M.A.I.D. wins Japanese firm research rights
New York-based Market Analysis and Information Database Inc. (M.A.I.D.) has been granted exclusive on-line rights for Yano Research Institute market studies. The Japanese firm's studies on Japanese markets will be available on M.A.I.D. in English. There are six reports currently available on the following markets: computers; toiletries and health care; food industry; hybrid integrated circuits; medical and surgical supplies; and over-the-counterproducts.
Additional reports on clinical testing equipment, pharmaceutical distribution, building and construction materials, and the top 100 Japanese medical companies will be forthcoming. A total of 40 major Yano reports are expected to be added to the M.A.I.D. database annually.
IRI responds to grocery ECR program
Chicago-based Information Resources Inc. (IRI) is providing retailers and manufacturers with the first comprehensive single-source solution to the grocery industry's efficient consumer response (ECR) program. For "efficient replenishment," IRI offers LogiCNet and IRI census data form QScan, Catalina Information Resources, Towne-Oller and InfoScan; for "efficient store assortments," IRI offers category management service and Apollo space management; for "efficient promotions," IRI offers Customer Marketing Resources' "Pay for Performance" program; and for "efficient new product introductions, "IRI offers BehaviorScan and other IRI testing services.
IRI's census data is based on all stores in a chain, measuring actual consumer purchases on a store-by-store basis. It also includes the only provider of census sales data for the health and beauty care industry. LogiCNet provides software that helps retailers ensure the product is on the shelves where and when the consumer wants it, and at the rightprice. The new IRI subsidiary, Customer Marketing Resources, focuses on the promotional aspect of ECR.
Equifax introduces health care assessment package
Equifax National Decision Systems, San Diego, has introduced the Health-Stats Area Health Assessment package. The information package is designed to enable medical group administrators to assess the health care needs of their market areas. The package includes four comprehensive reports and a market area map that provide key information in finding solutions for rising costs, increased competition, dwindling reimbursement, site selection and investment in new technology.
The package was developed by integrating information from a combination of proprietary national health care, demographic and business databases. The four different market area reports are: The Physician's Summary Report, the Office and Facilities Report, the Acute Care Detail Report and the Chronic Care Detail Report. The information is aggregated down to the census tract level. The computer-generated map displays the market area, facility site location(s), and major roads and highways, with the option to color code market data for visualization and analysis. The information for Health-Stats reports is derived from a new database called Health-Facts, which was jointly developed by Equifax and San Diego-based Healthdemographics, a division of Geosource Inc.
SMI says "oui" and "ja" to French, German Atlas
Strategic Mapping Inc. (SMI), Santa Clara, Calif., has introduced French and German language versions of Atlas GIS and Atlas Pro for DOS, two of its geographic information system (GIS) soft-ware packages. The majority of on-screen commands and menu items have been translated, as well as the documentation that accompanies the two programs. Both packages include a complete set of geographic and demographic files forme European Community (EC), developed by Eurostat, the official provider of statistical information for the 12-nation EC.
BMDP offers object-oriented Windows system
Los Angeles-based BMDP Statistical Software Inc. has begun shipping BMDP New System for Windows. Designed exclusively for the Windows environment, the newly developed application is a true MS Windows object-oriented statistical software package. The new system supports features like object linking and embedding (OLE), and dynamic data exchange (DDE). It can dynamically link variables from the datasheet to other objects corresponding to statistical routines and plots. Graphic user interface characteristics like pop-up menus, dialog boxes and point-and-click operations are integrated throughout the entire application. Other features include: descriptive statistics, nonparametric tests, ANOVA, a spread-sheet-like data editor, and unique missing data matrix for easy identification of missing values. The system is flexible enough to accommodate novice and sophisticated users.
