MODERN APPLICATION OF MARKETING RESEARCH

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CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS OF MARKETING RESEARCH

1. Competitive Advantage.

The notion that achieving superior performance requires a business to gain and hold an advantage competitors is central to contemporary strategic thinking.

Businesses seeking advantage are exhorted to develop distinctive competencies at the lowest delivered cost or to achieve differentiation through superior value.

The assessing competitive advantage can be done in number of ways. The methods can be broadly classified as market-based and process-based assessment.

Market-based assessment is direct comparison with a few target competitors, whereas process-based assessment is a comparison of the methods employed.



2. Brand Equity.

  • Brand equity is defined as a set of assets and liabilities linked to a brand that add to or subtract from the value of a product or service to a company and/ or its customers.
  • The assets or liabilities that underlie brand equity must be linked to the name and/or symbol of the brand.
  • The assets and liabilities on which brand equity is based will differ from context to context. However, they can be usefully grouped into five categories:


a) Brand loyalty

b) Name awareness


c) Perceived quality


d) Brand association In addition to perceived quality


e) Other proprietary brand assets: patents, trademarks, channel relationships etc.



3. Customer satisfaction.

  • The measurement of customer satisfaction and its link to product/ service attributes is the vehicle for developing a market-driven quality approach.
  • This approach requires a sequential research design that uses the results from each research phase to build and enhance the value of subsequent efforts.
  • During this process, it is imperative to study customers who were lost, to determine why they left. This issue must be addressed early in the system design.
  • The steps involved in customer satisfaction is

a) Define goals and how information will be used


b) Discover what is really important to customers and employees


c) Measure critical needs


d) Act on the information


e) Measure performance over time


f) Issues in questionnaire design and scaling in satisfaction research



4. Total quality management.

  • TQM is a process of managing complex changes in the organization with the aim of improving quality.

  • The power of measurements is clearly visible in applications of quality function deployment (QFD), a japanese import used to make product design better reflect customer requirements.

  • In QFD, a multifunctional team measures and analyzes in great detail both customers attitudes and product attributes. Marketing research plays a crucial role at this stage of the process.

  • Then the team creates a visual mtrix in order to find ways to modify product attributes (engineering characteristics) so as to improve the product on the customer-based measures of product performance. Along the way, the team must develop a series of measures of several different types.

EMERGING APPLICATION OF MARKETING RESEARCH

1. Database marketing

A database is a customer list to which has been added information about the characteristics and the transactions of these customers. Business use it to cultivate customers – as they seek new customers.

Need

A database provides the means for research to support decisions. It enables profiling of customers by searching for prospects who are similar to existing customers. It provides the means for implementation of profitable programs of repeat business and cross-selling. It assist in marketing planning and forecasting. Further a database can:

• Match products or services to customers’ wants and needs


• Help select new lists or use new media that fit the profile of existing customers.


• Maximize personalization of all offers to each customer.


• Provide for ongoing interaction with customers and prospects.


• Pinpoint ideal timing and frequently for promotions


• Measure response and be accountable for results


• Help create the offers most likely to elicit responses from customers


• Help achieve a unique selling proposition (USP), targeted to appeal to your customers.


• Integrate direct-response communication with other forms of advertising


• Demonstrate that customers are valuable asstes.



Types of database

1. Active customers


2. Inactive customers


3. Inquiries


Benefits of database marketing

a) Customers are easier to retain than acquire. The first reason is that it takes five times the energy and budget to get new customer as it does to keep an existing one. Also, a disproportionately small number of your customers generate a very large proportion of your income.


b) Determine their “Lifetime Value”. Building a lasting relationship becomes the obvious way to a prosperous and profitable future.


c) Developing relationships with customers. Understanding your customers’ tastes and preferences on an individual basis is the foundation for relationship marketing. Relationship marketing combines elements of general advertising, sales promotion, public relations and direct marketing to create more effective and more effective ways of reaching consumers. It centers on developing a continuous relationship with consumers across a family of related products and services.



2. Relationship marketing

The relationship marketing process incorporates three key elements:


1. Identifying and building a database of current and potential consumers, which records and cross-references a wide range of demographic, lifestyle and purchase information.


2. Delivering differential messages to these people through established and new media channels based on the consumers’ characteristics and preferences.


3. Tracking each relationship to monitor the cost of acquiring the consumer and the lifetime value of his or her purchases.
 
Advantage of Marketing Research

1) Enhance communication with current and potential customers.

2) identify opportunities in the marketplace.

3) helps you minimize risks.

4) Identifies potential problems.
 
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