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In addition to many products for use in amateur photography, Polaroid Corp. also manufactures films for use in a wide array of professional and business applications. To cite just a few examples: the science and healthcare fields use Polaroid products to capture images from everything from ultrasounds to scanning electron microscopes; professional photographers use Polaroids to check lighting and layout before beginning a shoot; and 31 states use Polaroid film for their driver’s license and identification photos.

Within Polaroid, the Professional Film division encompasses eight market sectors, including the scientific and industrial, medical, commercial, electronic imaging, and security/identification fields. And though each sector has performed marketing research on topics specific to its area, George Garland, senior market research analyst with Polaroid, says that the market sector managers wanted more concrete information on consumption in their various markets.

“Everybody wanted to know, What’s my piece of the pie?” he says. “We’ve done a lot of primary research, looking at the various syndicated efforts that are available, and certainly some good information comes from them, but it’s not at a level that’s of great help to us. We needed to look at specific film types and specific markets, (to get) the really detailed information that we couldn’t get from any other source.”

The idea was to profile the professional film users by market to discover which film types were most used in each of the markets and with what applications, thereby gaining a broader perspective of the professional market.

Incentive with survey

To do this, Polaroid used ResponseChecks, a research tool created by Attitude Measurement Corp. (AMC), a Southampton, Penn.-based marketing research firm.

Combining the incentive with the survey, a ResponseCheck is a negotiable bank check with a questionnaire on the back. Each check is made out to “bearer,” and the dollar amount is set by the client.

Ray Roshkoff, president of Attitude Measurement Corp., says the typical incentive for consumer-related projects is $1.00, though because the respondents in the Polaroid survey were professional photographers, $3.00 was the amount chosen.

Below their endorsement on the “check,” respondents supply their name, address and telephone number and answer a series of questions which are printed on an attached “stub.” Once the checks are cashed, they go through the normal check-processing procedure before being returned to AMC for coding and tabulation. AMC also assists with questionnaire development, handles the check printing, and compiles a respondent database for each project which clients can use for follow-up research, focus group recruitment, etc.

Most popular film types

Beginning in September 1988, ResponseChecks were randomly inserted into boxes of five of Polaroid’s most popular professional film types—approximately 2,000 checks per type. The checks were packed into one box of film per case, so that customers who buy in large quantities wouldn’t be inundated with checks.

Further, the boxes containing ResponseChecks were dispersed to regional distribution centers in proportion to sales of the product the previous year, to get as close as possible to a random sample based on geographical distribution.

“The idea is that the client should intersperse them among their entire inventory so that we get a good sample of purchasers throughout the product cycle and throughout the entire marketing area,” AMC’s Roshkoff says.

The questionnaire sought information on: the equipment used in conjunction with the Polaroid film, what subject matter was photographed, current and future usage levels, opinions on the film, and readership of Polaroid literature.

During the process of drafting the questionnaire, Garland consulted with market sector managers to get their input and then structured the questionnaire to be as specific as possible about each film type while meeting more general informational goals.

High response rate

The program has enjoyed a high response rate, accumulating returns of between 35 and 55 percent, depending on the type of film. Garland says that although final analysis of the data is still in progress, the project has been received with tremendous interest within the company.

“I think the biggest impact is the improved level of information for the market sector managers as they move forward in their strategic planning for 1990’s and beyond.”

Usable information

Garland is unable to discuss specific findings in-depth, but he says that the research has already provided usable information in the areas of advertising and positioning, sales, and quality control.

“It lets us know where we should be directing our advertising efforts. We were able to look at each film type by sector and take total sales for a particular product and break it down specifically to the amount that was used in a particular area.

Usage data indicated that certain film types were being used in greater quantity in certain professions. For example, research showed that 90% of sales of Polaroid’s Type 52, a 4x5 sheet, black and white film, were in the scientific and industrial sector. “We didn’t know that before,” Garland says.

This information, Garland says, gives the advertising and promotion teams more insight into who their current customers are and also assists in efforts to increase awareness with potential customers who might not now be using, considering, or aware of the capabilities of, Polaroid products.

“We can now target particular markets because we’re better aware of the level of consumption within those markets of the various kinds of films. For example, we know now that there’s a low consumption level of Type 52 in the professional photography market—that may be because the product is inappropriate for their use—but also there may be an opportunity there, in that some people in that industry may not be aware of the product or may not be aware that it’s usable in certain applications.

“Positioning is always an issue. When your product line is so diverse, as our products for the industrial world are, how do you position it? You really have to be very focused in your approach, and (the research) gives us an opportunity to address that issue with a greater understanding of what the (consumer) thinks.”

