GSC Corp. "STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS"
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Research & Analysis Services
GSC's research team conducts market structure analysis, pricing analysis, advertising tests, promotion tests, segmentation studies, employee analysis, acquisition analysis, branding analysis, customer satisfaction tracking, new product research, and many other types of custom business strategy and marketing research programs. GSC also performs in depth interviews and focus groups in person and via the Internet.Pricing Research
There are three ways of increasing profits: sell more, cut your costs, or raise existing prices. Selling more and cutting costs are not easy, but raising prices, in principle, is very easy indeed, change the price ticket and price list and tell the sales force to raise prices by 5%. Costs remain the same and therefore the 5% price rise becomes an immediate 5% profit increase!
Of course, we all know that there is an inverse relationship between price charged and volume purchased. Once we increase prices, customers may start to look elsewhere for a better deal. It is therefore useful to broaden the discussion and think about value, the trade off between the benefits a customer receives from a product or service and the price they are willing to pay for it.
Customers rarely buy on price alone, rather, they are driven by the disparity between the package of benefits they receive and the price they are charged for them. Key pricing questions are therefore:
- How much more will a customer pay for an added value service or product?
- How much of a reduction in service/product requirement would necessitate a price decrease?
Pricing research can help us answer all kinds of questions about pricing:
- Statistical techniques such as conjoint analysis are used to calculate what prices the market would bear for different types of offering.
- Segmentation and needs analysis studies highlight the relative importance of different attributes, allowing you to decide which to offer and therefore charge for, and which not to offer and therefore exclude from your price.
- Competitive pricing research involves obtaining and analyzing the prices of competitors in order that these can be benchmarked against your clients’ prices.
Whatever you want to know about pricing in your markets, GSC will provide you with a solution. Finding out what people value lies at the very heart of successful pricing research. Yet establishing the value that people place on the goods and services they sell is one of the most difficult tasks for the business-to-business marketer. If they pitch their price too high then quite clearly they will lose out to the competition. Equally, if the price is too low, the company is in danger of leaving money on the table for the customer.
For most b2b marketers, finding the right price is a judgment which many get wrong, usually charging too little because they don’t realize the value of their offerings. Two examples of tools that exist for measuring value, each has its own merits and may be utilized in different circumstances:
1. Points Spend:
A very simple approach is to present the buyer with a list of the benefits and ask him/her to indicate their relative importance by spending anumber of points according to which are most valued. The points-spend gives a rough indication of how buyers see value in the products and services they buy. This is a relatively crude and unsophisticated approach to researching price and value.
2. Conjoint Analysis:
This is a long-established technique used by market researchers for assessing the value of different elements of an offering. However, even with relatively simple conjoint concepts it is necessary to interview a minimum of 200 respondents in order to obtain an accurate result, and most statisticians would look for at least twice this number. Conjoint analysis is not, therefore, without its problems for the business-to-business researcher.
Acquisition Studies
When your company is considering making an acquisition, it is essential that you are armed with as much knowledge as possible. Usually, acquisition targets are new to the potential purchaser, making the level of uncertainty even greater.Some of the key questions acquisition research typically answers are:
-What do suppliers, distributors and other market players think about, and know about, the acquisition target?
-How big is the market in which the acquisition target operates, and how will this market develop?
-What is the market share of the acquisition target?
-What do customers think of the acquisition target?
-What are the acquisition target’s routes to market?
-What does the future hold for the acquisition target?
-What are the risks that need to be considered?
Acquisition studies form an integral part of the due diligence process. Most of the information is gathered through the following means:
- Interviews with the acquisition targets themselves to evaluate their strategy, intentions, performance, and characteristics.
- Interviews with competitors of the acquisition target to assess their views of the acquisition target’s strengths and weaknesses as well as the strategy, intentions, performance and characteristics of the competitors themselves.
- Interviews with customers of the acquisition target, these are arguably the most important conversations of all, as they allow us to gauge the reputation, performance and brand values of the acquisition target, as well as pick up ‘industry gossip’ regarding issues such as the target’s financial status.
- Published information such as annual reports and industry reports.
- Interviews with suppliers and distributors to the acquisition target, these interviews can provide some interesting perspectives in terms of the performance and attributes of the acquisition target.
GSC carries out acquisition studies within North America, and across Europe, Asia, and beyond. Whatever your target and wherever it may be, GSC will obtain the information to make a real difference to your business.
Advertising Research
Market research and market intelligence play an important role before, throughout and following the life of a direct mail or advertising campaign. When advertising is at the initial development stage, GSC can obtain input from the potential target audience through exploratory research.
As the ad begins to take shape, we capture the reactions of the audience in order to refine the campaign and ensure it is completely ‘on message’. And once the advertisement is released, we obtain further feedback as well as measuring awareness rates and effectiveness.
We enable you to measure the ROI of a campaign, through measuring awareness before and after an advertisement has been launched. No matter where you are in your campaign, GSC will provide you with independent and detailed intelligence to make the campaign as effective as possible, ensuring that your advertising and marketing budget is spent effectively and avoiding costly mistakes!
