Firms realise information is power

Where do you prefer to go shopping in Dublin? Quarryvale? Lucan Town? The Liffey Valley? The Liffey Town? The Liffey Gate? The Liffey Village? West Gate? Liffey West? West Vale? Esker Park? Or Clondalkin Town?

The power of market research was evident in the naming of that shopping centre located between the M50 and the N4. There was a green-field site, a consortium and a number of property developers and a range of names to choose from. When the developers couldn't decide, market researchers were called in. Before even a block was laid, the branding of the centre was a critical factor in the marketing of the sprawling shopping centre and so potential shoppers and local residents were polled on the names. The name Liffey Valley won out over all of the above.

According to Ms Bernadette Coyne, chief executive of Research Solutions, there has been a huge wave of interest on the part of companies over the last 10-15 years in customer satisfaction. "It has been proven that customer retention is a lot more important than customer acquisition." Supermarket "club cards", she says, are all about retention and the life value of a customer is much more important than the numbers of customers. It is based on the Pareto Effect, which was designed 60 years ago - in most businesses 80 per cent of the business comes from 20 per cent of the customers.

The idea that information is power is the basis of market research, she says. "To get information, more and more you have to conduct market research." Most marketers would claim that all marketing begins with information and information begins with research. What differentiates marketing from other business functions is that it tries to see the business from the perspective of the consumer and it tries to organise the entire business to ensure the customer's needs are identified and are met and that the customer remains satisfied. Mr John Casey, chief executive of the Marketing Institute, believes such research is a growing phenomenon among new and established companies.

Fast moving consumer goods such as food and personal care products found in supermarkets are mass-market and necessitate getting information on a wide range of consumers. It is also an area where there are a lot of new products coming onto the market all the time as well as a lot of competing products.

The two main types of research are quantitative and qualitative, says Mr Casey. The former is where figures are gathered about how many people are buying a certain product. Qualitative research gets a little deeper into it and looks at what influences people and what their impressions are. In the area of gathering quantitative information the online survey is perhaps the newest method of research. "With online the question is sitting there and you can answer it when you feel like it."

Amarach Consulting is one company that is developing online research capabilities. "Online research is definitely a technique that most research companies are developing plans around. It's particularly effective at the moment on a business to business level, but in the future as the level of Internet usage among consumers grows, it's going to be increasingly popular on that level as well," explains Mr John Trainor, a director of Amarach Consulting. Visitors to a site can be asked to participate in a survey or a database can be generated through traditional market research, which would allow the company to contact the people online.

The bulk of Amarach's clients are major national and international brands ranging from e-business trends to sponsorship to customer segmentation.

"Research is always the first step in the work that we do with clients. The work that we do, consulting work, the strategic support that we give to clients is always grounded in some shape or form in research." Mr Trainor believes that as companies are becoming more strategic and as they are becoming more targeted, identifying and evaluating objectives is now a major business practice. New or existing research can be used to develop this and, says Mr Trainor, a lot of larger companies would have market research departments set up to handle market research.

The cost of research varies vastly and, Mr Casey estimates, it can range from £1,000 (#1,270) for a basic general survey. A complex survey could cost £40,000-£50,000.

"It is pretty much a fundamental part of the marketing management of all companies, but certainly for the larger companies it would be just part and parcel of their marketing activity." Smaller companies, he believes, are starting to take it up more and more. "As companies become more sophisticated in terms of marketing, this is the case right down the spectrum." Even for smaller companies, research can be informal and come from secondary sources. Mr Casey insists it need not be an elaborate affair.

Ms Coyne agrees and notes that a lot of companies would conduct their own in-house research such as credit unions, which send out self-completion questionnaires. "The basis of research is finding out information and getting feedback," she says, adding that research is essential for everyone. "Definitely the bigger companies have all cottoned on to it and the marketing mix is no longer just advertising, product price, place promotion. Research is information and information is power. That's why research is now one of the marketing mix elements; it's an essential part, because if you don't know what people think of your brand or they think of the competitor's brand, you are disadvantaged."