Measuring sampling experience of Pilsner Urquell with iPick SMS research

From March through to May 2011 Richmond Marketing commissioned iReach to perform SMS research on Pilsner Urquell sampling participants using iReach’s new iPick mobile research service.

The aim of the project was to measure the effectiveness of Richmond’s free samples of Pilsner Urquell which were given out to pub-goers in Ireland, by finding out if the samples made a favourable impression and created an intention to purchase the product over a period of time after initial sampling had taken place.

Participants were asked to provide their mobile phone number and some basic personal details for the purposes of the study.

In wave 1, respondents were sent an SMS either 2 or 3 days after sampling had taken place asking how much of the product they consumed on the night of sampling, how much they enjoyed their free sample, and how likely they were to try Pilsner Urquell again in the future.

In wave 2, respondents were sent an SMS 4 weeks after sampling asking on how many occasions they had drunk Pilsner Urquell since the sampling night and how likely they were to drink it again in the future.

Results of the study were very positive and justified Richmond’s use of the free sampling campaign:

35% of respondents indicated that they were very unlikely to have tried Pilsner Urquell if they hadn’t received a free sample

73% of wave 2 respondents had drank Pilsner Urquell on at least 1 occasion in the 4 weeks since product sampling

26% of respondents said they will definitely drink Pilsner Urquell again in the future

31% enjoyed their free sample of Pilsner Urquell a lot

The new Irish female consumer and the channels that influence her

-By Oisin Byrne, MD iReach

I recently spoke at Purse Power, a seminar on the increasing impact Irish females have on consumption. In my presentation I discussed the change in Irish females’ consumption patterns and the media channels which are influencing the purchasing behaviour of the modern Irish female consumer.

Irish females and consumption – the figures:

Research carried out by iReach exclusively for the Purse Power event underlined the influence women have on consumption in Ireland. According to the research data Irish women influence 89% of all consumer purchases where they have a direct role in buying, including a massive 97% of food and retail, pharmaceuticals, and new homes purchasing. They also influence over 90% of purchases for holidays, healthcare, and financial services.

Even more importantly, 58% of all consumer purchases in Ireland are made by females, from food and retail through to homes, holidays, cars, and PC’s. It is clear that the Irish female consumer has moved from being the “grocery mum” stereotype of old, responsible for one part of household consumption, to an ever more influential decision-maker across a broad range of products and services.

Irish females and marketing

Women accounting for 58% of Irish purchasing becomes particularly important for marketers in light of another statistic: 41% of Irish women across all purchase categories feel that advertisers don’t understand them. This figure is higher among investment (54%), automotive (44%), and healthcare (43%) advertisers, and lower (38%) with food advertisers. These statistics pose some interesting questions to marketers, particularly in those sectors performing poorly – what are they doing currently that makes women feel disillusioned, and how do they begin to connect in a more meaningful way with Irish women in order to make them feel valued and understood.

During the research process, iReach took financial services as a case study sector and unearthed several key factors which are affecting Irish females’ perception of financial advertisers, many of which are also impacting other advertisers. The key factors were:

• Shifting brand power from company to consumer – consumers more informed, aware and powerful. More channels for word of mouth (WOM).
• Falling levels of trust in business, government, and media.
• Impact of the recession.
• Ever changing gender roles.

So how can marketers reconnect with this key group that is diverse, powerful, informed, and currently feeling like they’re not being listened to?

Reaching females – social media

The key to marketers reconnecting with Irish women lies in harnessing the power of social media. In Ireland, 50% of females use social networks everyday, with the most regular users women in the 18-34 age group. Of this segment 45% check social networks first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It’s also interesting to note that 72% of all women online regularly visit a social network site compared to 60% of men. Another major difference between the genders is that Facebook is seen by women as more of a central point for news, content, and entertainment in their lives than men’s. Social media, and Facebook in particular, is now the major way to reach the majority of female consumers in Ireland today, and it affords marketers a massive opportunity to connect with a growing number of Irish women in a meaningful way through a medium that is increasingly important to them.

Social media impact

Due to its popularity and the level of involvement and interaction it brings, social media has had a major impact on Irish female consumption patterns, with 76% of women claiming that positive or negative social media comments have directly affected their purchase intentions. 80% of females also said a positive recommendation will reinforce a purchase decision, while 71% claimed a negative comment has changed their mind about a purchase decision in the past. What is also of interest to marketers is that twice as many females as males start an online product search at the retailer’s website instead of at a search engine, which gives the potential to control the information flow in a better way.

