The Customer Magazine 'Feedback'
'Feedback' is Vocatus's magazine, which appears quarterly, and in it we regularly present new project approaches and concepts to solve questions in market research. You can read online (and download) all the previous editions here.
"Internal service quality"
Many companies solely analyse service quality from the perspective of their customers; internal service quality is usually ignored. Nevertheless, it offers a crucial lever if one is to not only increase customer retention and staff motivation, but also raise productivity and thus ultimately ensure long-term success for the company.
Feedback, June 2010
"Successfully Developing New B2B Products"
Complex products and internationally fragmented markets confront B2B companies with particular challenges.
Furthermore, important information about markets and customers is frequently lacking. Soundly based market
research is needed here in order to deliberately adapt new products to customers' requirements and thereby
exploit previously untapped sales potential.
Feedback, March 2010
"Measuring and managing customer satisfaction"
Customer orientation or proximity are nowadays a 'must' if one is to enjoy long-term success. However, it's not enough to merely measure customer satisfaction. Instead, companies must take a close look at their customer relationships as well as their customers' loyalty in order to deduce targeted improvements.
Feedback, October 2009
"Mystery Shopping Leads to Better Service"
High-quality service and advice has never been more crucial.
Covert test purchases aim to reveal what things are actually like at Point of Sale.
The spotlight here is increasingly on salespeople's approach to closing the deal.
However, testing and improving this makes particularly exacting demands of market research.
Feedback, June 2009
"Crisis-proof Pricing Strategies"
Many companies think that price cuts are indispensable in times of crisis. However, this can have disastrous long-term consequences for both brand and profits. It is more productive to analyse whether the crisis actually changes customer motivation, their reason for purchase, and price acceptance.
Feedback, February 2009
"Optimising Sales Systems in a Holistic Manner"
A company's sales channels are usually optimised in isolation, and this often fails to take account of the concrete interplay of the various channels. However, this can be an important lever in terms of greater sales efficiency and customer satisfaction. This duly calls for investigations of sales channels which realistically "flesh out" consumer behaviour.
Feedback, November 2008
"Solution-oriented B2B Market Research"
Business relationships between companies are often considerably more complex and multifaceted than those between businesses and consumers. That is why market research in particular is called upon to deliver a holistic picture for identifying the key levers with which specifically these relationships can be affected.
Feedback, September 2008
"Customer-centred Pricing Strategy"
Classic pricing research methods are based on the assumption that people always decide rationally.
Nevertheless, a new pricing study called "Smarter Pricing with GRIPS" conducted by Vocatus in six sectors and sixteen countries demonstrates that,
depending on the product, people deal quite differently with the issue of price. Pricing psychology yields a
total of five different consumer types who must accordingly be addressed in different ways.
Feedback, May 2008
"Staff Surveys As a Management Tool"
Staff surveys demonstrate the extent to which companies have succeeded in winning over their own employees to help achieve their goals.
This means they can also be used as a strategic management tool -assuming that they don't use a standard concept.
Feedback, March 2008
"Understanding Customers via Online Diaries"
The drivers of high customer satisfaction are generally known.
By contrast, we usually don't know the actual single experiences that lead to enthusiasm or frustration.
This is where online diaries offer a unique insight.
Feedback, November 2007
"Interactive Online Reports"
In order to master the flood of data, market research results are usually consolidated in clearly laid out reports.
If specific questions relating to details then crop up at a later date, it has hitherto been necessary to carry out costly additional evaluations by the institute.
A new reporting tool now allows companies to put together individual analyses themselves, simply by clicking the mouse a few times.
Feedback, September 2007
"Multi Rule Conjoint (MRC)"
Multi-rule conjoint demonstrates that the predictive quality of traditional conjoint analyses can be increased by
up to 50 percent if one bears in mind that people to some extent make decisions in a systematically irrational manner.
Feedback, June 2007
"The Significance of the Net Promoter Score"
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an index that measures how likely it is that someone will
recommend a product/service. As a result of its considerable transparency and the cross-sector
benchmark data that is available for NPS, it is currently exciting major interest in company boardrooms.
This is sufficient reason for market research to take a closer look at it.
Feedback, March 2007
"The Fragmented Consumer"
If one uses classic market research approaches, they sometimes systematically distort what they should actually be
explaining: the consumer. After all, the objective of market research projects must be to understand companies from
the customer's perspective, and not to analyse customers from the company's point of view.
Feedback, December 2006
"Psychological Price Profile"
Price interest, price knowledge, and price evaluation are often far more important for the purchase
decision than the absolute price level. It is above all vital to understand the actual sequence of
the decision process so as to adapt the conception of market research projects to the decision process.
Feedback, September 2006
"The 360-degree Decision Analysis"
People's decision-making processes don't always happen in a logical, comprehensible, or linear fashion, or with the benefit of complete information.
