Decision Analyst, Inc.

Company Description

Decision Analyst is a global marketing research and analytical consulting agency, serving Fortune 1000 corporations, advertising agencies and management consulting firms. Custom research and analytical consulting are Decision Analyst’s foundational competencies. Decision Analyst is a leader in advanced analytics, mathematical modeling, simulation and optimization techniques.

The firm is dedicated to helping clients optimize brand strategy, marketing and advertising and operational systems. The firm melds qualitative investigations, strategic survey research, marketing science and advanced analytics to solve marketing problems and build winning brands. Headquartered in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Decision Analyst serves clients across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. The firm is wholly owned by its 150 employees.

Decision Analyst helps clients develop and grow winning brands by:

• Creating winning marketing strategies.
• Developing new products (through ideation, brainstorming and innovation).
• Building powerful brands.
• Improving product acceptance.
• Elevating advertising communications.
• Boosting package design effectiveness.
• Strengthening promotional programs.
• Optimizing pricing strategies.
• Enhancing the customer shopping experience.
• Optimizing employee recruiting and maximizing employee retention.

Decision Analyst places great value on scientific thinking, hard work, meeting deadlines, quality assurance and staying within budgets. The firm’s creed is A Spirit of Service, A Spirit of Caring.

Qualitative investigations 

Decision Analyst’s qualitative team designs qualitative research to explore conscious, non-conscious, emotional and rational motives that drive consumer decisions. Focus groups, depth interviews, forums and ethnography are the primary data collection techniques, including in-person, telephone, online and mobile. Projective techniques, semiotics, laddering, in-the-moment and other investigative methods are used. In addition to having its own qualitative staff, Decision Analyst maintains a worldwide network of outstanding qualitative partners. These partners provide expertise in various countries, languages, industries and product categories.

Consumer-driven innovation

Decision Analyst’s innovation team creates breakthrough concepts for:

• New products.
• New services.
• New customer experiences.
• New positioning and messaging platforms.
• New promotions.
• New packaging.
• New brand names.
• New display and point-of-sale ideas.

This is done with the help of Imaginators® Creativity Community of more than 2,000 innovative consumers. They have been tested and trained for high levels of “idea-centric creativity” – the ability to generate large numbers of highly original ideas for new products and services. Informed by their real-life experiences, the Imaginators® generate hundreds of inventive starter ideas in online or in-person sessions. Then Decision Analyst’s innovation experts develop these starter ideas into finished, ready-to-test concepts.

DecisionSystems™

These standard systems yield more valuable results because of normative data, action standards and predictive models:

• ConceptTest®
• Conceptor® Volumetric Forecasting
• Optima® Product Testing (iHUTs)
• NameScreen®
• PackageTest®
• CopyTest®
• PromotionTest®
• Brand Equity Monitor™

Advanced analytics

Decision Analyst relies on the scientific method, experimental design and mathematical modeling to address a range of marketing, advertising and distribution issues. Traditional question-and-answer surveys assume that every respondent is self-aware enough and smart enough to accurately answer the questions. Often, these assumptions are not true. Our advanced analytics team employs an array of tools and techniques to get at the underlying truth – the real reasons for consumers’ buying decisions.

Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics, combined with marketing research, can lead to optimal pricing strategies, optimal promotional offers and service bundles, optimal positionings and messages, optimal advertising campaigns and optimal target market segments. The results are better response rates and enhanced revenues and profits for clients.

Spatial analytics 

There is a geographic, or spatial dimension, to virtually all marketing and business activity. GeoAnalytics is the analysis, modeling and mapping of these geographic variables. Geographical information systems (GIS) are combined with predictive analytics, marketing information databases and advanced modeling to:

• Improve site selection for retail stores, medical clinics, offices, etc.
• Refine market targeting to improve return on advertising investments.
• Segment markets so that messaging can be crafted precisely.
• Optimize distribution and transportation systems.

Virtual shelf sets with 3D animation 

By combining its Logician® Virtual Shopping Platform with 3D animation and choice modeling, Decision Analyst can simulate in-store shopping experiences and present hypothetical buying scenarios to customers in an online survey. The realism of the in-store simulation adds accuracy to online choice-modeling experiments. The survey results, in turn, are translated into a DecisionSimulator™ so that “what if” games can be played. Clients can discover what marketing inputs increase brand share the most.

A spirit of service, a spirit of caring

This creed defines how Decision Analyst treat its clients, employees and subcontractors. At Decision Analyst, we believe that a “spirit of service” and a “spirit of caring” must underlie and pervade everything they do. Service and caring are the foundations of employee teamwork, employee retention, quality assurance and long-term relationships with clients.