Traditional media v social media

Even with the popularity of social media and online among marketers, traditional media still remains the most impactful and recalled medium among Irish females, with TV the most effective of all available channels. iReach research showed that TV ads were better at driving brand value and awareness, while internet advertising’s strength was its effectiveness at providing information and driving decision-making.

However, when the power of word of mouth is factored in, the impact of media channels is changed drastically, with personal recommendations and online social network recommendations more important than traditional media in their influence on Irish female consumers’ purchase behaviour.

Summary

From the research data it is clear that Irish females today have more influence than ever on a wider range of purchase decisions. They have a major say in the purchase of healthcare, financial services, homes, and cars, as well as the more traditional food and retail. The fact that women account for 58% of all purchases in Ireland is a major wakeup call for marketers as they need to shift priorities to avoiding alienating key segments.

So far marketers in general have been slow to adapt to the new female consumer and this is something that needs to be addressed as a major priority. Social media represents a great opportunity for marketers to reconnect with Irish women and drive positive WOM. Advocacy is now key for restoring trust and confidence, and with the proliferation of online, there is increased scope for fostering and encouraging positive conversations around a brand. This will lead to increased return on investment across all channels and allow marketers to reconnect with Irish women.

Move over Influencers – It’s all about Advocacy.

Move over influencers; advocates are more valuable to brands. It’s a fact that customer advocacy bring more life and longer term value for a brand.

 Influencers can be bought; but may not always deliver while Advocates love your brand and tell others too

 “If you love your customers, they will love you back and tell others about it.”

 Here is the great thing about advocates. They love your brand even if you don’t give them the time of day. They are vocal, passionate and are not afraid to give your brand praise (on and off line). And, while they may not have hundreds of Twitter followers or thousands of RSS subscribers, the conversation with them is always authentic. Advocates outnumber influencers by a long shot. Can you imagine for a second what the impact would be if you paid just a little attention to your advocates? It’s not hard to do at all; and the great thing about it is that they don’t label themselves and are very easy to approach. While influencers consider themselves influencers; advocates don’t really care. And, that makes your job so much easier to generate positive word of mouth and recommendations.

 Tapping into the emotional equity

 There is definitely an emotional connection between a brand and its advocates. It’s the reason why we reamin loyal to a brand. It’s not out of habit, convenience or price that consumers love a brand. The connection can stem from just about anything – a previous brand experience, the value the product brings to someone’s life, its swagger or the product simply kicks ass. When a brand actually becomes human and spends time nurturing their advocates; the emotional equity will grow exponentially. And that’s a hard bond to break.

 Advocates affect the sales funnel

 Marketers spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out what messages resonate with customers; and which channels have the greatest conversion rates. We are talking about millions in media spend that aims to drive marketing messages in each of the key sales or marketing funnel phases. And smart marketers are also creating metrics models for each phase of the funnel to measure the effectiveness of these messages.

 The sales funnel is evolving, especially as we think about advocacy. In this model, customer advocacy is at the centre. It’s meant to illustrate the power of social media and how advocates aid and influence their micro communities down the sales funnel through authentic messages (or everyday conversation) between brands and consumers.

It’s circular in nature because as a brand invests and drives customer advocacy; they will, in turn, influence others at various phases of the purchase funnel; thus creating a cycle of influence and advocacy that the brand is facilitating.

Share your views at our new BlogSpot site at http://ireachonline.blogspot.com

Your Brand and Social Media – Help or Hindrance

The Big Opportunity from Social Media: Understanding Consumers Online

Marketing professionals around the world are recognising that social media represents not only a way of communicating with customers but also a strategic data source for making decisions. Consumers are sharing a constant stream of opinions, emotions, and behaviours online, and this chatter represents valuable information about what they are thinking and feeling about your brand.

 The social media universe is growing at an astonishing rate. According to the iReach/Carat Digital Pulse monthly media tracker, almost two-thirds of online Consumers in Ireland are now use social media.

1.  Facebook reports that the average user creates 90 pieces of content each month.
2. As many as 80% of consumers report that they do online research before they purchase many products, from consumer goods to financial services.

