International Journal of Market Research - summaries of articles from current issue

2008 volume 50 issue 4

Tackling health inequalities using geodemographics – a social marketing approach, Marc Farr (Dr. Foster Intelligence), Jessica Wardlaw & Catherine Jones (University College, London)

As in the paper by May in the last issue of IJMR, the first paper is a further example of the innovative research methods being applied to the challenges faced by the public health sector in the U.K. to help ensure that scarce resources are targeted as effectively as possible. The authors describe how the National Health Service (NHS) is adopting social marketing as a key strategy in targeting healthcare priorities. Whilst he authors quote Wiebe’s view expressed as long ago as 1951 - ‘Why can’t you sell brotherhood and rational thinking like you sell soap?’ - Dr Foster Intelligence was created as recently as 2006 as a public-private partnership to help achieve this goal in the U.K. health and social care sectors. It is a joint venture between the Health and Social Care Information Centre (an NHS Special Health Authority) and the private sector designed to improve the delivery of quality information to health and social care organisations and the public, and provides management information to the public and private sectors in competition with other providers. The authors describe the concept of social marketing – achieve social good through behavioural change - and how this is a key foundation within the Department of Health strategy to help NHS Trusts target their budgets to meet local health needs within government policy. The five stage model developed by Dr Foster to deliver a robust social marketing process is described in detail within the paper, including the key role played by geodemographics and market research methodologies in identifying target groups in the population and the subsequent development of campaigns and evaluating their impact. The authors provide examples of how this process is applied, including a detailed case study covering a campaign identifying, and communicating with, a population group in a large town with a higher likelihood of suffering from diabetics.

A new tool for pre-testing direct mail, Margaret Faulkner & Rachel Kennedy (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, University of South Australia)

The second paper describes how the effectiveness of direct mail can be improved by applying principles identified over twenty years ago. Despite the rapid growth in electronic and digital based marketing in recent years, traditional direct mail remains a major communications channel. As the authors point out, total sales in the U.K. through this channel totalled £17bn in 2006, with 130m direct marketing items passing through the mail system. The authors also re-affirmed in their research that the direct mail industry still seems wedded to split runs as the prime method to pre-test alternative packs, rather than also applying market research techniques as part of the development and diagnostics process. The authors also discuss why the recommendations published in 1991 from the Copy Research Validation Project conducted by the ARF that researched pre-testing methods used in other advertising media provide an appropriate base for research on direct mail copy. The detailed research conducted by the authors was undertaken in the charity sector – a growth area in direct mail - with the objectives of identifying whether or not the CRVP recommendations could be successfully applied in developing a methodology that could firstly predict the approach likely to produce the best in-market response and secondly define the measures that identified the winning execution. The authors describe their multi-stage research programme in detail, including the diagnostics developed from the CRVP recommendations. The initial stage explored current direct mail testing processes and perceptions of what factors contribute towards creating effective mailings. This was followed by pilot studies to test the CRVP based approach, and the final main test programme. The results of the research are also described in detail, including an analysis of those measures that worked, those that didn’t and areas where further research might add further insight. Importantly, the research predicted the winning mailing and the authors conclude that the methodology described in the paper offers those involved in direct mail development and market researchers an enhanced pre-testing process for this medium.

Optimizing the language of e mail survey invitations, Howard Moskowitz (Moskowitz Jacobs Inc) & Birgi Martin (Lightspeed Research)

Falling response rates are a well described fact of life in market research. The key question is whether there are any methods that could be applied to help stem the downward trend – what can be done to encourage response. This is the issue addressed through a very comprehensive multi-stage research programme described in the third paper. The authors have focussed their research on one data collection medium, online surveys, and investigated what messages within invitations to participate are more likely to encourage response, and how these might be optimised. In order to address this objective the authors designed a two-stage research programme – an initial multi-cell experiment followed by a validation survey based on the results of the first stage. Key to the design of the first stage was the requirement to apply dummy variable (least square) regression to the data in order to analyse responses at an individual respondent level (using an isomorphic concept design) and identify the absolute value contributed by each element within the overall communication. Six categories of invitation-content were tested, based on normal practices and the findings from earlier published studies, with six different message variations created for each category. The initial analysis generated first a Persuasion Model, and secondly an Interest Model. The initial research identified three segments of respondents based on message impacts: ‘Survey Junkies’, ‘Expert Wannabes’ and ‘Fast & Simple’. The second stage covered eight invitations and two product fields and utilised conjoint analysis. The findings demonstrate that the content and language of invitations do impact on response. The authors provide researchers with guidance on developing appropriate messages in invitations to participate, and also confirm the importance of salience and valuing respondent’s opinions as key message components.

