buginsights - Tumblr blog

buginsights · 9 years ago

Text

Case Study: Retail Electricity Provider Better Understands Customer Needs to Improve their Products

August 24, 2016

Often times businesses stick to what they know and never venture out, because expanding into a new product space can be difficult and intimidating. Branching out, when done correctly, posses a significant opportunity and can lead to broader differentiation and growing market share. However, in order to do this successfully, you must first understand what your customers want and need is the first step to offering a competitive product. Recently, a Texas based company decided to expand its business into a completely new product space: home security. Unfortunately the initial product launch did not meet expected sales targets, and not wanting to throw in the towel on their new business venture, the company enlisted Bug Insights for help on better understanding customer needs. Using Product Optimization and Conjoint, we determined how the product could be redesigned in order to better meet customer's needs. Product Optimization blends customer preference data and financial considerations (impact to gross profit) to help businesses deliver the most effective products to customers, while remaining competitive. Interested in the results of our case study? Want to learn more? Click here to learn more about how to identify and meet customers' unmet needs, and capture a market.

ABOUT BUG INSIGHTS

Bug Insights is a marketing analytics company that provides prescriptive analytics to help organizations make better business decisions. Using fact-driven data, Bug Insights consults clients how to best optimize the return on their marketing investments. Bug Insights assists organizations with a range of actionable research methodologies including focus groups, conjoint, A/B testing, data mining, and trade-off analysis. The company advises organizations of all sizes across a range of industry verticals including financial services, public policy, transportation, telecommunications, hospitality, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, higher education, and energy.

Founded in 2014, Bug Insights is headquartered in Houston and Atlanta. For more information, please Contact Bug Insights at 713.425.4168, [email protected] or visit www.buginsights.com.

#maketing #conjoint #electricity #Business Solution #product optimization

0 notes

buginsights · 9 years ago

Text

Case Study: Retail Electricity Provider Attempting to Understand Consumer Behavior

August 17, 2016

Usually, giving your consumers the power to choose is a good thing. This can only be true, however, if your organization is not loosing revenue in the meantime. In Texas, a state approved website for the sale of retail electricity has been causing headaches for both consumers and for electricity suppliers because of that particular issue. Originally designed to be an unbiased resource for customers, the PowertoChoose.org site has now become a forum for electricity suppliers to create new, unheard of brands and offer completely irrational, deceptive pricing structures. A well-known Texas electricity supplier engaged Bug Insights to help them to better understand how consumers are using the site. Using conjoint, we found how power companies can best structure their products in order to compete with the irrationally low pricing structures and minimize long-term losses. Interested in the results of our case study? Want to learn more? Click here to learn more about how to identify and meet customers' unmet needs, and capture a market.

ABOUT BUG INSIGHTS

Founded in 2014, Bug Insights is headquartered in Houston and Atlanta. For more information, please Contact Bug Insights at 713.425.4168, [email protected] or visit www.buginsights.com.

#buginsights #marketresearch #texas #consumer

0 notes

buginsights · 9 years ago

Text

The Most Influential Generation: Leveraging Eye Tracking Technology to Understand How Millennial Women Absorb Information through Advertisements.

August 2, 2016

Initially written off as children who have been given too many participation trophies – the Millennial generation (18 to 34 year- old Americans) has now come of age. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Millennials make up nearly 1⁄4 of the US population, making them the largest generational demographic in America, and with nearly 80 million Millennials in the U.S. alone, this generational demographic has started to impact the economy as their buying power grows.

A Neilson study found that households in the US with at least one Millennial accounts for 37% of the total dollars spent in the U.S. and 31% of the trips taken annually. These households spend roughly 15% more than the average U.S. household. According to Accenture, Millennials in the U.S. alone spend approximately $600 billion annually. No longer teenagers living with mom and dad, many Millennials are now in their 20’s and 30’s, building careers, married, and having families of their own. Accenture reports that by 2020, annual spending for Millennials in the U.S. will grow to $1.4 trillion, making them the generation with the largest buying power.

In light of this generational shift, marketers too have shifted their focus, attempting to understand how to reach this digitally connected, easily distracted, socially minded, multi-tasking generation. However, even with this change in focus, marketers still seem to be ignoring a large and very influential demographic: Millennial women.