With this volume of data available, those companies that can break through the noise to truly understand their consumers have unique opportunities to:

•  Optimise their messaging, advertising, and packaging
• Identify “hot topics,” market trends, and unmet consumer needs
• Measure and monitor their social media brand, its drivers and inhibitors

 Where Is Social Media Analysis Today?

To date, businesses have used social media data primarily to monitor the quantity of conversations about their brand (“buzz”) and to get a quick read on sentiment, that is, whether online posts are positive, negative, or neutral.  In order to realize the strategic value of social media data, businesses need answers to three key questions:

•  Can sentiment be a useful measure to capture from social media?
• How accurate is the data analysis upon which sentiment data relies?
• What actionable information could we extract from social media other than sentiment?

Accurate Sentiment Analysis Reveals Social Brand Health Sentiment analysis focuses on analysing the content of online posts, determining whether they are positive, negative, or neutral, and aggregating the sentiments detected into a single generic score. Sentiment analysis can serve as a practical, cost-effective way to track general brand health over time, assuming you have a way to measure sentiment accurately.  

What methods or tools do you use to analyse such data?

Engagement and Advocacy – 11 tips for 2011

As each one of us is a customer ourselves, we should understand customer experience management like the back of our hand. Yet, for many marketers customer experience seems a bit mysterious, and certainly has a myriad of definitions.  Customer experience and advocacy management is a dedication to serving customer needs from their perspective and research techniques can enhance how organisations react to changing levels of satisfaction and advocacy, where your customers promote or recommend your brand to those that detract from your brand through negative word of mouth.

iReach propose that customer experience management must have the following 10 qualities in order to consistently win your customers (and prospects) heart to win a share of their wallet:

•  Perspective (the experience is defined entirely by the customer, not the brand).
• Preventive (the customer gravitates toward the easiest and nicest brands that address customers’ needs).
• Duration (encompasses the point from which customers become aware they have a need until they say that need is extinct).
• Dynamic (the experience evolves with the customers’ context – the purpose and circumstances of their need, and overall experience reference points).
• Choice (the experience is built on trust and mutual respect for brand; advocacy is more important than loyalty).
• Multi-faceted (the experience is measured by functional and emotional (social and personal) judgments related to the customers’ expectations).
• Operational (the experience is shaped by all the touch-points to an organisation’s processes, policies and culture, in addition to the physical product or service associated with the customer’s need).
• Integrative (the experience is impacted by the degree of alignment among touch-points, technologies, channels, etc).
• Anticipatory (the brand experience is on-going, where the present and future are equally or more important than the past).
• Transparent (the customer sees through the brand’s motives and intentions, and favours genuine sincerity for the customer’s well-being).
• Advocate (the customer is proactive about recommending the brand experience for friends and family generation positive word of mouth)

Integrate Social Networking in Marketing Plans

Procter & Gamble Co.’s top digital-advertising executive had some serious reservations about Facebook as a marketing tool.  Now, the world’s biggest marketer wants all of its brands to get a presence on Facebook this year and has recently opened a research-and-development office not far from Facebook’s headquarters, in an effort to co-develop capabilities in digital and social media.

It’s a clear sign that Facebook, by its sheer mass of 400 million global users and the leading Social Networking site in Ireland is a marketing force not even the world’s biggest media spender can ignore.

“What Facebook does is connect people into communities,” said P&G Global Brand-Building Officer Marc Pritchard. “It’s also just a pretty good way to reach consumers through messages.”  That doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on brand or campaign websites, he said. “You can use Facebook and websites in different ways,” he said. “You can go deeper in content on your website in many cases.”

Focus on partnerships

Facebook tried banner ads earlier this year and faced a user backlash, so abandoned this appraoch for Social Ads. But Facebook’s focus on integrated partnerships — lucrative or not — in lieu of display advertising is a big reason it’s at least on the same page as brands, rather than pushing products marketers did not want.

Clearly the messaging part stood out when P&G launched its Winter Olympics sponsorship with a 60-second “To their moms, they’ll always be kids” ad from US Agency Wieden & Kennedy. Most of the 18 P&G brands involved in the corporate effort posted messages on their Facebook walls the next day linking to the ad on YouTube. Click here to see P&G Ad

Some, such as Olay, put their pages up for the first time just this month, ahead of the Winter games, garnering about 9,000 fans within the first 10 days. Pringles, with 2.9 million fans, already had a substantial presence that had grown largely organically.