Companies must first understand these processes in all their complexity so as to be in a position to influence them and correspondingly optimise their marketing mix.
Feedback, May 2006
"Greater Customer Proximity via Online Panels"
A customer panel offers companies the opportunity to regularly survey
a defined group of customers. Many companies use panels to ensure greater
customer orientation on the part of each individual employee in widely
varying areas of the company. This is because an in-house online panel
helps to give every employee access to what customers actually think.
Feeback, February 2006
"Matching with Added Value"
Customers shouldn't have to learn to express themselves like databases;
it should be the other way round. In this study, which has been awarded the
1st Prize for German Market Research, Vocatus develops the concept for a
travel search engine focussing on the individual needs of the customer.
Feedback, July 2005
"Increasing Sales via Lead Scoring"
Not every prospect actually promises to be a potential customer. Lead scoring
is a statistical method of analysis that assigns a buying probability to every
single enquiry. This allows the company to prioritise its scarce resources and
focus on the most important customers so as to achieve maximum sales.
Feedback, May 2005
"Customer-oriented Pricing"
Customer-oriented pricing can open up significant revenue and margin potentials.
Price threshold analysis and the conjoint method are very effective ways of
measuring price sensitivity and price acceptance for a specific product, as
well as defining meaningful product bundles.
Feedback, February 2005
"Online Market Research has Come of Age"
Only a few years ago, many companies were rather cautious and critical
about online market research, and sometimes rightly so. In the meantime,
there have been fundamental changes. Online market research has come of
age and become an integral part of market research.
Feedback, November 2004
"More Meaningful Image Analyses"
The quality of quantitative image analyses is crucially dependent on the appropriate selection
and prioritisation of the image dimensions. The repertory grid methodology presented here
offers a flexible yet at the same time structured approach for extracting the relevant image dimensions.
Feedback, September 2004
"Retailer/Dealer Surveys as a Success Factor"
For manufacturers, the retailer/dealer, agent, or intermediary is the gateway to the customer.
In addition to what customers want, the desires of retailers/dealers are therefore of crucial
importance for the successful sale of products or services. This is because it is the
retailer/dealer who decides whether a product is on the shelf and how vigorously it is marketed.
Feedback, April 2004
"Measuring Customer Satisfaction in a Meaningful Way"
When measuring customer satisfaction, it is not enough for a company to merely ask current customers how satisfied they are. It is equally important to ask non-customers and to discover
the reasons (apart from customer satisfaction) that crucially influence the likelihood of them buying again.
Feedback, November 2003
"Consumers' Decision-Making Processes"
It is of elementary importance for companies to precisely understand the various phases in the decision-making process when people are looking at their products. This is because decisions can turn out
totally differently depending on the kind of information the customer receives in the various phases of the decision-making process. Retailers must also be included in the analysis, particularly in the
case of products requiring in-depth advice, since they are often pursuing their own agenda.
Feedback, September 2003
"Process Quality As a Success Factor"
Service is increasingly becoming the crucial competitive factor. However,
a high level of service can only be guaranteed if the underlying processes
are working properly. It quite often happens that companies get a nasty
surprise when these processes are tested for the first time in order to
ascertain their actual functionality.
Feedback, June 2003
"Benchmarking via Mystery Analyses"
Ongoing benchmarking with competitors is often the critical innovation driver, and at the same time is an excellent way of discovering potential for improvement. However, valid data concerning competitors is
generally not easy to come by. Mystery Analyses can bridge this gap via covert phone calls and e-mails to rivals that will allow you to accurately identify the competition's strengths and weaknesses.
Feedback, April 2003
"Psychological Price Optimisation"
The actual price of a product is not necessarily identical to the price experienced by the customer. This opens up considerable room for manoeuvre in terms of optimising pricing in order to make one's own
product stand out positively from the competition.
Feedback, November 2002
"Quality Checks in Call Centres"
An ever-greater proportion of customer contact takes place on the phone.
The customer calls a hotline number and is transferred to a call centre.
This makes it all the more vital for companies to continuously evaluate
these call centres, because ultimately they are the interface with every
company's most important resource: the customer.
Feedback, September 2002
"Process-oriented Website Evaluation"
Nowadays, a company's Internet presence is an integral part of customer communication, yet at the same time it poses an ongoing challenge because customers' expectations are constantly rising.
However, it is not only the design of the website that is important; the processes behind it have to be right too.
Feedback, June 2002
"Implementation-focused Market Research"
Market research, with its highly developed and increasingly sophisticated methods,
delivers insights concerning the needs of customers. However, this knowledge alone
is not enough, because it is only the deduction, prioritisation,
and implementation of concrete measures that makes companies successful.
Feedback, September 2001
"Benchmarking for Company Management"
Benchmarks help companies to set their priorities correctly. It often happens that possible
competitive advantages only become apparent once one makes comparisons with rival companies.
Feedback, July 2001