The American Research Professionals Research Blog

Internal Branding

Chris Vincentini — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:07:00 GMT

One of the most overlooked elements of branding is how your employees brand (internal branding) your business to the community at large. The degree to which your employees support and live your company’s brand through their actions and statements can have significant impacts on:

How the community views your business
The type of potential employee you will recruit
The number of referrals your current employees recruit
Employee satisfaction
Customer satisfaction…..and more importantly, customer loyalty

You may be assuming your employees are intimately familiar with your company’s brand and messaging. We recently worked with a company to test this very assumption. Senior management believed their employees were living the brand and could recite key elements of their branding pyramid (after a significant messaging campaign by senior management). When impromptu 1-on-1 informal interviews were completed with employees (using an unaffiliated objective interviewer), we found that this was not the case much to the surprise of senior management.

This presents unique opportunities for company’s to re-message their brand themselves from the inside out. Any new branding effort should begin internally first then go external. This approach also provides a more cost effective way to build your brand given today’s economic environment. This approach also has implications throughout the organization, through:

Training/organizational development
HR recruiting and employee retention
Employee engagement
Customer service
Sales and marketing

We will explore each of these areas in more detail in future postings. In the meantime, we encourage you to share ideas and experiences you’ve had in internal branding efforts.

If properly messaged, your employee’s will be your biggest brand advocates to the community and to your customers.

Conducting Research in a Down Economy

Pete Jacques PhD — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:22:00 GMT

In down economies, the typical reaction for many companies is to hunker down and ride out the storm until things turn around. This may include hiring freezes, reduction in staff, as well as cut-backs in new product development, capital improvements, and investments in new innovative ideas. Marketing budgets are sometimes also targeted for reduction.

Maintaining your investment in advertising and marketing can help minimize declines in sales during a recession and better position your company when the economy begins to improve. Business statistics reveal that companies that maintain their marketing activities tend to report better performance during economic turnarounds than their competitors that cut marketing budgets. By keeping your message out there, you will have better brand recognition and greater awareness among consumers when they decide to increase their purchase behaviors.

What may be more important than monitoring your bottom line marketing budget may be how to make the most of your marketing budget. That is where market research can help. Spending part of that marketing budget on research to better understand your current customers and marketplace can help you focus your marketing strategy on those segments that are more profitable and more likely to drive increased sales (through cross-selling or referrals). Some research strategies may include segmentation research, customer loyalty and satisfaction, and purchase behavior. Market research can act as your light guiding you through the dark passage of a recession.

Make sure you get your data

Chris Vincentini — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:35:00 GMT

Make sure you get your data

I was meeting with a client and we were going over past research they had conducted (it was from another consulting company). I asked if I could see the survey and the results of each question, and if they had the data file with the results. I told the client we could still mine the datafile for additional results. The client informed me they did not have it, only what the previous consultant gave them. I asked the client if the study that was completed for them was part of a study involving other companies but it was not. The unfortunate outcome is that this client is not able to fully use a data file that they should rightfully have.

Anytime you engage a consulting company and they perform any research on your employees, processes or your customers, you own the data. Make sure this is explicitly addressed in your contracts. Make sure you get copies of all data files and records that are made, they belong to you. (please note that market research industry standards limit the distribution of personally identifiable information to protect people’s identity and safeguard against misuse of research data) This is a tenant that we at The American Research Professionals feel strongly about; Do the right thing for your client.

Satisfaction versus Loyalty

Pete Jacques PhD — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 03:09:00 GMT

Customer satisfaction has certainly been a topic of discussion for business leaders for a long time. J.D. Powers has built a reputation on the measure and most health care organizations are eager to display the high levels of reported satisfaction among plan participants. Within the past few years, however, attention has turned to measures of customer loyalty. What’s the difference? Should you bother measuring both? This posting provides answers to these questions.