Branding Studies
Studies have shown that on average around 5% of a company’s stock value derives directly from the company’s image. Companies with a strong image or reputation attract more customers, retain more customers, and attract better employees. In short, branding is a key means of achieving differentiation.
Branding studies are designed to measure brand awareness, establish the essence of a brand, advise how to make the brand values as clear and positive as possible, and advise how to make a market’s awareness and recognition of the brand increase.
A key output of many branding studies is a competitive brand map, which uses satisfaction and perception scores provided by customers to statistically plot the relative strengths of competing companies against each other.
In a brand map the attributes towards the center of the map are least differentiating, while those towards the borders are most differentiating. The same principle applies to the suppliers or brands on the map the nearer they are to the border, the more distinct their corporate position. A supplier or brand with a truly unique positioning will be plotted near to an attribute towards the border of the map, but a distance away from competing suppliers.
By communicating a clear and distinctive message and delivering against that message, the supplier can increase customer loyalty, sales revenue, prices and ultimately profitability.
Competitive Intelligence
Businesses now operate in a world in which information is more readily and publicly available than ever before. Thanks to the development of the Internet, information on market trends, legislation, customers, suppliers, competitors, distributors, product development and almost every other conceivable topic is available at the click of a mouse. Search engines, online libraries, company websites, and other sources provide information in an increasingly plentiful, easy to find, and easy to digest way.
Despite this trend, it is often the most valuable information which cannot be found online. An example of this is competitive intelligence, regarded by most information users as the most difficult type of information to acquire. Our competitive intelligence solutions are designed to meet your individual competitive intelligence needs. From strategic overviews of the competitive environment, through to specific competitor profiles, GSC can provide you with a solution.
Where do we get our competitive intelligence from?
Typical sources of information used in a competitive intelligence study are described below.
* Press analysis
* Competitor pricing research
* Competitor interviews
* Customer interviews
* Interviews with suppliers, distributors and other industry players and experts
* Company website analysis
Output of competitor intelligence studies:
Competitor intelligence studies are diverse and rich in the information they provide. These studies provide a comprehensive description of the competitive environment as well as detailed competitor profiles covering topics such as company characteristics, needs, views on supplier performance, investment plans, marketing strategies, financial data, expansion records and plans and much, much more. Competitor profiles are by nature tailor-made, although data models exist that can be used as a basis for a high level assessment of the overall competitive environment in any market.
Customer Satisfaction Research
Most businesses lose around half of their customers every 5 years. What’s more, attracting a new customer can cost up to 20 times more than retaining an existing customer. Looking at these two facts, it is not difficult to see why a mere 5% reduction in the rate of customer churn can increase profits by as much as 85%. Customer satisfaction research should therefore be an integral part of any company’s activities.
GSC will speak to your customers (and often your competitors’ customers too) to find out their needs, what is it they want from you, and how do they make the purchasing decision? We then explore how well you and your competitors meet these needs, and measure what impact satisfaction has on customer loyalty within your industry.
The output of our projects is a detailed action plan consisting of both short-term and long-term recommendations. We have carried out hundreds of customer satisfaction studies over the years, allowing us to establish a Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) portfolio. This allows our Clients to compare their performance against other businesses and industries.
The index uses satisfaction and importance scores to identify the actions required for each issue. In this way, the results can be classified to show what action is required. For example, issues that score high in terms of importance and which have a low level of satisfaction should be earmarked for immediate attention. This method of interactive reporting builds ownership of the findings and thereby generates interest in taking action.
Employee Satisfaction Research
It may be obvious, but high employee satisfaction levels reduce the rate of staff churn. Satisfied employees feel they have a ‘voice’ and commit themselves to increasing the productivity and capabilities of the company, whereas dissatisfied employees are likely to leave the company quickly and are unlikely to speak favorably of you as an employer.
Our employee satisfaction research solutions cover everything from atmosphere, to training, to rewards and reviews, to internal communications, and much more. Studies are often conducted online, reducing the price of the study and allowing increased interactivity from the Client. Online studies also typically result in slightly higher response rates.
Our proprietary tools enable easy interrogation of the data, and is particularly useful in surveys which are intended to be repeated with reasonable frequency. The tools use satisfaction and importance scores to identify the actions required for each issue. In this way, the results can be classified to show what action is required. For example, issues that score high in terms of importance and which have a low level of satisfaction should be earmarked for immediate attention. This method of interactive reporting builds ownership of the findings and thereby generates interest in taking action.
Market Assessment Studies
All companies must seek new ways to increase growth and value. Both growth and value can be achieved in four alternative areas.
In each of these areas, GSC can:
- Review your existing products in existing markets and advise you how to sell more and differentiate yourself.
- Advise you how to introduce new products and services to your existing customers, and tell you what these new products and services should be.
