Marketing Research, Modeling, and Customer Satisfaction Surveys

If you don't know what your customers and prospects want, if you don't know what product or service features matter most, or if you don't know how to creatively develop and present your value propositions, database marketing and the modeling it rests upon will not compensate for such shortcomings.

Businesses, whether selling direct to consumers, direct to other businesses, or through traditional retail outlets need to know how they and their products and advertising compares to that of competitors who seek the same customer.

They need to know what kinds of individuals are most interested in their product, the characteristics of such folks, what product features they find compelling, and how to describe what it is they have to offer in such a way that potential customers are motivated to purchase.

In addition, obtaining a customer is only half the battle. Customers who maintain ongoing relationships and keep purchasing, are worth much more than those who do not.

How satisfied are your customers? What makes them satisfied or otherwise? How can a business change its customer interactions to make them more satisfying to those they serve?

The Taylor Group provides marketing research to provide answers to all these questions in an expeditious and cost effective fashion. We help you identify current and prospective customer preferences and then optimize product features and advertising positioning to help you sell more. We provide marketing research services including:

• Modeling
• Mail, Phone, and Internet Surveys
• Focus Groups
• Conjoint Analysis
• Customer Satisfaction Research

Prospecting for New Customers and Cross-Selling Current Customers
The Taylor Group builds models, also known as scoring equations.

Models allow a company to predict the likelihood that an individual prospect on a list will respond to a specific offer, be it a magazine subscription, an opportunity to get a quote for life insurance, or an invitation to come into a store to refinance a mortgage or take out a closed-end loan. This allows marketers to target their efforts - mail perhaps 50% of a list - while still obtaining 90% of those who would ultimately respond.

Scoring equations find those most likely to purchase. But they do nothing to improve what you are trying to sell. The Taylor Group conducts mail, phone, and internet surveys that identify what product characteristics potential customers (and in some cases current customers) find most attractive and desirable.

Using such techniques as conjoint analysis we are able to assign utilities to each level of each feature, informing the Client how much less or how much additional share of market he is likely to get as a result of product modification. The Taylor Group also does tests of new product concepts to see which are most likely to be successful. This can be done early on in the product development process, before great amounts of money have been invested in a concept that may have little chance of success.

Advertisers are fond of saying that they sell the sizzle, not the steak. To learn what cloak of language works and resonates best with potential customers, The Taylor Group conducts focus groups with the kinds of people targeted by the products.

We do not merely ask focus group participants if they do or don't like various creative efforts. We use the "Three Pen Technique" to have them note their reactions to creative stimuli as they are occurring.

We then we go back and discuss what the words on the page conjured up in participants' minds. We obtain a truer read as to the real reactions elicited by the creative by separating immediate reactions to creative from subsequent rationalizations about why it was or wasn't pleasing.

For dynamic advertising stimuli, such as radio or TV commercials, we use the Ortek Preference Analyzer in computer-assisted focus groups to track listeners and viewers moment-to-moment reactions to what they're hearing and seeing. Once again, we focus on measuring participants' spontaneous reactions to advertising stimuli.

These research techniques used to find those most likely to buy, discover desired product improvements, and help refine creative presentations can help significantly improve sales. They are essential for successfully increasing cross-selling and up-selling efforts to current customers, as well as selling to new prospects.

Improving Current Customers' Loyalty and Persistency
We conduct Net Present Value analysis to determine the value of a continuity product's sale. This is vital for products and services including insurance, clubs, lawn-care services, etc.

Inevitably such an analysis shows that simply increasing the percentage of customers that persist - fail to cancel - by a few percent (e.g. reduce the cancellation rate for an auto club from 27% in each of the first two months to 23%) increases the value of a sale markedly. This in turn means that one can achieve lower response rates and still make a profit - since each sale is worth that much more.

To find out what fuels cancellation The Taylor Group conducts several kinds of research. We build models that predict when individuals will terminate their relationship.

We conduct customer satisfaction surveys that find out the pluses and minuses of your product and service. Are you doing something that may turn your customers off? These are quite often things that you might be able to quickly and inexpensively fix. But, it you do not know about them, you can't fix them.

We do surveys of new customers as soon as possible after they purchase to determine the level of their commitment to the purchase. This is used to determine whether, in their minds, they actually bought-in or whether they are still looking for a solution. This is vital to knowing if the purchase is a done deal or whether they had and still have little or no intention of keeping the product.

We've developed a "reselling program" that reiterates product benefits in a non-manipulative setting for those instances where we discover that the purchaser is not yet committed. This increases the chances that the "buyer" will maintain his relationship with your company.

The Taylor Group looks forward to satisfying your direct marketing and marketing research needs.