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Archive for the ‘Matt Harrison’ Category« Previous Entries Next Entries »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. Marketer of The Year – Helen Bailey of B2B InternationalThursday, December 10th, 2009 
Earlier this week, we posted a blog article about marketer of the year. Well, in today’s Thursday Night Insight, Matthew Harrison outlines his nomination of B2B International’s very own Helen Bailey as his marketer of the year. As I sat perusing this blog’s discussion of potential ‘marketers of the year’ earlier this week, I took it upon myself to think back to some of the great and not-so-great marketing experiences that I have been exposed to (or perhaps had inflicted upon me) over the past 12 months. I must confess I found the exercise relatively cathartic. Although not as cathartic as my nomination for anti-marketer of the year – the pizza restaurant in Beijing that preceded my 4-day stay in a hotel bathroom with nothing but German faucets and the dulcet tones of CNN for company. That got my thinking about the other foreign trips I have made, and in particular my visit to our UK office back in February. An extremely pleasant opportunity to meet colleagues old and new, and to renew my acquaintance with life at B2B’s bustling Head Office. I decided to turn up fashionably late, at around 10am, for maximum impact. No-one seemed to notice. Especially the guy (I’ve no idea who he was) who told me to hurry up fixing the U-bend. Undeterred, I chatted to a couple of colleagues and was just about to start working the room when – at about 10.30 – a mysterious ripple of excitement began to emanate from the far side of the office. I assumed either that a minor celebrity had shown up at reception or that one of the supervisors had had a fit. The ripple quickly became a wave, and was approaching me at a rapid pace. I was transfixed, like one of those poor souls that sees a tsunami head towards the beach they are standing on and only realises it’s time to run when their mother-in-law surfs past on a piece of plywood accompanied by the family dog. The epicentre of this morning’s excitement soon became clear, as the lovely Helen emerged from our kitchen pushing a stainless steel tea-trolley crammed to buckling point with a quintessentially English cargo: millions of shiny white cups huddled around three huge tea-pots, as if to keep themselves warm or prevent themselves from being pushed overboard. Matching saucers stacked obediently at the stern of the vessel. And a plate of chocolate digestives spread regally across the bow, like Leonardo Di Caprio in Titanic. Pens were placed on desks, phone calls ended and curious, expectant heads peered from behind doors and above the blue partitions. I cannot imagine a more contentedly English scene, not without sending the staff down to Wimbledon to queue all night in the drizzle for their tea before being interviewed by Sue Barker. Helen began by serving the supervisors at the far end of the floor, before making her way gradually through a group of temporary workers, tentatively through the researchers, crawling through the managers, idling through the administrative assistants and slowly – very slowly in fact – towards myself and my colleague. What a fine egalitarian tradition, I thought – the serving of tea and biscuits to every member of staff from the temporary workers up to the CEO. A brief hiatus during a busy day, in which friend and foe, boss and bossed-about could exchange jokes, stories and gossip before returning to their questionnaires and reports. It was, however, beyond my comprehension how splashing a bit of tea and milk into 50-odd cups could take so long. I am ashamed to say that I was becoming impatient and wondering whether the productive Helen I remembered so well had turned into someone who would rather push a tea-trolley round an office than do any work. As I observed events more closely, however, I realised two things. First, that I was someone who would rather watch someone push a tea-trolley round an office than do any work, and second that Helen was charged with achieving the impossible – serving tea and biscuits in a satisfactory and orderly fashion to a room full of English office workers. For every person that smiled and thanked poor, harassed Helen as she carefully placed a cup of tea onto their desk before briskly returning to their work, another three would engage her in animated discussion about the tea/milk ratio of their upcoming beverage, the number of sugars, whether those sugars should be heaped or flat, whether the milk should be poured direct from the jug or injected via a syringe, and whether the digestives should be served on plates or fed in chunks to each staff member as they took turns to recline naked on a chaise longue like Roman emperors. A dieting temporary worker had pre-ordered – I repeat pre-ordered – tea laced with sweetener rather than sugar, as if she’d come to a theatre performance and this was her interval refreshment. Another insisted on lemon being squeezed into his brew, as if it was a gin and tonic. And some nincompoop, having decided that PG Tips was not good enough for her, had insisted Helen make her a tailored beverage with the assistance of some silly peppermint tea-bags that made the whole office smell like toothpaste. Personally I’d have taken 10 minutes to serve lukewarm PG Tips and milk to everyone and then thrown 10 sugar lumps into the office before shouting ‘scramble’. But this was a marketing company, and no-one aspired more diligently to meet every individual customer’s needs than Helen. No-one understood better that as each year passes, the expectation for customized, tailored solutions to needs and wants increases. I therefore end this Thursday Night Insight with two messages to Helen: Firstly, it gives me great pleasure to nominate you, Helen Bailey of B2B International, as my Marketer of the Year. Secondly, I will be visiting Head Office in two weeks’ time to congratulate you in person. I will be loitering at the back of the office at 10.30 and am likely to be in the mood for a slow-boiled bucket of jasmine-scented ooling with whipped cream and a Cadbury’s Flake. Hot but not too hot, with a couple of oatmeal digestives and a slice of lemon on the side. Don’t give your customers a product or service, give them an experience they will never forgetSunday, August 30th, 2009