AMA mail-order buyers list available
Medical Marketing Service Inc. (MMS), Wood Dale, Ill., is offering for the first time a list of 240,000 American Medical Association mail-order buyers. It consists of mail-order buyers from the AMA Catalog of Products, Publications and Services. The average order is $114. Selections include three-month hotline, multi-buyers, phone numbers, merchandise type and customer type (physicians, associations, booksellers, clinics/group practices, educational institutions, government, hospitals, insurance companies, lawyers/law firms, libraries and pharmaceutical companies. The physicians on the list can be targeted using the AMA Physician Masterfile's myriad data elements, including specialty type of practice, and age. If such targeting is done, AMA royalty is applicable. MMS offers a 20% discount to list brokers and a 15% discount to ad agencies.
Claritas has free booklet on update service
Claritas/NPDC, Alexandria, Va., is offering a free 37-page booklet, Update: Precision Demographics, which outlines the methodology and sources behind its annual demographic update. The firm's annual small-area demographic updates are available to Claritas clients via the on-line MAX-3D system, or a phone-in service.
BiblioData issues custom on-line Fulltext
BiblioData, Needham Heights, Mass., has introduced for 1994 a Custom Version of its 4,500-title Fulltext Sources Online directory, in addition to the 11th edition of its regular semiannual directory. The custom version is available at any time and is limited to whichever databases the customer accesses. There are also two electronic versions available. Data-Star has the FULL database on-line, offering Fulltext Sources Online, updated quarterly. Sandpoint Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., offers a Lotus Notes version of the directory. In addition to the Fulltext directory, BiblioData publishes the Newspapers On-line directory. The book was published this summer, and is sold with two updates, extending its coverage throughout most of 1994. BiblioData recently celebrated its fifth year in business.
Dow Jones users can now access D&B service
Dow Jones News/Retrieval Service on-line customers can now access Dun & Bradstreet's Dun's Global Families service. The service identifies corporate relationships by linking domestic and international companies using the Data Universal Number System (D-U-N-S number). The new service identifies corporate relationships with the broadest coverage of corporate linkage anywhere, including more than 300,000 corporate families and 1.7 million "family members" from 150 countries. Dun' s Global Families also provides customers with the reporting relationships among these family members. Dow subscribers now can fully explore domestic and international sales and marketing opportunities with large multi-national firms.
Global Families offers three reports: The Global Overview Corporate Report, with corporate information like headquarters, subsidiaries and locations in each country; the Corporate Family Snapshot, with identification information about each company location within the family; and the Customized Report, with details by selected criteria. The customized report is available as a telemarketing report, which provides highlights, or as a full reports. Cost of each report varies.
Equifax offers Infomark updates
San Diego-based Equifax National Decision Systems has introduced new geographic databases and analytical capabilities on its Infomark for Windows desktop PC information system. Infomark now provides mid-year demographic updates and projections based on economic changes throughout the United States, like employment, migration patterns, housing starts, interest rates, total wealth and types of income. Other enhancements include the introduction of Block Group data with new proprietary block circular field methodology for retrieving data geographically; the new QuickCode capability for appending geographic or customer segmentation codes to user file data; and the new interactive TIGER Code capability that allows users to automatically assign latitude/longitude to specific addresses or intersections.
Product & Service Update - In Depth
Tips for managing your industrial marketing research projects
by Chris Van Derveer
Editor's note: Chris Van Derveer is president of Van Derveer Industrial Research, New York.
The research marketplace is crowded with material on consumer research techniques and outcomes, but there has always been a dearth of information on marketing research for industrial products. Many corporate managers, schooled in consumer research techniques, believe these skills are directly transferable to industrial products research. This is not so, however. Industrial marketing research is very much a separate discipline, with exact methodologies that must be used to ensure a statistically accurate outcome.
This article focuses on some tips and techniques to keep in mind when managing your industrial research projects. It is more focused towards telephone research, as this methodology is very popular and yields quite accurate data. I have not covered project management techniques, tabulation or final report writing as the style of these will depend upon your specific needs.
List selection
In consumer research, a sample can consist of a broad-based segment of the population - for example, all females between the ages of 18 to 30 years, so it can potentially include millions of people. On the other hand, most industrial products research samples consist only of businesses likely to purchase your special product line, so they number in the hundreds of thousands.
The next question is whom to poll - present or potential clients? The answer is usually both.
