Identifying Customers for Self-Service Channels via MSInnovation
Branding a New Product Offering
Unseating Preconceptions About Purchase Process
Pricing a New Product in a New Market
Consumers Find HP Photo Printers Easier to Use
Client: A property and casualty insurance company
Business Objective: One of the nation’s largest property and casualty insurance companies requested assistance from Market Strategies International in developing an approach to direct sales and self-service via new channels. After assessing the client’s goals a team of experienced market research professionals recommended a discrete choice- based conjoint analysis.
The insurance provider wanted to build on the findings of an earlier study that had identified 12 customer segments, but which could be collapsed into three, distinct macro-segments:
- A segment which exclusively deals with a local person.
- A segment involved with self-service channels that places less value on access to a local person.
- A highly flexible segment that emphasizes direct self-service channels, but is not fully freed-up from relying on a local person.
Challenges: The challenge was to identify features and levels of a product offering that would maximize the appeal of direct distribution channels (phone and web) to the second and third customer segments described above. That offering should not alienate the provider’s traditional base of consumers who prefer to deal with a local person for their insurance needs.
Research Approach: Market Strategies designed and conducted a web survey with several thousand consumers. A key part of the survey was a set of choice tasks that asked consumers to make tradeoffs regarding features of a direct channel offering. In addition to the usual factors that influence the choice of an insurance company – price and brand – the discrete choice design included features that pertain specifically to shopping, buying and ongoing customer service via self-service channels.
From the survey results, a preferred product configuration was optimized and a simulator was developed, thereby allowing the client to conduct what-if analyses (within the constraints of features tested in the discrete choice design).
Market Strategies then conducted a latent class analysis that reveals underlying patterns of customer choice and allocates customers into large groups whose product and service needs appear similar.
Bottom Line: This national provider of automotive, property, life and commercial insurance is actively developing a direct channel offering.
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Client: A high technology component supplier
Business objective: This U.S.-based Top 100 Fortune 500 high-tech component supplier was in need of a way to determine the optimal brand architecture for a new product that frequently uses sub-brands and ingredient brands to differentiate its offerings. The corporate parent brand historically overshadows all sub-brands; Market Strategies International was brought in to find out how the sub-brands would achieve a high degree of consumer recognition.
Challenges: Some of the challenges this Market Strategies client faced included whether or not to use the corporate brand and whether the choice of product-line brands made sense for the identity of the new offering. The affected product existed in a new category, complicating issues of brand fit and communication; consumers had no frame of reference for how to understand the product based on current, competitive brands.
Research approach: Because of the amorphous and complex nature of the market and branding questions, Market Strategies emphasized the need for interviewer involvement rather than relying on a self-administered survey. We conducted telephone surveys with several segments of decision-makers focusing on the classic metrics for a broad competitive set of brands: awareness, consideration, preference, functional attributes and key brand attitudinals. We offered respondents a description of the new offering, followed by functional and attitudinal metrics similar to the brand battery.
Design and analysis proceeded along the premise that a "popularity contest" was not sufficient grounds for a business decision. We examined which attributes respondents considered critical to product success, and which brands they rated high on those attributes. Functional benefits were aligned primarily with the company's product-line brand, while "softer" attitudinal benefits (e.g., service, reliability, innovation) were aligned primarily with the parent company's corporate brand.
Bottom line: We recommended fitting the new offering into the parent company's existing brand architecture in order to maximize corporate brand strength. The recommendation included using an ingredient brand strategy ("powered by…") to leverage existing equity in the subsidiary's brand. The ingredient brand could be downplayed or eliminated over time as the parent company's product line increased equity in the category. Using elements of both brands allowed for tiered marketing strategies to be effectively tailored to the appropriate target audience.
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Client: A business computing OEM
Business objective: A global business computing OEM required the development of a simplified purchase decision model for mid-tier server hardware to guide future product development, marketing programs and industry alliances. Market Strategies International was brought in to ensure that the decisions made were financially sound and would provide significant ROI.
Challenges: This OEM’s existing purchase decision model was based on long-cherished internal beliefs, stemming from a small group of inside sales staff professionals employed by their own Fortune 500 clients. The sales force believed that numerous discrete sets of purchase influencers are involved, both within and outside the company, and that these influencers would be difficult targets to locate for research.
