Applying Research & Insights: Customer, Brand, Products (RA01)

• Understand your customers, your products/services and your competitive environment.
• Segment your markets and position your products/services in the target markets.
• Generate new product ideas, test concepts and products, measure market performance and track changes.
• Evaluate alternative pricing strategies and assess demand for current and new products.
• Analyze and evaluate specific shopper marketing tools such as path to purchase analysis, shopper decision hierarchy, and retail loyalty studies.

RESEARCH FOR MARKETING DECISIONS
• Identifying management's strategic and tactical decision needs and linking research response to those needs
• Use and abuse of marketing research in the corporate environment
• A framework for assessing the role of marketing research in the planning process
• How to understand the client's decision process and needs

   

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CUSTOMERS - MARKET SEGMENTATION
• The need and the implications of understanding customer needs and adapting the marketing mix to specific segments
• The bases and the analytical tools used in segmentation research
• Presenting actionable segmentation results to management
• Case studies illustrating the methodology and applications of segmentation research

12:00 PM - 01:15 PM Lunch Break

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CUSTOMERS - CUSTOMER SATISFACTION/LOYALTY RESEARCH
• Components of a customer satisfaction monitoring program - discovery, benchmarking, tracking and implementation
• Key issues in customer satisfaction research - what to measure, from whom, how to gather the data and how to analyze and interpret it
• Applying customer satisfaction research results to business decisions

03:00 PM - 03:15 PM Break

UNDERSTANDING YOUR CUSTOMERS - SHOPPER MARKETING
• What is shopper marketing: explanations and objectives
• Shopper research tools - qualitative and quantitative methods: shopper segmentation, understanding retailer loyalty, uncovering the shopper’s path to purchase
• Validating findings

UNDERSTANDING YOUR COMPETITION – MARKET STRUCTURE AND POSITIONING RESEARCH
• Defining and identifying competition
• Determining competitive market structure
• How to assess competitive positioning: qualitative procedures, including social media monitoring and establishing online communities
• Quantitative positioning: the considerations, key steps and analytical procedures
• Components of a competitive intelligence system; sources of competitive information
• Gaining competitive advantage

MANAGING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES (Part 1): CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT AND OPTIMIZATION
• Research tools applicable at the various stages in a product's life cycle, including research for new products, idea generation procedures, concept testing and concept optimization
• Analytical techniques such as conjoint analysis and discrete choice modeling useful in product research

12:00 PM - 01:15 PM Lunch Break

MANAGING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES (Part 2): RESEARCHING PRICE
• The decisions involved in choosing the best pricing strategy for a firm
• Information needed to make informed pricing decisions and how research can help
• Structured and unstructured approaches and analytical strategies to assess the impact of alternative prices and to help select the optimal price
• Price sensitivity measurement, conjoint analysis, discrete choice models and other analytical approaches in pricing research

MANAGING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES (Part 3): FORECASTING SALES AND ADVERTISING RESEARCH
• Choosing the appropriate forecasting techniques by stage in product life cycle
• Using test marketing and simulated test markets (STM's)
• Judgmental, timeseries and causal models for forecasting sales
• Conducting advertising research (Advertising decisions and supporting research methods; diagnostic and evaluative procedures to test advertising content and implementation; media/audience research for print, broadcast, and internet; ATU studies and tracking a brand’s progress over time)