The best way to begin is to make a list of all the possible companies in the marketplace most likely to buy your products. If you don't have this on an internal database, you can buy it from a list house. For accurate results, you must sample this total list at random. For example, if you have a total list of 1,000 names and you want to do 100 interviews, you would begin by sampling every tenth name.
The other option is to break down the list, for example, into present and potential buyers. To sample all present clients may prove interesting, but it will not fully gauge market opinion. Firms that are already doing business with you will probably rate your products and services well. You may have reached your potential with them. It's through understanding the needs and wants of your non-clients that you will most probably increase the sales of your products. In the final tabulation of data, client vs. non-client data may be tabbed out separately so that your marketing group can develop strategies towards addressing each.
The art of questionnaire design
Most of our examples here deal with telephone surveys, since this methodology is extensively employed and delivers the most statistically accurate - hence, most actionable - data.
An accurately designed questionnaire is one of the keys to research success. This is especially true for industrial product surveys. But while consumer questionnaires are likely to test perceptions, or evaluate lifestyles and demographics, industrial surveys tend to rate technical issues. So it's worth spending as much time as necessary to design an understandable questionnaire. The problem you may encounter here here lies with interviewing staff who can't explain technical issues if respondents don't quite understand the question. For surveys with complex questions, you should always include a "crib sheet" the interviewer can refer to if the respondent has a concern.
Questionnaire format, as well as content, should also be a prime issue. If possible, most questions should be presented in a closed-ended format. Closed ends are quicker to administer, easy to tabulate and produce a result that is not subject to opinion. Put the issues most important to you at the beginning of the questionnaire, with questions of lesser importance following them. The only exception to this rule would be questions of afinancial nature, which should be asked at the end, because they most often prompt a terminate.
Open ends should be used sparingly; If your questionnaires include too many open ends, it suggests that you probably don't understand your market as well as you should. (They're often used to follow up a closed-ended question, however.) If your questionnaire has too many open-ended questions, your best bet is to hold off on the questionnaire, and conduct focus groups instead, to better conceptualize the issues so you can develop an optimal survey form.
Finally, keep it short. Unlike consumers who are at home and not pressed by business meetings, executives are under extreme time pressure. As such, we recommend that industrial telephone questionnaires last no more than 15 minutes. If the issues require a more complex and lengthy analysis than this, perhaps other options like personal interviews, focus groups or mail surveys are appropriate.
Do a survey pretest
Because industrial research questions are fairly demanding, it's wise to conduct a thorough pretest to debug the industrial questionnaire. During the pretest your telephone firm and management staff should listen to the surveys as they are administered. Two interviewers working a full business day should be able to complete the task. The pretest should determine if:
- the survey takes the right amount of time;
- the questions are being asked accurately;
- the questions are in the right order;
- sensitive issues are properly dealt with; and
- the format achieves management data objectives.
Once the pretest is concluded and you've resolved whatever problems may have emerged, develop a revised and improved questionnaire. This new format is what should be administered to the entire survey group.
The prescreening process
You may want not want to use con-sumer research interviewing staff for your industrial project, because this sort of research can demand particular competence. The interviewer conducting a consumer telephone survey who calls into a household is usually in direct contact with the respondent. In industrial research, interviewers must first call into a main switchboard, get the name of the proper respondent and have the operator transfer them to the right department. Once the respondent answers, interviewers must find out if the respondent has specific knowledge of or purchasing responsibility for the products in question.
To get the industrial sample size that you need may require your interviewers to call back several times or branch the interviews to multiple parties within one company that have shared responsibility for the function. Effective prescreening and several callbacks are necessary as industrial samples tend to be smaller than consumer samples and must be polled more effectively.
This article cannot, of course, cover every nuance of managing the industrial research process, as each of the four major methodologies has specific and optimal techniques associated with each of them. But using them as general guidelines should get your industrial research off to a solid start.
(To further assist industrial research efforts, Van Derveer lndustrial Research has published "The Van Derveer Industrial Marketing Research Training Manual," which is designed to teach users the advantages and disadvantages of industrial telephone and mail surveys, personal interviews, focus groups and how to best manage each. It also contains questionnaire drafts for the major project types.)