Women in general are responsible for creating and influencing a significant amount of wealth. Women in the U.S. with income of at least $100,000 (or investible assets of $500,000) control over $11.2 trillion – which is 39% of the nation’s total investable assets. Not only are women controlling the investible assists of their households, but they are also becoming primary breadwinners and business owners generating and controlling a growing amount of dollars.

Millennial women are the driving force of this shift; in fact, these women spend seven times more than their parents did at the same age, even adjusted for in inflation. A study conducted by FutureCast found that of the 6.2 million affluent millennials in the U.S. (those making an annual income of $100,000 or more), 64% are female. With women graduating from college at a higher rate than their male counterparts, and female hourly earnings slowly becoming more in line with the hourly earnings of men (92% - still not equal, but much closer to parity than it’s been for generations past), Millennial women have captured a significant stake in an ability to impact the economy, and should be a significant consideration – if not the primary focus – for marketers targeting the Millennial generation. Millennial women are exercising more power than ever interms of purchasing, but are not being targeted by marketers or brands for anything other than women-centric products, and even those sometimes fall short of reaching this specific demographic in a way they relate to.

“Boomers bought stuff because they needed it; Xers buy because they want it. Gen Y . . . are easier targets, because they have grown up in a culture of pure consumerism. They’re more likely to buy because they see buying as a part of life.”

-Rob Frankel, author of The Revenge of Brand X

USING EYE TRACKING TO UNDERSTAND VIEWING BEHAVIOR

These women are financially independent, driven, technologically savvy, but they are overextended and rushed for time. A study conducted by Radar Research, suggests that Millennial women live a faster pace of life and are easily distracted, which impacts the way that they consume advertisements. They've been besieged by media their entire lives, making them incredibly savvy in the way they digest all types of advertisements.

The Radar study concluded that like many consumers, Millennial women are unlikely to click on digital advertising; however, they are much more aware of these ads. When asked if they have discovered a new product via an online ad that they saw but did not actually click on nearly 40% reported that they had. Conversely, just over a quarter of Gen X women said the same. This raises a question around how these women view advertisements. What about advertisements catches their attention? How does their viewing behavior differ from women older than 35? How can marketers design ads that are more likely to get these women to take notice?

To answer these questions, Bug Insights designed and implemented an eye tracking study. 25 women from Houston Texas were included in the study. Participants were segmented into two age categories: Millennials (women age 18-35) and Non- Millennials (women over the age of 35). 13 Millennials and 12 Non-Millennials participated in the study – a total of 25 women – which was conducted in June of 2016. Each participant was asked to first self-report on a few key demographics, including age. These self-reported demographics were used to segment the data for analysis. The study included 16 print advertisements; each participant saw the same 16 ads presented in random order. To capture the Eye Tracking data, a Tobii X2-30 screen based tracker was used. This tracker is affixed to a screen, allowing participants unrestricted movement and captures data at 30Hz. Tobii Pro Study was leveraged for data analysis.

Results demonstrated that consistently Millennial women spent half as much time viewing advertisements as Non-Millennial women did. On average Millennials spent just 3.3 seconds viewing the ads; for Non-Millennials average time per ad was 6.5 seconds. Interestingly the patterns and the way the media is viewed is fairly similar; however, Millennial women just appear to be more efficient at digesting the information. This is not surprising, given their lifelong exposure to technology and their strong ability to multitask.

For example, the images below, show a heat map of the viewing patterns for Millennials vs. Non-Millennials for one of the ads tested. For this specific ad, Millennials spent on average just under 4 seconds viewing it; Non-Millennials averaged about 7.5 seconds.

Looking at the heat map view side by side, it is easy to see that viewing patterns are similar – both demographics, essentially

view the add from top to bottom and from left to right. However, one key difference exists: the Millennial segment basically skips right over the small text just below the image that says “The stylish XT5 combines effortless power and progressive technologies so that you can focus on what lies ahead”; whereas the Non-Millennial segment spends almost the same amount of time on both text sections (the “Dare to ask, where next? Introducing the first ever XT5” text above the image and “The stylish” text just below the image). This suggests that while Millennials are still able to process information more quickly, they still will not absorb everything a Non-Millennial will. In the case of this advertisement, it may be problematic, as the text that was overlooked provides most of the detail about the car being advertised, and given a Millennial’s need to make a connection with the brand and the product, this ad will miss the mark.