Research approach: This was not a case where typical focus group interaction would be helpful or desirable because high-level IT management, application development managers, line-of-business decision-makers (typically VP-level), and server decision-makers at consulting firms were the targets. Instead Market Strategies scientists and professionals conducted in-depth interviews in most regions. That included a significant amount of custom, in-house recruiting so as to find the ideal respondent across a global scope of work (9 countries in North America, Europe and Asia), and a wide spectrum of company sizes. In addition, we conducted interviews with the client's own inside sales force to understand their preconceptions of how server purchases are made.
Bottom line: Conventional wisdom was altered at this OEM. What our research revealed was that the way customers like to think they make decisions is often different from the way they're actually made. We drove each interview on the basis of actual behavior—that is, a detailed case study of the last major qualifying server purchase. The client walked away with a multifaceted understanding of how its products are perceived vis-à-vis the competition and how well-suited these products are for different applications and usage models across countries and segments.
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Client: Top 100 Fortune 500 technology firm
Business objective: This technology firm wanted to estimate the demand for a portable web access device (for consumers) at different price points and competitive mixes and hired Market Strategies International to conduct this research.
Challenges: The client’s product was not a PC, but could conceivably compete directly with PCs as a way to access the Internet. One significant challenge was that in estimating demand, should PCs be included as part of the competitive set or left out altogether. We strongly recommended that PCs, as the predominant Internet access point now and in the foreseeable future, should be included in the competitive set. The client initially disagreed but eventually decided to include PCs.
Research approach: Market Strategies used a discrete choice design administered via standardized interviews of potential buyers. Because the product was new and unfamiliar, we brought consumers to central location settings in which they could view and demo the product before answering questions. Shortly after the interviews, we contacted a subset of likely and unlikely buyers for a qualitative, online discussion to delve into purchase motivations, pricing issues and possible feature additions.
Bottom line: In the final analysis, PCs accounted for more than half of preference share. Anticipating a broader context by including PCs allowed us to accurately calibrate forecasts for the client's web access product. In addition to the choice analysis, we worked with the client to aggregate secondary sales-out data for similar products in related categories. By applying weights to account for availability, promotion and time-in-market, we were able to develop a consensus estimate for first-year sales volume. These estimates confirmed the notion that likely volumes were not sufficient to support a profitable business without significant changes in pricing and marketing strategy.
We also saw resilient preference for a very expensive competitor, which seemed counterintuitive. We closely examined from what other products this competitive product drew preference. Next, we developed a hypothesis that form factor issues (industrial design and the ability to do more than portable web surfing) were overcoming price barriers for some buyers. We followed up with participants who expressed preference for the competitive product to confirm this hypothesis.
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Consumers looking to buy a photo printer that’s easy to use should turn to HP, according to a report by market research firm Doxus. The company announced the results of an annual study that evaluates the ease of use of all-in-one photo printers from major manufacturers. For the second year in a row, HP’s contender outperformed competitive brands on all metrics.
This year, the HP Photosmart C8180 printer was evaluated alongside printers from Canon, Epson and Kodak. In on-site tests, research participants in the United States, United Kingdom and China were asked to print a photo on each printer from a memory card provided by Doxus and then answer a series of questions based on their experience during the exercise.
In all countries, a majority of participants printed the photo fastest on the HP printer. In the United States, 67% of participants who printed a photo successfully did so faster on the HP printer than on competitors’ printers, 63% in the United Kingdom, and 82% in China. On average, participants went from memory card in hand to printed photo in 2 minutes and 19 seconds on the HP printer—1 minute and 44 seconds faster than the mean print time clocked for all included competitive printers.
On average across all countries, 70% of participants said the HP printer was the easiest to use compared to the other brands included in the research. In addition, 68% said the HP printer provided the best overall printing experience, and 65% said they would prefer to own the HP model tested over the other brands.
In total, the study involved 455 participants between the ages of 18 and 65. All participants were digital camera owners and said they did not print photos directly to a printer (without the use of a PC) on a regular basis. The research was commissioned by HP.
For further information on the research study and a list of tested printers, click here .
Doxus provides research-based technology marketing and product strategy. Doxus is an industry group within Market Strategies International, a full-service research firm that focuses on five service sectors including high technology. All trademarks and brands herein are property of their respective owners.
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