- Offer you advice on taking your existing products into new geographical markets or industry sectors, anywhere in the world.
- In the most challenging area of all, conduct market assessment research to help you sell new products into a new market.
- In order to assist you in making these difficult decisions, we would gather information from the following sources:
- Potential buyers, to ascertain how much demand there is for the product/service.
- Distributors, agents and other intermediaries, to find out how to best get products and services to market, and to determine how much demand there is for the product/service.
- Competitors, to explore how other companies have successfully entered and stayed in the market, and judge the market’s likely response to a new entrant.
- Industry experts, such as journalists and industry associations frequently provide a concise overview and independent perspective of the market.
Market Entry Studies
Entering a new market is a big decision for any company. Whether by acquisition, establishment of a subsidiary, or through any other means, the investment and level of uncertainty are significant.
GSC knows that despite the difficulties of entering a new market it is one of the most potentially rewarding decisions your company can make, we have helped many of our clients answer some of the most difficult questions that such a move involves:
- How do we know there will be enough demand for our products or services?
- How can we make sure the target audience understands the benefits of what we offer?
- What should our promotional strategy be?
- How does our product and service offering need to be tailored towards the target market’s needs?
- How should we price our offering in the new territory?
- How do we get into the marketplace?
- Do we need to use importers, agents, distributors?
- How will the competition react?
Whether you are considering entering an established American or European market, or a developing market such as China or Russia, GSC will tailor a solution to meet your needs. A good segmentation is one that enables a supplier to successfully meet customer needs. It will be apparent from the above segmentations that “firmographics” is a very simple means of classifying companies but may not be the most effective. Needs-based segmentations are the most accurate but they are difficult to achieve. People within companies should understand the market in terms of all three different types of segmentations in order to fully understand customer requirements, before tailoring customer value propositions around the needs of the segments of interest.
The output of our market entry studies is a comprehensive interactive presentation, at which we work with our Clients to devise a market entry strategy.
Market Tracking
As competition intensifies and markets change more quickly than ever, the need for up-to-the minute research and intelligence has never been greater. Market tracking studies identify and assess trends as they happen, allowing GSC’s clients to make decisions as quickly as possible, and with the assurance that they have the best possible information at their fingertips.
Market tracking studies are particularly popular in the area of brand tracking, in which awareness levels and perceptions of brands are tracked over time and related back to specific advertising and PR campaigns. Our market tracking studies are tailor made to suit your needs, they can be continuous, or run quarterly, biannually or annually; they can be large or small; they can be single-country or multi-country. GSC will work with you to put into action a customized market tracking study that will provide you with maximum value.
Product Development Research
In a competitive world, no company can survive without product development. As soon as you release a new or improved product or service onto the market, your competitors are ready and waiting to emulate it and improve it for their own purposes. Product development does not have to be revolutionary. Indeed, most products evolve continuously over time; product development must be regarded as a continuous process, not an occasional event.
Whether you are seeking to make your existing offering evolve, or whether you are looking for a completely new offering to appeal to the market, the views of your customers and potential customers are crucial. We caution however, against simply asking customers what they want, this approach will not always lead to success. Often target markets are extremely bad at saying what they want, usually because they don’t know!
The key to successful product development research lies in exploring what the market values. Our job as researchers, marketers and product developers is to convert these issues into a package of benefits that appeals to the market. It is worth highlighting that product development research is not just about the product per say. As we imply above, you must also consider the whole package of benefits that will appeal to the market. This package will include product, but also the pricing strategy, the packaging, the associated services, and the promotional messages.
GSC continues to demonstrate that innovative research can identify the areas of real opportunity and the benefits that really appeal.
Segmentation Studies
Segmentation is at the very heart of marketing. A segment is a group of individuals or companies with a common attribute that causes them to share similar needs. Marketers tailor their products, services and communications to these common attributes in order to ensure that their offering meets market requirements. Most business-to-business markets possess at least 3 segments, meaning that the astute b2b marketer should usually market at least 3 different offerings.
There are three broad approaches to segmentation based on the “demographics” of the firm (firmographics), on the company’s behaviour (i.e. how it acts), and on its needs:
It is worth highlighting the fundamental principle behind market segmentation: The top 20% of customers in a business may generate as much as 80% of the company’s revenue. What’s more, half of the company’s profit may then be lost serving the bottom 30% of unprofitable customers.
Segmentation is a means of capturing value, customers receive and pay for benefits they value; conversely they neither receive nor pay for benefits they do not value.
GSC will assist you in segmenting your market and in building the segmentation into your marketing strategy.
Specifically, we will help you to:
• Differentiate products or services in line with your customers.
• Improve your competitive positioning.
• Tailor your product offering and pricing strategy to fit the markets with most potential.
Provide focus on your customers so that you can:
• Concentrate on providing profitable products or services.
• Target marketing and selling resources.
Our research and analysis services provide the metrics to make well informed strategic decisions... Call us today to discuss your specific requirements!
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GSC Corp. |
GSC Corp. |
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