Understanding and measuring customer loyalty to product variants, Jaywant Singh (Kingston University), Andrew Ehrenberg & Gerald Goodhardt (London South Bank University)

The authors of the fourth paper argue that whilst product variations in the fmcg sector, such as pack size and flavour, have increased in recent years, manufacturers and retailers have virtually no empirical evidence available to them from research to drive decision making. To help fill this gap in knowledge, the authors have analysed data across product fields from panels in the UK (TNS – seven product categories) and the USA (IRI – one product category) using the Dirichlet model. Those familiar with Ehrenberg and Goodhart’s work will know that they have successfully used this model in earlier studies investigating consumer purchase behaviour. The measures used in the study covered overall buying rates for variants, direct index of repeat-buying, incidence of 100% loyal buyers, share of customers’ category requirements and duplication of purchases. In addition to describing their research and the findings, the paper contains a review of existing literature, a description of the Dirichlet model for those unfamiliar with it, and the detailed results for one product category from the research. The findings confirm that this model proved to be a robust tool for research in this field and provided accurate predictions when benchmarked against actual purchase levels. The authors conclude that loyalty to variations conforms to the patterns established in the earlier research, being related to the shares, or overall popularity, of variants within a category. In other words, purchase behaviour for variants by brand conforms to the patterns for that product category.

Using support vector semiparametric regression to estimate the effects of pricing on brand substitution, María Pilar Martínez-Ruiz, Alejandro Mollá-Descals (University of Valencia), Miguel Ángel Gómez-Borja (University of Castilla-La Mancha), José Luis Rojon-Álvarez (University Carlos III of Madrid)

The second paper investigating fmcg buyer behaviour describes research undertaken on data from a Spanish retail grocery chain. The authors examined the wider impacts of price-promotions in two product categories (yoghurt and sunflower oil) with different perishability rates. They argue that price–promotions analysis often focusses on the brand in question and fails to recognise the impact on overall profitability across the whole product category, and the sales substitution effect in particular. The research builds on earlier work undertaken by the author and uses the Support Vector Machine Semiparametric Regression (SVM-SR) based methodology. The authors discuss the use of regression models for analysing the impact of sales-promotions and the advantage of using the semiparametric based SVM-SR model over other models. The results of the analysis are described and discussed, for example that promoting high-price brands has a stronger impact on low price brands than the reverse. Whilst the results provide a basis for understanding the wider impact of price-promotions, the authors caution that their findings cannot necessarily be generalised and may differ by product category, store type and promotional strategy.

Forum

Building better causal models to measure the relationship between attitudes and customer loyalty, Jose Antonio Garcia & Laura Martinez Garcia (Technical University of Cartagena)

In the Forum article, the authors challenge the value of the current models commonly used to measure the relationship between attitudes and customer loyalty and argue that they are not ‘fit for purpose’. They also demonstrate that the current literature shows contradictions regarding the casual relationships between the key variables of perceived quality, satisfaction and image/reputation and the impact on customer loyalty commonly used in building models due to a misleading understanding of the underlying relationships. The authors believe that a casual process cross-sectional design based model built on the premise that attitudinal variables are unidirectionally linked assumes that attitudes can be manipulated by companies. In reality, the authors’ state, customers own their attitudes whilst companies have ownership of their actions - as Jeremy Bullmore also reminds us: ‘Many marketing companies, and even more of their marketing advisors, pride themselves on their ability to build brands. But of course neither group build brands: because brands are built in people’s heads’ (Apples, Insights and Mad Inventors, Wiley, 2006). Commonly used models don’t provide management with the information they most need – how will actions taken by the company change the attitudes, and actions, of consumer. The authors recommend other potentially useful variables and propose an alternative basis for model building that they believe is more appropriate for identifying the impact of management decisions on consumer attitudes - for example, if a company adopts ISO quality standards does this lead to a positive impact on perceptions of quality.

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