Another advertisement tested as a part of the study shows the same results. A Gaze Plot indicates that both segments viewed the advertisement from top to bottom; however again Millennials do not linger over the add. Their average time of viewing

for this specific test was just over 3 seconds; for Non-Millennials, average time was just over 6 seconds. And again, Millennials followed a similar gaze pattern here, however notice the time spent (indicated by the size of the dots) was shorter and they almost completely failed to notice the “Drink responsibly” text at the bottom of the advertisement. For this specific advertisement, that may be ok. While obviously this company wants its consumers to drink responsibly, that is not the key focus of this message, and likely would not be a reason that Millennials are drawn to this brand over another.

Catching the eye of Millennials is challenging; despite their ability to process information more quickly, they still get distracted more easily and move on more quickly than their older counterparts. In the Eye Tracking study that was conducted, even advertisements that had significantly more text than others, did not catch the eye of Millennials for significantly more time – for example, some ads with large blocks of text prompted non-Millennials to take nearly a full second longer than the average length of viewing; Millennials instead took just an additional two tenths of a second. The car ad pictured to the left was one of the ads tested that included a significant block of text. For this ad, Non-Millennials averaged 8.6 seconds to view the ad; Millennials took just 3.75 seconds

What does this mean for marketers today?

Millennial women are the first generation to grow up in a truly digital age. They have been inundated with technology and advertisements since they can remember, and as a result they have developed an ability to quickly digest information and a very low tolerance for stagnation.

This female demographic needs constant entertainment and engagement, and has developed an incredible ability to sort through chaos and overwhelming amounts of information. Busy schedules, constant activity and significant drive means that women demand that information is disseminated quickly and efficiently. It is imperative that marketers use this information to their advantage. When designing advertisements, keep this demographic and the following behaviors observed in this study in mind: 1) a rapid assessment of advertisements, 2) the tendency to ignore multiple text blocks, and 3) the propensity to move on quickly no matter the amount of text. These insights should inform advertisement design and should result in creatives that are engaging but succinct. Calls to action must be clear, uncluttered and communicated efficiently, and important information should never be communicated with small fonts, long paragraphs, or at the foot of ads. Millennial women present a huge opportunity for marketers today, and with their growing ability to influence purchase decisions and impact the economy, marketers cannot afford to ignore this demographic in advertisement and creative design.

ABOUT BUG INSIGHTS

Founded in 2014, Bug Insights is headquartered in Houston and Atlanta. For more information, please Contact Bug Insights

at 713.425.4168, [email protected] or visit www.buginsights.com.

#buginsights #marketing #consulting

0 notes

buginsights · 9 years ago

Text

Annual Enrollment: What would your employees say?

July 21, 2016

Communication really is key. Unfortunately, many businesses are missing the mark when it comes to annual enrollment execution, which is why it has become such a dreaded task for many. As health care plan options have become more complicated, so too has the Annual Enrollment process, and as a result, there is a good chance that your enrollment process is frustrating your employees.

Every company, in every industry, wants to offer a smooth, annual experience for their employees, but comparing benefit plans and options can be extremely discouraging for those who do not fully understand the process.

To ensure the process is seamless and simple, you must quantitatively understand the employee experience from end-to-end, only then are you able to determine gaps and identify opportunities in order to improve on the existing process and make Annual Enrollment simpler for all.

Want to learn more? Click here to learn more about how to identify and meet employees' unmet needs.

About Bug Insights

Bug Insights is a human capital and marketing analytics company that provides prescriptive analytics to help organizations make better business decisions. Using fact-driven data, Bug Insights consults clients how to best optimize the return on their investments. The company assists organizations with a range of actionable research methodologies including focus groups, conjoint, A/B testing, data mining, and trade-off analysis. Bug Insights advises organizations of all sizes across a range of industry verticals.

Connect With Us

Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: [email protected]

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

LinkedIn: Bug Insights

0 notes

buginsights · 9 years ago

Text

New Study by Bug Insights!