Promotional efforts

Garland says that the knowledge that Type 52 is used primarily in the scientific and industrial world will help focus promotional efforts for the film.

“We know that if we include a special promotion in the packaging, that most of the product will end up in scientific and industrial people’s hands, so certainly we don’t want to include something concerned with the medical field in that particular product.”

Technical comments

In the area of product satisfaction levels, the questionnaire solicited technical comments from the respondents, which gave Polaroid detailed information on specific quality-related issues.

“These areas were amply covered by the questionnaire, to such an extent that we now know some areas that we need to be a little more concerned about because of customer dissatisfaction. That directs us to address those issues in terms of developing new or improved products.” For example, the discovery of a technical problem through the research resulted in a reassessment of the interface of one film type with its film holder.

“The quality organization got together a task force with the hardware engineering people as well as the film engineering and manufacturing people and worked out a better system for the interface,” Garland says.

End-user notes

In the future, the research may also inform the content of Polaroid’s end-user notes, a series of booklets designed to inform readers of the capabilities and uses of Polaroid professional films.

“In the end-user notes for the scientific field, for example, the subject might be optical microscopy, and we now know that a great deal of Type 52 is being used for that purpose, so it isn’t inappropriate to say to the new people that are coming into that field: Here is a product that is used successfully in your particular field,” Garland says.

Sidebar: “An evolutionary process”

The implementation of any new idea is always a learning process. Without a frame of reference, you pick things up gradually, smoothing out the logistical bumps and humps as you go.

That’s just what Ray Roshkoff has done over the years while refining the ResponseCheck concept. Roshkoff, president of Attitude Measurement Corp. (AMC), says he came up with the idea of putting a questionnaire on the back of a check after seeing a somewhat similar method used to gauge readership of trade magazines in the medical field.

“Medical publications are sent to many doctors free of charge to increase the circulation and there is some question about what percentage of the medical profession actually reads a given issue. So periodically checks were placed in random copies of a publication, and based on the number that were found and cashed by the doctors, the readership percentage would be determined. And the pharmaceutical companies would use this data in selecting their media,” he says.

“I took the concept and thought Why not put it in consumer products?—where often we were screening for really low incidence users. If we gave people enough of an incentive they would identify themselves, and not only would they identify themselves, but you could also put a survey on the back. And that grew into the method that we’re using now.”

In the eight years since their introduction, ResponseChecks have been used in many different ways, from defining purchaser satisfaction levels and obtaining usage information—as with the Polaroid example—to gathering marketing information from participants in rebate programs.

Initially, Roshkoff says, space limitations were an issue. There just wasn’t enough room on the back of a check for several questions and their answers. Then he realized the questions could be put on an attached “stub,” freeing up a great deal of much-needed space. But this led to another snafu, as some respondents had difficulty figuring out where to write their replies to the questions.

“After I first developed the stub, when we asked an open-ended question—for example What do you like about the product?—I found that some people were starting to write their answer on the stub where the question appeared, not realizing that we wanted it on the right, and so we’d get back only the second half of the sentence!”

This led to explicit instructions telling respondents where to record their answers and to the obliteration of any space on the stub that might be considered open.

Roshkoff says that one of the most obvious problems—that of bank processing stamps making some information on the back of the checks illegible—really hasn’t proven to be that troublesome.

“Sometimes there’s only one stamp and it’s fairly light and other times it gets fairly heavy. It’s a matter of where it was cashed and how many banks it travels through on its way back. Our coding department is quite used to working with them by now, and when they transfer the data to coding sheets for data entry, the original document is attached for reference in case there are questions.”

As part of the ResponseCheck program, AMC handles printing of the checks for clients, something Roshkoff didn’t think was possible in the beginning.

“Before I tried this I just assumed that you couldn’t print your own checks and that everybody went to Deluxe Check Printers, for example. But when I discovered that I could print them myself, I spent a good deal of time with different typesetters and printers trying to find out how I would go about it. Everything has to be very precise. You’ve got to have different kinds of inks and you’ve got to conform to each bank’s specifications and the Federal Reserve’s rules and regulations.”

And it’s not always governmental specifications that need to be met. Prior to proceeding with the Polaroid program, Roshkoff had to send samples of the inks and paper used to print the checks to Polaroid for analysis, to make sure they wouldn’t chemically interact with the film types when placed in the boxes. Similar precautions have been taken when the checks are to be included in food products.

Roshkoff says some clients have asked him to look into the possibility of using ResponseChecks on an international basis. He’s already used them in Canada—which presented its own set of difficulties, courtesy of some idiosyncratic Canadian banking practices—and as they are used elsewhere, Roshkoff is sure that new issues will be raised.

“It’s truly been an evolutionary process,” he says.