The reality is that branded Facebook pages, still relatively rare only a year ago, became commonplace for a variety of marketers in the past year, particularly as Facebook gave them a chance to control and own their URLs such as Facebook.com/Pringles. Bebo also offers such branded pagesbut target a younger demographic

Among the more-interesting signs of Facebook’s emergence as a marketing tool over the past year have been marketers trying to channel the intrinsic power of the social networking site rather than using it as a place to host content they might once have parked on their brand sites.

We expect to see new and creative ways marketers will find to use Facebook’s ability to connect with consumers. With the biggest consumer brands now clearly committed to tapping the network’s potential, we’ll soon see more globally and locally.

The Importance of Pricing Strategies

There are many cost effective ways to get a fix on pricing strategy. Pricing strategy surveys and value based research are often ignored by product and marketing managers faced with determining the merits of increasing margins by raising prices, or the likelihood of increasing revenues by decreasing prices. As we plan for the end of 2010 and early 2011, changing economic conditions mean that getting the ‘price right’ is more important than ever as there is no room for error.

iReach Research methods and techniques makes pricing strategy surveys straightforward, so you can get the best results in these challenging times for business and consumer buyers in Ireland.

Pricing strategy surveys and online pricing studies can be conducted using a variety of methodological approaches including price rating scales, Van Westendorp models, and conjoints; all of which provide key data to forecast and predict how price changes will impact unit sales and underling profits.

Price Rating Scale
Rating scales are often used to provide graded scales that indicate importance or acceptability of a given concept. Their application within online pricing surveys usually involves determining the degree of importance that consumers attach to a given price level. This approach reports the overall importance of price and not the optimal price for a given product or brand.

Direct Pricing Measures
In direct measurement scales, respondents are asked what the likelihood would be for them to purchase a product if the price increased by €5, €10, €15, €20, etc. Many different ways to include premium measures into the pricing scale exist and can be implemented for specific pricing studies by iReach.

Van Westendorp Model
The underused Van Westendorp method uses a series of questions to identify key psychological price points for buyers to help Product and Market Managers under how pricing impact on product consideration and purchase impact.

In order to have an effective Van Westendorp study, you need to create a price scale in which lower is not always better and there is differentiation between buyers and non-buyers of the product. Furthermore, the price-value of the product must be measured so that an accurate view of price perceptions and propensity to buy are included.

Experimental Test Markets
Online pricing experiments provide an interesting approach to comparing price changes and their effects in “real world situations.” Different market segments may be chosen to receive different product, pricing, or purchase situation information. For example, prices may vary by distribution location (i.e., convenience store, retail/grocery store, and online), and the likelihood of product purchase in each of these retail channels can be compared.
The use of graphics in the form of pictures of the store and product provide a window to the world that assures more realistic and accurate price elasticity estimates.

Conjoint Analysis
Conjoint is used in more detailed price only studies to measure the combination of price and product feature. Ideally suited to Online Research methods and especially powerful when combined with rich media so organisations can visualize product features or branding.

Many Brand or Marketing managers do not invest in research to support pricing decisions and often act on gut feel. In today’s marketplace their is no room for error, so such an approach is high risk when good data is easily captured to remove such guess work. Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves…..invest a small amount to avoid the loss of a big amount….

Once Skeptics big Brands embrace Facebook

Procter & Gamble, Unilever Integrate Social Network Into Marketing Plans

Procter & Gamble Co.’s top digital-advertising executive had some serious reservations about Facebook as a marketing tool. Now, the world’s biggest marketer wants all of its brands to get a presence on Facebook this year and has recently opened a research-and-development office in Palo Alto, Calif., not far from Facebook’s headquarters, in an effort to co-develop capabilities in digital and social media.

It’s a clear sign that Facebook, by its sheer mass of 400 million global users and status as the digital world’s biggest time-sink, is a marketing force not even the world’s biggest media spender can ignore.

P&G rival Unilever and beverage giant Coca-Cola have begun shifting attention in digital marketing from campaign websites to more-permanent relationships with consumers on their Facebook pages. And other marketers such as Honda and Ikea are moving beyond the “planting the flag” stage to find new ways of using Facebook’s intrinsic ability to connect with consumers.

