopying room. She gasped with relief as I finally asked her a question. She seemed to believe me when I said that it must be the man behind me that stank of vinegar. We met up a few more times over the following week or two, each encounter becoming slightly more relaxed than the last. I took her to a restaurant and tried to show off by buying some expensive wine that I’d never heard of. We went to a football match with a group of friends. Gentlemen, I hope you are learning as you read this. After 4 or 5 ‘meetings’ we were officially an item and I was congratulating myself on my marketing expertise. So, when I look back at the seductive marketing techniques I employed in my early 20s and reflect upon how they changed the course of my life, I am struck by how similar the art of attracting a business-to-business customer is to the seduction of a beautiful woman. I therefore leave you with my key tips on how to attract and keep the most demanding of b2b customers: Make the first impression count – A sober, well prepared marketing approach is always likely to be more effective than an impulsive dash in the direction of the target customer. This applies to all aspects of the marketing mix, from promotional materials and interpersonal contact through to pricing and proposal preparation. By the time you get to undoing an early bad impression, the object of your desire will already be looking elsewhere. Expect the sales process to take 4 or 5 contacts – Business-to-business buyers, like women, are complex creatures. The quick ‘hard sell’ is far less suited to their multifaceted needs and their focus on interpersonal contact than it is to the more impulsive and impersonal world of consumer marketing. It is critical to take the time over a number of conversations to understand customers’ rational and emotional needs, before providing a personalized solution built around these. Ask lots of (intelligent) questions – Like the most boring of inebriated men, bad b2b marketers focus so much on their own offering that they forget to ask the target customer what makes them tick and what would make their lives better. This is a fatal mistake when each target customer has needs that are often technical, complex and unique. Always leave them wanting to find out more – Successful business-to-business marketing is a long-term, dynamic process built around frequent conversation and mutual exploration. The effective b2b marketer answers every question concisely, whilst hinting at new, intriguing ideas that make the target customer want to find out more next time. Tell a coherent, authentic story and stick to it – This is the most difficult and most critical trick of all. Just as the single man identifies an overall impression he wants to project to the fairer sex and attempts to dress, smell and speak in a way that authenticates that impression, so the successful b2b marketer must identify the story that target segment wants to hear and ensure that every customer touchpoint authenticates that story. This requires consistency, and – most fundamentally – a deep and accurate understanding of what the target market wants from you. Master these two basics and you are on your way to becoming a seductive b2b marketer. The Future Looks Bright for Online B2B Focus GroupsMonday, December 14th, 2009 
With worldwide expenditure on online research predicted to almost treble over the next three years, market research specialist B2B International believes the future is rosy for most online techniques, especially focus groups. The technological revolution of the past 15 years has led to the rapid development of online data collection methodologies. Of these, the online survey is the most established but, more recently, online focus groups have emerged, making it possible to obtain qualitative information online. Following similar principles to Internet message boards, the online focus group differs from online surveys in that it allows every participant to see the responses of all of the other respondents and encourages them to respond to these views as well as to the initial question posed by the researcher. In addition, the researcher inserts questions as the discussion develops, in order to probe areas of particular interest, or to gain further information on new topics that participants introduce to the discussion. In this way, online focus groups enable a real-time, dynamic discussion to develop between the researcher and the respondents, just as would be the case with a face-to-face focus group. Business-to-business market research specialist B2B International has been firmly established in the online research industry since the company’s inception in 1998 and remains one of the forerunners in e-enabled research. B2B International has recently published a comprehensive White Paper – Using Online Focus Groups As A Business-To-Business Research Technique – which gives a balanced assessment of the rationale behind using the online focus group as a research methodology. The White Paper outlines 13 key reasons to conduct online focus groups:
In addition to highlighting the undisputed benefits, B2B International Director Matthew Harrison, author of the White Paper, shares some of the insights that B2B International has learned through the large number of online focus groups it has conducted over the last several years. According to Harrison: “Online focus groups can take place for a defined period of, say, 90 minutes, as with a face-to-face focus group but our experience shows us that online groups are more effective when spread over a period of 2 days, with respondents entering the discussion at different times to suit their convenience. This way, groups generate more considered opinion and a greater volume of information, adding real value to the research.” However, internet focus groups are not suited to every research project and B2B International is quick to recognise the limitations. These include the fact that certain target audiences – particularly the less web-savvy – are less suited to online groups than others; respondent recruitment can be labour-intensive and expensive; and certain limitations exist with presenting physical stimulae for respondents to touch, feel or smell. In spite of this, Harrison is optimistic about the future for online focus groups: “There are many reasons why we believe the prominence and effectiveness of online focus groups will increase, but key among them would be convenience and technology. Increasingly busy schedules coupled with the need to speak to respondents all across the world make online focus groups an ever more viable option. Secondly, there will continue to be huge advancements in the capabilities of and familiarity with technology, enabling greater numbers of respondents from all across the world to take part with increasing ease and improved effectiveness.” To read the white paper in full, please click here. « Previous Entries Next Entries » |
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