In recounting a recent – and somewhat memorable – taxi journey, Matthew Harrison is reminded of how a product or service can really differentiate itself from the rest of the pack by becoming an ‘experience’. I must confess to being one of B2B International’s less tolerant air travelers. The 6 hours I spent imprisoned in a 747 on a Shanghai runway…the 7 course ‘meal’ served up by the good staff of Aeroflot (6 of the courses were salmon)…my interrogation by a wild-eyed immigration goon at Newark Airport…the dimwit who confiscated my cases at Rochester because I allowed said cases to complete two laps of the carousel without collecting….these and other events have been crow-barred into company folklore by my incessant moaning. As a result, it is a relief both to me and to anyone unfortunate enough to be my travel companion when my flight touches down, and all that remains is to catch a cab to my final destination. A couple of weeks back, my colleague and I returned from Pittsburgh to New York in good spirits. The journey had gone ahead without a hitch, our meeting had concluded successfully, and both of us looked forward to the weekend. We drank a couple of beers and took the opportunity to examine the front page of the Wall Street Journal, which was reporting on Bill Clinton’s liberation of two journalists from the clutches of Kim Jong Il. Oddly, the official photograph to mark the event (see below) featured a rather kitsch 1980s wall frieze, which had been dropped onto a Tellytubbies set and gate-crashed by the cast of Madame Tussauds.
To return to the matter in hand, my colleague and I had forgotten that the efforts of the airline industry to make the general public’s life a misery extend far beyond aircraft cabins and indeed airport walls. Whatever medicine the world’s aviators take to ensure unrivalled levels of inhospitality and indolence, it would appear that the New York taxi industry has been raiding the cabinet. The warning signs that B2B International was to experience a nadir in land travel were there from the beginning. The passenger window of the cab was jammed open and the back seat about as comfortable on the posterior as a broken Rubik’s Cube. My colleague and I had naively taken the driver’s rather blank grin upon being asked to drive to White Plains as proof of his willingness to take us there, rather than his inability to find his own backside in the bath with both hands and a personal assistant. Within 2 minutes of leaving the taxi rank, and well inside the airport perimeter, we drew despondently to a stop underneath a graffiti-speckled flyover. - “Where you go?” Our driver lurched into gear, trying but failing to convince us that he had the slightest idea of where he was going. Three laps of the airport’s inner perimeter and 25 minutes later, we finally find our way onto the open road and were heading north. Disconcertingly, the driver had been steering with one finger, most of his other 9 digits clasping a telephone, through which he received nonsensical directions from someone who also had no idea where we were or where White Plains was. Over the ensuing 2 hours we stopped and asked, we shouted at passers-by, we waved, weaved and guessed our way through the streets and back yards of Southern New York, before finally, mercifully, we arrived in White Plains city center. I dragged my weary body out of the cab and headed for home. And as I trooped through the streets I was hit, not by a Friday night drinker but by a kind of Eureka moment. I was happy! In fact I was exhilarated. I HAD ENJOYED THAT TAXI RIDE. The speed. The bumps. The danger. The nausea. The sense of the unknown. The laughs. The memories. I had experienced an adventure that evening – an adventure I am recounting to you now. An adventure I will recount to my children, and my children’s children. That useless man, that anti-navigator with whom I had shared two hours of my life had (unwittingly) met a need that few suppliers can meet. Rather than sell me a tangible product or service, this disorientated scatterbrain had given me a holistic experience that will live with me until my dying day. The savvy marketer recognizes that providing a simple product or service puts the organization on a route towards low prices and commoditization. In order to add value, and therefore raise prices and profit, it is critical to look beyond the tangible. In other words, sell a concept and provide an experience. Our taxi driver, of course, made two mistakes: firstly the basics of product and service were so intolerable that most customers would be uninterested in any ‘experience’ related to these. Secondly, he sold us a basic service (to drive us home) meaning that the thrill-packed tourism experience we endured was unexpected and therefore not paid for. So, I will not pretend that our driver’s marketing strategy was flawless. However, I thank you, Mr Clueless of LaGuardia Airport Taxis, for the memories. Your product is substandard, your service despicable, and your attentiveness to my needs non-existent. But, for a mere $90 (plus tip and tolls), you gave me an experience that was both thrilling and addictive. You, Sir, in one (and only one) respect, are an inspiration to all marketers. Only Fools Rush InWednesday, July 1st, 2009