“What Facebook does is connect people into communities,” said P&G Global Brand-Building Officer Marc Pritchard. “It’s also just a pretty good way to reach consumers through messages.” That doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on brand or campaign websites, he said. “You can use Facebook and websites in different ways,” he said. “You can go deeper in content on your website in many cases.”

Focus on partnerships

Aside from hopes that marketers will buy more of its Social Ads, none of this has put much cash in its tills yet. But Facebook’s focus on integrated partnerships — lucrative or not — in lieu of display advertising (it abandoned banners earlier this year) is a big reason it’s at least on the same page as brands, rather than pushing products marketers did not want.

Clearly the messaging part stood out when P&G launched its Winter Olympics sponsorship with a 60-second “To their moms, they’ll always be kids” ad from Wieden & Kennedy. Most of the 18 P&G brands involved in the corporate effort posted messages on their Facebook walls the next day linking to the ad on YouTube.

Some, such as Olay, put their pages up for the first time just this month, a week ahead of the games, garnering about 9,000 fans within the first 10 days. Pringles, with 2.9 million fans, already had a substantial presence that had grown largely organically. The men’s personal-care brand from Unilever, which has long used disposable campaign websites, is instead channeling consumers toward its Facebook page now. The page has become a place to host viral videos the brand launches, and Axe recently added a human face aimed at appealing to its male clientele — Jennie from Axe, actually part of the brand’s team at PR shop Edelman.

The men’s personal-care brand from Unilever, which has long used disposable campaign websites, is instead channeling consumers toward its Facebook page now. The page has become a place to host viral videos the brand launches, and Axe recently added a human face aimed at appealing to its male clientele — Jennie from Axe, actually part of the brand’s team at PR shop Edelman.

It remains to be seen, however, whether brands’ Facebook pages will become a force even bigger than their own brand websites.

As of last week, Axe’s Facebook page had fewer than half the fans that its most recent campaign website — AxeHairCrisisRelief.org — attracted in one month last June in the U.S. alone, per Compete.com. The 200,000 fans of P&G’s Pampers on Facebook are dwarfed by 1.5 million monthly visitors (per Compete) to Pampers.com, which anchors one of several online relationship programs with seven-figure databases for P&G brands.

Then again, in many cases those databases have been in development for more than a decade. And, as a counter-example, Coca-Cola’s 5 million Facebook fans easily outnumber the roughly 300,000 monthly U.S. visitors to its brand website, and came largely without the brand’s involvement, or, until last year, even formal consent.

The reality is that branded Facebook pages, still relatively rare only a year ago, became commonplace for a variety of marketers in the past year, particularly as Facebook gave them a chance to control and own their vanity URLs such as Facebook.com/Axe.

Channeling rather than parking

It remains to be seen, however, whether brands’ Facebook pages will become a force even bigger than their own brand websites. American Honda Motors Co. did increase the fans of its Facebook page nearly fivefold to more than 300,000 through its “Everybody Knows Someone Who Loves a Honda” campaign, launched in October. But the point really was to point out that everyone knows a Honda lover, and to that end the campaign website has calculated more than 3 million friends of self-proclaimed Honda lovers.

And Ikea in August used one of Facebook’s most-popular functions — photo tagging — to promote the opening of a new store in Malmo, Sweden. Agency Forsman & Bodenfors created a Facebook profile for the store’s manager, Gordon Gustavsson, and posted about a dozen photos of Ikea showrooms. Whoever was first to tag his name on the items in the pictures won them, encouraging people to tell their friends about the deals (at least after tagging one for themselves).

Among the more-interesting signs of Facebook’s emergence as a marketing tool over the past year have been marketers trying to channel the intrinsic power of the networking site rather than using it as a place to host content they might once have parked on their brand sites.

American Honda Motors Co. did increase the fans of its Facebook page nearly fivefold to more than 300,000 through its “Everybody Knows Someone Who Loves a Honda” campaign, launched in October. But the point really was to point out that everyone knows a Honda lover, and to that end the campaign website has calculated more than 3 million friends of self-proclaimed Honda lovers.

It’s hard to know what additional ways marketers will find to use Facebook’s ability to connect with consumers. But with the biggest ones now clearly committed to tapping the network’s potential, they’ll soon find more.