February 18, 2016

#market research #buginsights #utilities #new study #MRX #houston #atlanta

0 notes

buginsights · 9 years ago

Text

What’s the Deal with the Customer Satisfaction Conundrum?

January 21, 2016

For two main reasons, conventional wisdom suggests that monitoring customer satisfaction makes good business sense. The first is that satisfied customers are likely to continue to buy from and/or continue to conduct business with a firm, while dissatisfied customers are likely to take their business elsewhere. The second is satisfied customers tell others about their positive experience, while dissatisfied customers may tell even more people about their negative experiences. The question is, however, are these truths universal?

Customer satisfaction measurement is one of the most widely used and accepted management tools available. Interestingly, several studies suggest that while customer satisfaction measurement is a commonly used tool, many firms are less than completely satisfied with the results.

An executive can gain a strategic and tactical advantage in staffing, product development and resource allocation by understanding the relationship between customer satisfaction and a customer’s future purchase behavior. Surprisingly, relatively few studies in marketing have examined the relationship between customer satisfaction and future purchase behavior. Fewer still examine customer satisfaction and future behavior in a competitive environment. While it is common for larger firms to track customer satisfaction at regular intervals (monthly or quarterly), analyzing of this satisfaction data, specifically how it relates to behavior, is less common.

Most customer satisfaction modeling and measuring tools ignore the linkage between customer satisfaction and future behavior, they ignore the importance of price in the product / service delivery value proposition, and lastly they fail to examine customer satisfaction within the confines of a broader competitive arena. Finally, firms do not put all of these pieces together (including the cost of delivering service to customers) to determine how customer satisfaction can be optimized.

In Measuring Customer Satisfaction, Tim examines how satisfaction drives future purchase behavior for mobile phones in the western Canadian marketplace, and how an understanding of this relationship between satisfaction and behavior can augment regular customer satisfaction tracking data.

For a copy of Glowa’s Measuring Customer Satisfaction: Exploring Customer Satisfaction’s Relationship with Purchase Behavior, click here: http://www.amazon.com/Measuring-Customer-Satisfaction-Satisfactions-Relationship-ebook/dp/B00NTCZ5MO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453398109&sr=8-1&keywords=measuring+customer+satisfaction+tim+glowa

About Bug Insights

Connect With Us

Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: [email protected]

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

LinkedIn: Bug Insights

0 notes

buginsights · 10 years ago

Text

Millennial Job-Hopping: Helpful or Hurtful? And How HR Can Help.

June 26, 2015

It is impossible to ignore the presence of millennials (1980-1995) entering the workforce. However, the trend of fast turnover with these employees can cause some concern for hiring managers. With the downturn in the economy coming at a time when many of college graduates were attempting to find full-time employment for the first time, employers should not be surprised to see multiple positions listed on a millennial's resume - potentially in a short period of time. According to the Future Workplace’s “Multiple Generations @ Work” survey of 1,189 employees and 150 manages, 91% of millennials expect to stay in the same job for less than three years. This statistic demonstrates the general outlook for millennial retention.

This quick turnover can be perceived as either beneficial or detrimental in the eyes of a hiring manager. Varied job experiences provide significant opportunities for growth and development, allow for potential exposure to different industries and challenges, and can provide millennials with the opportunity for more frequent promotion. These assets can demonstrate significant value to a hiring manager.

Barrie Hopson, an author and career consultant, has noticed the changing perceptions of millennial applicants with a ‘chronic job hopping’ past. “Before, if you wanted something other than the single-track you were considered unreliable, a dilettante,” said Hopson in a recent interview. “But now employers are beginning to understand the benefits of employees who wish to develop a broad skill set.”

However, job hopping has a downside. Moving too quickly from one position to another could be detrimental to careers. Leaving a number of jobs in a short amount of time could substantiate stereotypes that millennials lack focus and get bored quickly. This could also hurt a millennial’s chance of landing another position, as hiring managers may think twice before hiring someone who seems like a potential flight risk from the beginning. Chronic job hopping, then, can send the wrong message to hiring managers who desire a stable and dependable workforce.

And How Can HR Help?

