All companies engage in conversation and communication with their customers. This is good and necessary. When it comes to gathering detailed data about the marketplace’ exact requirement and perceptions, how the marketplace view the company and its product/services; how it views competition and alternatives, the company’s customer interactions have two flaws that leads to erroneous and biased data:
1 - The customer always lies.
Any conversation your company has with your customers is seen, by the customer, as a sales conversation. Not necessary that the company is trying to sell something at that moment, but the customer know that sometime in the future, the information your company gather will be used, at least partly, to sell the customer something. Thus, when customers communicate with a potential or actual vendor, they give information, withhold information and distort information with an agenda to denigrate your value proposition in the hope that you will not charge for your unique benefits. They understate their willingness to pay, hoping for the best possible “deal” when a sales is to be made.
2 - You hear from your customers, not your marketplace
Companies promote themselves with a certain value propositions. Their customers accept those value propositions and purchase the product or service the company has to sell. Prospects in the marketplace who do not accept that value proposition purchase nothing, or something else.
Naturally, companies have more in-depth and frequent communications with their customers, the prospect who accepts their value proposition, than with prospect who do not. Over time, this often leads to self-reinforcing misconception of the needs and wants of the larger marketplace. Thus, many companies focuses selling just to its existing customers, and prospects with the same needs, often ignoring and missing large market segments they could serve, if they only knew what value proposition these segments accepts.
Market research
Atenga conducts anonymous targeted market research, with no identification with a vendor. This removes the element of bias and errors and instead it becomes a non-sales conversation about what the buyer believes is important, what he/she values, and what he/she is willing to pay for, how your product/services and your competitors’ product/services are valued. Thus, not only does market research help companies to develop a product or service and a value proposition that resonate with the larger marketplace, as opposed to “just” its customer, but it also allows the company to better serve its entire marketplace, improve its competitiveness and make more money at the same time!
Factors and attributes
The ultimate goal of anonymous targeted market research is to discover, with statistical significance, what drives a marketplace to make purchase decisions and what drives their willingness to pay. In order to do so, Atenga distinguishes between Factors and Attributes. Factors are the circumstances of a prospect that drive their willingness to buy, ie to solve the problem your company solves. Attributes are a description of the company’s product or service abstracted into general terms. These Factors and Attributes need to be identified and ranked and its relative values need to be established.
Our methodology
We use on-line survey panels and computer aided in-depth interviews as our main research methods. All research is anonymous and we strive for statistical significance. Survey takers and interviewees are compensated with cash, the level of compensation depends on the length and complexity of the research.
Specifically we use standard research methods like conjoint analysis (adaptive and choice based), value attribute positioning, the Van Westendorp price sensitivity meter as well as propriety research methods. We also use advanced statistical methods to analyze the data and make our recommendations based on hard factual data from the marketplace.
