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Archive for the ‘Quantitative Research’ Category« Previous Entries Next Entries »Segmentation: Are All Women Purchasers The Same?Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Segmentation is key to deciding which groups of apparently like-minded individuals to target with your product or service. From more basic demographic or ‘firmographic’ groupings according to sex, age, location, etc, through to more useful but undoubtedly harder-to-categorise behavioural or needs-based segmentations, most companies realise that they can’t be all things to all men. Or, for that matter, all things to all women. One of the biggest segments some companies make a play for is women. Obviously it’s a large group that makes up 50% of the world’s population, but can you really group all women together? Hardly – but some products do target women specifically, among them:
A recent Marketing Week article discusses the issue of targeting women in depth. To read it click here. To find out more about how B2B International can help to segment your market, please click here, or read our Segmentation Case Study. The Apprentice: What We Can All Learn – Pricing ResearchTuesday, April 8th, 2008
Last week’s episode of The Apprentice saw the two teams challenged to set up and run their own laundry business for 24 hours. Both teams had to go out and tout for business, wash and press the laundry to a high standard, and return all the correct items to their owners within the specified time limit. As usual, there were all sorts of mistakes made along the way which would serve as a warning to anyone in the world of business. But from a market research point of view, what was the lesson we can take from this week’s exercise? Without any previous experience in the laundry trade, one of the keys to winning business in this task was getting the pricing structure right. The boys’ team wisely did their research straight away, ringing round several competitors to get a feel for the industry’s charging structure, and reaping the benefits immediately by winning a big hotel contract. Whilst the manager of the hotel in question had been expecting a quote in the region of £200, the girls’ team left him speechless by pricing its services at £5,000! This followed a conversation between the girls during which they all admitted that they had no idea what to charge, and so proceeded to pluck a figure of £4.99 per item out of the air. Why no-one showed even the slightest initiative in suggesting the need to research what pricing structure should be chosen, is beyond the comprehension of most people. You might have hoped that, upon learning how staggeringly expensive their quote had been, the girls’ team would decide to do some pricing research, yet they carried on regardless. At their next appointment, they offered to wash a huge amount of filthy industrial workwear at the bargain basement price of £15. Even the customer could hardly contain his disbelief and amusement at the ridiculously low price. Needless to say, the boys’ team strolled to victory in this task. Week One’s episode also demonstrated a lack of nous when it came to product pricing. In setting up competing fish stalls in a market, the girls’ team started to make losses from the word go. Before they had even had time to price up their stock, they were approached by customers wishing to purchase their wares. Desperate to get the ball rolling and some sales under their belts, some team members just asked the customers what they would be willing to pay for their produce. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that these early customers probably landed themselves some unbelievable bargains! The boys’ team, meanwhile, in its rush to get set up, mistakenly began selling lobster at £4.90 each (instead of a more realistic price of £4.90 per kilo). In their defence, it didn’t take the boys too long to head off to check out the prices offered by their competitors and to correct their mistake, but to some extent the damage was already done. Pricing is never easy to get right, but the very last thing you should do is guess. Pricing research is vital in establishing what the market can bear, what pricing strategies your competitors have adopted and why, what quality perceptions a particular pricing structure will give, etc. You can learn more about pricing in our B2B International white paper, The Problem With Price and in the article Research As An Aid To Optimum Pricing. 2007 in Market Research – A RetrospectiveWednesday, January 2nd, 2008
First of all – A Happy and Prosperous New Year to all our readers! Although New Year is typically a time to look forward to new events and experiences, we thought we’d break with that convention somewhat in our first post of 2008, by having a quick review of the year just gone on The Market Research Blog. With that in mind, here’s a quick rundown of our most popular posts from 2007, just in case you’re a newcomer to our blog or if you simply missed something we posted in the last year:
From our point of view, 2007 was a big year of expansion for B2B International – especially in terms of getting our Asian office in China up and running as well as unprecedented growth at our central operations in the UK. Naturally, we’re hoping for bigger and better things in the year to come – and we wish you much the same. We’ll get into the swing of things proper in the next few days with some more of our thoughts on market research, the universe and everything else! Small Sample Versus Census SurveysWednesday, November 14th, 2007
An interesting article from Seth Godin that discusses the differences in perceptions of very small samples compared with census surveys:
For more information on sampling click here. The Emergence of Mobile Market Research OpportunitiesMonday, October 15th, 2007
With the growth of the Internet, market research industry business models are evolving. Using mobile telephony to conduct market research will expand the current potential for research and provide a platform for future directions in the industry. Why Mobile Research? In today’s market research environment, where increasing respondent cooperation has been a challenge, mobile research may be part of the solution. A growth in mobile phone penetration, coupled with the latest developments in mobile phone technology, is presenting new solutions and opportunities to boost participation levels. Within the past five years, there has been a significant increase in both the number of mobile phone users and households that have mobile phones and no landlines. In the United States alone, the percentage of adults in mobile-phone-only homes has increased from 7.7% to 11.8% between 2005 and 2006, according to the National Health Interview Survey. The rise is driven primarily by young people, with more than a quarter of those aged 18-29 moving towards mobile phone use only. The increase of mobile-phone-only homes poses a particular concern for researchers who rely largely on landline numbers to conduct phone surveys. Outside the U.S., the mobile phone infrastructure has expanded throughout the world, creating a growing number of mobile phone users in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the developing countries. Steady expansion will continue to increase the number of mobile phone users. According to a report by Informa Telecoms and Media (2006), 30 countries exceeded 100% mobile phone penetration, with countries such as the U.K., Sweden and Italy at more than 110%. This indicates that a portion of the population in these countries currently has two or more mobile phone subscriptions. According to the same report, mobile phone penetration in the U.S. is nearing 70% while the Asian leaders, Hong Kong and Taiwan, have reached a significantly higher rate of 125%. The 2004 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index study reported nearly one-third of adults in the U.S. claimed “the mobile phone is the number one invention they cannot live without,� beating out staples such as alarm clocks, televisions and microwaves.
In addition to increasing rates of global penetration, mobile telephony is characterized by rapid technological developments. A typical mobile phone is not only used as a telephone, but also may be used as a computer, media player, camera and much more. According to the latest research of the Online Publishers Association, 76% of all consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe have Internet access on their mobile device and about one-third use it. Among those with mobile access to the Internet, the U.K. leads in usage (54%), followed by the U.S. (41%). As we examine the heightened global penetration and technological developments, IT research company Gartner predicts that 70% of global voice connections will be wireless by 2009. Gartner further predicts that about one-third of the people in Europe and the U.S. will choose wireless and broadband telephones over fixed phone lines by 2009. There are several ways to utilize mobile devices to conduct market research. One approach is recruiting respondents for online surveys through invitation or screening, utilizing a short mobile survey or providing the option to take the survey via mobile phone. Below are some mobile research opportunities: • Alternative way to connect with hard-to-reach demographic groups in market research Like all research and data collection methods, mobile research may face some constraints. Here are some things to consider when conducting mobile surveys: • Short questionnaires « Previous Entries Next Entries » |
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