Big market research budgets tend to accompany big advertising budgets - but there is far more to the industry than that. There is also great demand - often from blue-chip firms - for smaller campaigns not linked to advertising. As Marketing's Research Awards showed last year, research with a budget below 拢25,000 is good enough to challenge for the title of 'best campaign'.
Comet won the retail category with a campaign delivered within a budget of 拢20,000, which was carried out in partnership with TNS. Its objective was to understand how committed customers were to the brand, what drove this commitment and specifically whether its new store format supported increased levels of commitment.
The results indicated that customer satisfaction was almost exclusively staff-related. This message was communicated across the business, from board to store management, enabling Comet to increase the efficiency of the business over the Christmas period and drive the long-term strategic agenda of the company simultaneously.
Phil Tysoe, Comet's general manager for commercial information, is quite clear about the limitations that cost can put on research. 'The principal one tends to be sample size,' he says. 'Or, if you spend big on sample size, you leave little budget for analytical insight. This makes strategy research harder.'
As a result, Tysoe believes these studies have a specific purpose. 'Single pieces of research should not be viewed as a panacea,' he explains. 'The responsibility on the client side is to review all the data available and to ensure that additional pieces of research seek to plug any gaps in your knowledge.'
One advantage of working to a small budget is that it can focus the mind - and from this pressure comes the creation of imaginative methodologies to get to the answer. 'Some ideas to save money include using cheaper approaches, such as telephone interviews as opposed to face-to-face,' says Kath Harris, joint head of qualitative research at RDSi in Leeds. 'The key is to sit down and consider what will meet the objectives without affecting the integrity of the findings.'
Some surveys can be completed very cheaply. 'One thing that really increases the cost of research is the need to include different types of target consumer - different genders, ages, regions and social grades,' adds Harris.
'If you are interested in a simple population, you can get great results from quite a small study.'
Compromising quality
The temptation is always there for clients to seek more cost-effective ways of finding answers - no bad thing in itself, unless the quality of the outcome suffers. BBC World, for example, determined through inexpensive online polling that its great strength against other news channels is that it is perceived to have integrity, to be more thought-provoking and serious than other news channels. It therefore introduced the positioning 'Demand a broader view', reinforcing the channel's approach to news. The ratings, however, remained static. While the online research had indicated that its greatest strength was the depth of its news, there was never any guarantee that this would motivate viewers. Instead, the news audience seemed to prefer the more user-friendly offerings from CNN.
At this stage the BBC called in Sanjay Nazerali, managing director of The Depot, to delve deeper. He conducted face-to-face interviews around the world and discovered that the BBC's 'strength' also entailed 'difficulty' - watching the channel was hard work. As a result the BBC's strategy has been changed radically. It wants not only to protect the channel's integrity, but also to make it easier for the viewer to tune in.
The BBC had hoped that its initial small investment would produce results, but ended up having to pay for more research. This tale does not, however, demonstrate the limitations of online data; instead, it shows the need to recruit skilled researchers to analyse the results. 'In addition to the face-to-face work, I based the new positioning on a piece of online quantitative research that was substantially cheaper than any other quantitative study would have been,' says Nazerali.
The key to any research - big or small - is the brief and the setting of realistic objectives. David Colic, a partner at specialist chocolate retailer Pierre Marcolini, turned to research to help decide where to locate the company's first London shop. It commissioned FreshMinds to survey people in Kensington, the area it had pinpointed, asking questions not only about local conditions, but also about the availability of similar products across London, as well as attitudes toward chocolate in general and Belgian chocolate in particular.
The 拢1500 project involved talking to about 400 people over three days, asking them up to 20 questions at a time. Given that it was the first Pierre Marcolini shop for both Colic and his business partner, and that chocolate is such an emotive subject, they looked to FreshMinds to provide advice on the compilation of the questionnaire, as well as analysis of the results.
Fuelling growth
The research seems to have done its job. Footfall in its Kensington store is far above the business plan's upper expectations, and it now has a part share in a shop in the City. With The Depot's help, two additional stores are planned for New York and Brussels. Indeed, a competitor has since employed management consultants, who interviewed Colic at length on the UK market and the retailer's experience. He recognises the irony: having paid out once for this type of information, he has now been paid himself to deliver the same.