Matthew Harrison, B2B International’s Director of International Operations, was featured in Marketing’s recent special issue on emerging markets. Drawing upon his time spent working in our China office and using his extensive experience gained through managing research projects in such far-reaching geographies as Russia, Sri Lanka and Tanzania, Matthew offers invaluable advice to Western companies looking to establish or build a presence in any emerging B2B market. The full published article is as follows:
More of Matthew’s white papers on developing markets are available on our website:
What Can Marketers Learn From Extravagant MPs?Friday, May 29th, 2009
In his latest Thursday Night Insight, Matthew Harrison reflects on what lessons we can take from the latest scandal that’s plastered across all the British newspapers. Despite working in the US, I do like to keep in touch with events in England – my home country – on at least a weekly basis. Most weekends I will spend an hour or two on the Internet looking through the newspapers and marvelling at the content. I read a couple of weeks ago how sun-soaked Britain – at a balmy 62 degrees Fahrenheit – would be ‘warmer than Tel Aviv’ later that week. I was informed a week later that Neanderthal men – rather than being wiped out by disease or developing over time into human beings – were in fact eaten by the French. And only yesterday I learned that a 73-year-old pensioner who performed a daring break-dance routine on Britain’s Got Talent has been claiming for disability benefit. Whilst the ludicrous content of these stories provided the reader with plenty of entertainment, their impact pales into insignificance against what is regarded to be the ‘biggest political scandal in decades’, namely the Daily Telegraph’s exposure of British politicians’ expense claims. The details of these expense claims have caused widespread offence and outrage at a time of economic hardship for the country. Some of the claims, it has to be said, were jaw-dropping, including an ornamental floating duck house (£2,000), moat-cleaning at a politician’s sumptuous country mansion (another £2,000), 2 pornographic films (£12), multiple toilet seat replacements and a £1,800 limousine ride to a football match. Other politicians have used public money to furnish their family homes or indulge in tax-free property speculation. As I laugh and wince at the tales of extravagance and anger currently filling the UK newspapers, it seems to me that marketers can learn a number of things: The importance of (authentic) story-tellingSuccessful marketers depend on telling an appealing story that can be defended as authentic. When a story is exposed as unauthentic, trust in the supplier evaporates, and the costs in terms of damage to reputation and lack of repeat sales usually far outweigh any sales made through ‘mis-selling’. The double-glazing salesman who sells the promise of a warm, dry home will not stay in business long if his windows let in the wind, rain and next door’s dog. The same goes for the restaurant that promises Michelin Star standard food that turns out to taste like a Dunlop tennis shoe. MPs, who ‘sell’ amongst other things financial responsibility and moral leadership when they are elected, kill their hopes of ever ‘selling’ their candidacy to the public again when they are exposed as frauds. The importance of transparent pricingAt B2B International, we are frequently faced with questions such as the following:
The answers to these questions vary hugely according to the market we are studying, the client we are working for, and a host of other factors. However, there is one factor that is universal to all of the pricing work that we do: Above all, customers want to know how much they are paying, and what they are paying for. In other words, they want transparency. A key reason for the negative public reaction to the politicians is not the total price taxpayers are paying for the politicians; rather it is that they are paying 20% or so more than they were told. People feel betrayed by this unexpected price supplement, just as they would with a product or service that did not meet their expectations. In business, also, a breach of trust can be fatal. I was recently furious when my bank charged me $15 for a new check-book. Not because $15 is a lot of money, not even because I don’t think my bank should charge me for allowing me to spend my own money. I was furious because the bank had consistently told me that my account was free and never mentioned that there would be a charge for new check-books. I felt cheated, and my trust in the bank evaporated to such an extent that I have now opened an account with a different bank. Problem-solving can turn a negative into a positiveA constant feature of the customer satisfaction studies carried out by B2B International is that satisfaction tends to be driven not by the product per se, but by the extended offer – the services that surround the product. This often means that a company can gain market share not by increasing product quality (so long as quality meets a certain minimum standard) but rather by responding efficiently and effectively when quality problems do occur. Whilst a number of MPs have sealed their own fates by blaming their extravagances on the rules they were working to or denying that they have done anything wrong, others have defended or even improved their reputations by apologising profusely and promising to reform the flawed expenses system. Indeed, just as many of our clients in industries as diverse as telecoms, education and industrial equipment have provoked significant increases in client satisfaction not through product innovation, but rather through improved aftersales and problem resolution, perhaps there can be a happy ending to the long-running expenses story. « Previous Entries Next Entries » |
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