Marketing tools
Discussion
I had a meeting with a marketing company yesterday interested in buying a new customer metric which I have been developing ( a happy but largely accidental by-product of a very different project I had been running).
It emerged that they were also very interested in a way of defining the broad ways in which customers viewed their products in terms of the buying decision ( e.g. reliability, quality, price, value, environmental, easy etc).
Not being in marketing I couldn't believe they didn't have simple online tools which help them find out what customers think about their product/brand without resorting to surveys, focus groups and panel assessments of ads.
Before I rush off and develop it, anybody know of anything online or on PC which does just that; defines brand image and measures the brand?
I don't know of anything online which does this, but have to say I have never specifically looked, although I would probably have come across it at some point.
Not wanting to put a damper on the idea, but I think the trouble is that reliability, quality, price, value, environmental, easy etc are very subjective and vary considerably from one category of product to another, and are all interlinked. The obvious link being price and quality - what to someone is average quality may be good for someone else because of their perceptions of the price. To get genuine, meaningful responses to customers perceptions of these through the cold, hard interface of the internet would not be easy, or particularly reliable without understanding a whole host of other factors. Hence the reason expensive focus groups and surveys take place with experienced people running the sessions - they know how to get the real information in a way a webpage probably can't.
Not wanting to put a damper on the idea, but I think the trouble is that reliability, quality, price, value, environmental, easy etc are very subjective and vary considerably from one category of product to another, and are all interlinked. The obvious link being price and quality - what to someone is average quality may be good for someone else because of their perceptions of the price. To get genuine, meaningful responses to customers perceptions of these through the cold, hard interface of the internet would not be easy, or particularly reliable without understanding a whole host of other factors. Hence the reason expensive focus groups and surveys take place with experienced people running the sessions - they know how to get the real information in a way a webpage probably can't.
andyps said:
I don't know of anything online which does this, but have to say I have never specifically looked, although I would probably have come across it at some point.
Not wanting to put a damper on the idea, but I think the trouble is that reliability, quality, price, value, environmental, easy etc are very subjective and vary considerably from one category of product to another, and are all interlinked. The obvious link being price and quality - what to someone is average quality may be good for someone else because of their perceptions of the price. To get genuine, meaningful responses to customers perceptions of these through the cold, hard interface of the internet would not be easy, or particularly reliable without understanding a whole host of other factors. Hence the reason expensive focus groups and surveys take place with experienced people running the sessions - they know how to get the real information in a way a webpage probably can't.
Perhaps the people I met are just a bad marketing company!Not wanting to put a damper on the idea, but I think the trouble is that reliability, quality, price, value, environmental, easy etc are very subjective and vary considerably from one category of product to another, and are all interlinked. The obvious link being price and quality - what to someone is average quality may be good for someone else because of their perceptions of the price. To get genuine, meaningful responses to customers perceptions of these through the cold, hard interface of the internet would not be easy, or particularly reliable without understanding a whole host of other factors. Hence the reason expensive focus groups and surveys take place with experienced people running the sessions - they know how to get the real information in a way a webpage probably can't.
Identifying the behaviour and likely buying decision of a customer group is not something that can be done off the shelf – at least not if you want it done right.
To establish a set of online tools that cover every scenario, customer group, price point, etc would be so complex as to be virtually unusable – and still not accurate.
The big consumer and retail companies use Neural Network modelling to predict certain aspects of consumer behaviour yet still rely on Focus Groups and Market (and Marketing) research to assess true market potential.
It sounds unlikely that you need to go this extreme anyway. The basic questions that need first answering are….
What problem does it solve?
What is the value of that problem being solved?
What other products exist to solve that problem?
Why is yours better?
Who is likely to buy the product?
The last one is very important. Once you’ve identified this, then you can run focus groups, research programmes, etc..
To establish a set of online tools that cover every scenario, customer group, price point, etc would be so complex as to be virtually unusable – and still not accurate.
The big consumer and retail companies use Neural Network modelling to predict certain aspects of consumer behaviour yet still rely on Focus Groups and Market (and Marketing) research to assess true market potential.
It sounds unlikely that you need to go this extreme anyway. The basic questions that need first answering are….
What problem does it solve?
What is the value of that problem being solved?
What other products exist to solve that problem?
Why is yours better?
Who is likely to buy the product?
The last one is very important. Once you’ve identified this, then you can run focus groups, research programmes, etc..
phoenixblend said:
I dont see how you can gather peoples thoughts on a product, service or brand with out questioning them - how do you plan to do this?
With this;http://shireprotest.mustbebuilt.co.uk/dynamic_v3.p...
On trial at the moment but it measures subliminal responses to brand image ( see http://faculty.washington.edu/agg/pdf/MaisonEtAl.P... .
This trial version is a bit obvious ( we just want to see if it will indeed detect the perception) but the live version is more subtle.
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