MARKETING RESEARCH

The Premier Business Experts’ Marketing Research Provides Clients with Competitive Advantages!

Whether a company has a need for Exploratory Research (i.e., literature search, experience survey, group interviews or analysis of selected cases), Descriptive Research (i.e., longitudinal studies including true panel and omnibus panel, as well as cross-sectional sample surveys) or Causal Research (i.e., true experimental and quasi-experimental), those at Premier Business Experts have experience with ALL types of marketing research and thus handle test market programs, perform brand switching studies, and even build sophisticated sales forecasting models that reduce inventory holding costs. By assessing marketplace changes and needs and by identifying growth opportunities, the professionals at Premier Business Experts help to ensure the long-run success of their clients.
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The Professionals at Premier Business Experts Analyze Both Primary & Secondary Data to Assess Market Changes, Needs and Growth Opportunities, and Make Their Clients’ Businesses More Profitable!

The team members at Premier Business Experts have been hired to conduct a number of studies. The Secondary Research Programs have included using existing sources of internal corporate information as well as locating existing external (i.e., published and commercial) sources of intelligence. Many times a client receives solid business insights from such efforts and can eliminate the need to spend extra money on Primary Research, as shown by the below situation handled by those at Premier Business Experts.

How Premier Business Experts Helped a Client to Lower Costs and Improve Sales Using Data It Planned to Discard

In one case, some of those at Premier Business Experts found out that a mid-sized client was going to dispose of individual salesperson data, which it had for the last three years. However, members of the Premier Business Experts team convinced the client that it would be wise to analyze it. The reason was that this moving industry client felt it did not have “seasonality.” However, an analysis revealed that the business was indeed seasonal. Sales at the end of the year and beginning of the year were similar to those in the summer due to its typically adding new customers in the early fall and losing clients at the end of spring. Yet, its corporate clients had lower end-of-year and beginning-of-year demands. Thus, the additions of corporate customers in the early fall months were “washing out” the lower end-of-year and beginning-of-year average demand numbers. Similarly, the end-of-spring loss of clients pushed summer sales lower than they would have otherwise been. When a sales forecasting model was built on the deseasonalized sales, it was found that 20% of the sales representatives would, with a 99% confidence, have decreasing performances in the upcoming year. However, the remaining 80% were projected to have stable or increasing performances. Since adequate sales training and numerous pep talks had been held in the past, the company decided to terminate the poorly-performing, sales representatives and reassign their accounts to the remaining 80%. The result was that the 80% were invigorated since the “deadwood” was gone and since they were now receiving higher commission checks. Similarly, the company saved money by paying 20% less in base salaries to its sales force. During the next year, overall revenue went up by 28%, which was a record high increase.

Nevertheless, because there are cases where Secondary Research does not provide adequate insights, those at Premier Business Experts often conduct primary studies. These studies in some cases involve interviewing customers over the phone, and at stores to solicit their suggestions on how to improve merchandising activities. The teams, at Premier Business Experts, have also surveyed individuals via postal mail, email, instant messaging, tweeting, facsimiles and online surveys, as well as by observing actual shopping behaviors. In some cases, work is done to learn more about the demographic and psychographic characteristics of specific radio station listeners, readers of publications and the like, as shown by the below summary sheet that you can click on to enlarge:

Besides studies conducted on behalf of retailers, service providers and media outlets, the professionals at Premier Business Experts also solicit and screen testimonials regarding products and in some instances it even performs focus group and mystery shopping types of studies. Moreover, those at Premier Business Experts sometimes handle new product sample distributions and provide feedback on attitudes. In fact, they did this for Frito Lay in Houston. Similarly, Premier Business Experts collected data about travel patterns of those who were dining at International House of Pancakes (IHOP) restaurants to determine where to locate two new restaurants in Houston. This particular study was done to spot locales where most individuals were patronizing IHOP’s competitors and relatively few were making special trips to an IHOP facility due to the travel distance being too great. Depending on the situation and client preferences, the highly-talented individuals at Premier Business Experts use (as discussed on the Potential New Site Evaluation page of this web site) the following four approaches to determine where to locate new sites: (1) Radial (or Ring) Studies, (2) Gravity (or Spatial Interaction) Models, (3) Drive-time Evaluations and/or (4) Multiple-Regression Analyses.
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Premier Business Experts Can Handle YOUR TASKS From Start to Finish!

Due to a very high level of expertise, the teams at Premier Business Experts are uniquely qualified to handle the entire marketing research process! Explained differently, those at Premier Business Experts can perform the following tasks on behalf of their clients:

(1) Defining Problem and Determining Research Design
(2) Designing Data-Collection Methodology and Forms
(3) Designing Sample and Collecting Data
(4) Analyzing and Interpreting the Data
(5) Preparing the Research Report with Recommendations

In short, regardless of whether your company is large or small and regardless of whether your budget is big or small, those at Premier Business Experts desire to help. Moreover, the teams at Premier Business Experts have very low overhead. Thus, they are able to tackle the most complex tasks at extremely competitive prices, while not pricing itself out of the small and mid-sized marketplace!

How Premier Business Experts’ Start-to-Finish Efforts Helped a Small Batting Cage Operation

Problem: An owner of batting cages did not know where to spend his advertising dollars and did not want to survey his patrons since he felt that it might offend some of them.

Solution: The marketing research professionals at Premier Business Experts obtained the sales data for batting cage establishments across the United States and merged their sales data with syndicated, demographic and psychographic (i.e., lifestyle) data for their trade-areas. They then determined which variables predicted the sales for existing batting cage establishments. While there were many factors, a major factor was the presence of retired grandparents. Seemingly, batting cages are, in essence, the “modern-day-fishing-hole!” Explained differently, active grandparents do not want the “modern-day hassles” of getting fishing licenses or being subjected to the possibility of large fines. Thus, when their grandchildren show up for a visit, they instead take them to a batting cage operation! Looking at the patrons who came to his business one weekend, it struck the owner that these findings were indeed valid and made sense. Thus, the owner of the batting cages sought the advice of those at Premier Business Experts, in terms of how and where to advertise to attract more grandparents to bring their grandchildren to his establishment. In response to his request, the professionals at Premier Business Experts designed a print-advertising-campaign and arranged for the running of the ads in some local newspapers and newsletters, which the retired individuals in his community spent large amounts of time reading. In short, the talented individuals at Premier Business Experts handled this business owner’s concerns from start to finish, with the results being extremely positive economic returns!

MARKETING RESEARCH

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