Projects involving new products or markets often require research, but this need not always be the case. Sid Simmons, managing director of Incite Marketing Planning, believes companies could find the answers they need from existing research within the organisation. He estimates that 60% of studies are never exploited to their full potential.
Simmons believes that companies can, as a rule, get 80% of the answers they need from 20% of the data. 'While the perfect solution may be to carry out eight focus groups followed by 600 interviews, most organisations can get more than adequate results from a much smaller study involving two focus groups and a much smaller number of interviews,' he says.
There is plenty of evidence that small budgets, judiciously used, can deliver solutions. Yorkshire Bank, for example, wanted to explore reactions to a pilot branch transformation programme ahead of national roll-out.
Quaestor, with a 拢25,000 budget, carried out three waves of in-branch quantitative interviews over six months, qualitative in-branch executive days and a final control programme of CATI (computer-assisted telephone interviews). These showed which elements worked well and gave guidance on those needing improvement.
Another example is KFC, which asked Basis Research whether it should focus on value, quality, heritage or occasion when finding a name for a new product. Basis conducted a 拢6150 qualitative study that showed conclusively that Mini Fillet was the most motivating brand name, which meant no additional name testing was required.
Finally, Pilkington Glass gave Incite Marketing Planning a 拢20,000 budget to learn how best to increase its share of the car window replacement market. Incite placed questions on an omnibus survey to gain an overview of the market and identify dissatisfied customers. It then ran focus groups to learn the underlying reasons, before surveying 100 people on what the best solution should be. The whole exercise took four weeks from start to finish, resulting in a complete change in Pilkington's car window replacement business.
Turning research into action
Ultimately, the success of small-budget research depends on how savvy clients are - be they multinational retailers or specialists with limited funds. The imperative is to have absolute clarity of objectives and to manage the debrief process so that research generates action within the business.
As Comet's Tysoe puts it: 'Think about research costs relative to the actions that might arise as a consequence - or value for money. A major project costing upwards of 拢50,000 might feel expensive, but if the findings fundamentally change the strategic direction of the company it is good value. A minor project costing less than 拢10,000 feels cheap, but if you don't do anything with the results it is a waste of money.'
Pierre Marcolini: 拢1500
Comet: 拢20,000
Yorkshire Bank: 拢25,000
Research 2005 Market Research Society Event - 16-18 March, The Barbican, London
Among the issues are:
- The need for the UK market and social research industry to reconstruct itself if it is to continue to thrive. This includes an examination of new techniques in advertising research and an analysis of how brands can re-invent themselves.
- Will the 21st century see the death of marketing as we know it? This debate will argue the case for the future of marketing in the face of technology and communications advances, asking whether marketing as we know it will still have a role in years to come.
Among the speakers are:
- Simon Woodroffe, founder of Yo! Sushi, panellist on the BBC's Dragon's Den and former UK Entrepreneur of the Year, and the COI's senior research manager Michael Warren.
CASE STUDY - CHOICE FM
The test of a good market research campaign is how durable the results are. London-based radio station Choice FM won the under-拢20,000 category in last year's Marketing Research Awards for its campaign to increase advertisers' understanding of its offer and its audience, and thus enable it to sell airtime more effectively.
The 拢15,000 'Choice cuts' research campaign had an immediate impact on the business, with monthly ad sales at the time of the Awards up by an average of 120% year on year, and new advertisers such as BA and Nike coming to the station. Since then, the figures have continued to improve, with sales up 232% in November 2004.
The campaign, carried out in-house, was not just about advertising. It was also designed to help programmers and marketers better understand their audience. This appears to have worked too, with listening hours up 20% year on year, according to the latest quarterly Rajar figures.
To sustain this success, the research needs to be followed up. According to feedback from the team that work on Choice FM, it is now time to move on to the next stage. Oliver Rowe, head of consumer insight at Capital Radio Group, which took over the radio station at the beginning of the year, is keen to do something similar on a yearly basis - but realistic enough to admit that it could happen every 18 months.
'This sector, contemporary youth culture, is not static. It is probably one of the most dynamic in the market,' says Rowe. 'We should research it as often as we can, but we do not have that big a budget for this particular brand.'
Rowe has already started to think about the next Choice FM campaign, and insists it will not duplicate what has gone before. 'I am keen to try different methodologies,' he says. 'It might be that next time we decide not to use focus groups, or maybe we will choose to use pure ethnography.
We will use whatever will give us the deepest insights.'