First of all, satisfaction and loyalty are not simply two different words used to describe the connection between your company and your customer. Generally, satisfaction is a rational response to the product or service you are providing. It is a customer’s evaluation of how well the product or service met their need, whether that need is physical or emotional, tangible or intangible. The level of satisfaction can fluctuate within a short period of time depending on the current needs of the customer and their mental state.

Loyalty, on the other hand, tends to be a more emotional connection to your company. It takes longer to form and, as a result, is usually harder to break. Loyalty can be described as a connection to the mission or purpose of the company and elicit statements like, “I really believe in Blick Corporation’s support of inner-city education.” Loyalty can also be described as a willingness to be an advocate for the company or product: “I would recommend the Q Car to all of my friends because of its environmental-friendly combustion system.”

Why the shift in focus to loyalty? One key phenomena that led to the study of loyalty was the fact that satisfied people sometimes shopped elsewhere. Despite high levels of satisfaction, customers did not have a strong enough bond to the company and purchased from a competitor. Thus, knowing satisfaction levels is not enough to maintain a stable customer base.

Continued study revealed that companies with more loyal customer bases were more profitable. In essence, these companies capitalized on the lower acquisition costs associated with retaining a larger proportion of their client base. While this might lead you to strive for 100% loyalty among your customers, bear in mind that some loyal customers could be less profitable, such as the ones who take up a lot of your sales staff’s time but make only small purchases, and then subsequently return that purchase.

So, where does that leave you and your customer measurement program? Well, if you have no program in place, and are considering implementing one, it makes sense to start in increments and first determine the level of satisfaction of your existing customers. Information from this research could potentially drive strategic planning for several years to improve your customer connections.

If you find you are comfortable with your current satisfaction measures, and are ready to kick it up a notch, then measuring loyalty, and key drivers of loyalty, provides a whole new perspective to understanding the relationship between your company and your customers. It provides another way of segmenting your customers so that you can better serve your strongest clients and form strategies for making them advocates for your business.

The Over Surveying of America…

Chris Vincentini — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:58:00 GMT

The Over Surveying of America….

Way back when I started in research (back in the late 1980’s), back in the days before the Internet was as integral in our lives as it is today, survey research was primarily conducted via pen and paper, or by phone, (the “mall intercept” was being used and is still used today, this discussion will focus on pen and paper and phone surveying methodology’s). One was slow and somewhat inexpensive, the other quick and expensive. The ideal was quick and inexpensive, not really possible until the advent of online survey methods.

We saw the beginnings of online surveying in the late 1990’s and it really took off in the 2000’s. In 2002, I conducted my first online survey to a panel. It got me thinking about the nature and make-up of panels and how many surveys are pushed out to these panels. So, I started signing up for panels just to see how many survey invites I may receive.

Let us fast forward to 2007. One panel alone, I received an average of 6 invites a day, always with the chance to be entered into their $25,000 sweepstakes. Now, this is not the norm for the vast majority of these research companies with panels; however, over surveying is impacting our industry’s ability to deliver quality results.

Unfortunately, some people are trying to become professional survey takers. We generally get contacts from individuals (the professional survey taker) wanting to either take surveys, or be in a focus group. Do we have a panel that survey’s can be sent to? Yes. Do we take steps to ensure they are not over surveyed? Absolutely, we have filters in place to ensure quality responses from quality respondents to ensure accuracy.

Do you consider over surveying an issue? If so, how do you overcome it?

Welcome!

Chris Vincentini — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 02:57:00 GMT

Greetings!

Thank you for taking time to visit our Blog. I am Chris Vincentini, the founder of The American Research Professionals. We are a research consulting company based in Omaha Nebraska, with operations in Springfield Massachusetts.

We are starting this Blog as a place where researchers can post their opinions on various research subjects and have some friendly dialog. You will see work by some of our researchers and guest Bloggers. Please take time to read the articles and check back for new entries. If you want to post your writings, please contact me at chris.vincentini@americanresearchprofessionals.com. Please visit us at www.americanresearchprofessionals.com

Thank you for your time,

Chris