From the perspective of an HR manager, there are ways to improve satisfaction, and thus, retention of the millennial workforce. According to a study conducted by PwC, drivers of retention for millennials can be categorized into four groups: balancing work load, engaging work and development opportunities, people and teams, competitive pay and job opportunities.

More than the Baby Boomers, millennials value a work-life balance. Because of this, organizations should seek to offer flexibility in hours and schedules. In the Future Workplace study “Multiple Generations @ Work,” workplace flexibility trumped both compensation and career progression in importance. Due to this fact, it is crucial that managers understand this generation’s tendency to value flexibility over compensation. Understanding and appreciating the needs of your workers is the first step in establishing and retaining a successful workforce.

In addition to the mainstream benefits of compensation and professional development and more specific to the younger generation, millennials value an emotional connection with their team and supervisors. It is important for your organization to build a sense of community by emphasizing teamwork, establishing a culture of support, and offering employees face-to-face feedback and interaction.

By adapting the rewards program offered and developing a welcoming and comfortable environment for the millennial generation, workplace satisfaction and therefore, retention, can be maximized.

About Bug Insights

Connect With Us

Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: [email protected]

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

LinkedIn: Bug Insights

#bug insights #market research #millenials #job hopping #analytics #college graduates #careers

0 notes

buginsights · 10 years ago

Text

Marketing to Personality Types

June 8, 2015

While it may be easy to target customers based on demographics like age, location, and gender, this type of segmenting misses out on an important consideration. Despite sharing similar demographic properties, customers will still have different ideas, different wants, different needs, and different personalities. Simply targeting customers based on demographic segment can be unsuccessful. Two customers may be the same in gender, hometown, and age yet one may be interested in getting a phone because it's cheap, and the other may be interested in getting a phone because it will make him/her popular. Because of these differences, marketing to personality rather than demographics is an effective way to better segment target customer populations.

At Bug Insights, we think marketers should employ a two-step process when it comes to marketing to a specific personality types. First, marketers need to deeply understand the needs and preferences of their target personality type. Conjoint analysis may be used in order to measure consumer preferences through a series of simple trade off questions. These trade off questions give the marketer rich insights into the rank order and magnitude of the consumer’s true preference, as the he or she is forced to make choices throughout the exercise. This is a very effective way to understand the underlying needs/preferences of the consumer.

The second step in the process is to understand the attitudes, opinions, and characteristics that make up the specific personality segments that they are targeting. This can be achieved by leveraging typical attitudinal surveys to measure psychographic information. In additional to providing a whole picture of these target customers, these attitudinal questions can provide rich insights into content of messaging, the channel that should be used, etc.

The combination of understanding needs and attitudes allows a marketer to gain insights into both how to reach the target personality type and what that specific type is looking for. The combined information should help to shape the channels used, the types of communications that are leveraged, and the content included. This information should also be used to segment demographics by personality type. The information provides a much richer understanding of the target customer and allows marketers to better connect with and more efficiently sell to the target market. Employing this two step process enables marketers to identify messages that resonate most with identified personality types and should be incorporated into messaging and content in order to more effectively target the desired demographic. This process can be applied in both a mass and direct marketing environment.

About Bug Insights

Connect With Us

Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: [email protected]

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

LinkedIn: Bug Insights

#bug insights #market research #marketing #personalities #analytics

1 note · View note

buginsights · 10 years ago

Text

Correlation Does Not Equal Causation

May 5, 2015

Oftentimes in marketing, we want to forecast the outcome of a certain event – the likelihood a customer will purchase a project for instance, and we can use data and analytics to do so. Many times, however, someone gets tripped up with the concepts of correlation and causality. They are not the same, but are often incorrectly used interchangeably.

Correlation is easy to spot – its just a similar pattern that occurs in two observations, whereas causality looks at how one observation fundamentally impacts the outcome of another. Causality explores the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood to be a consequence of the first event.

Just because two events are correlated does not imply causality between those events. An example here will help.

As a longtime Winnipeg Jets fan, I was extremely disappointed to see the NHL team move to Phoenix in 1995. This spring, unpacking after a move into our new home, I came across some old hockey pucks, including one with a Winnipeg Jets logo, and threw them into our swimming pool to give my kids something to swim for. A few short weeks later, it was announced that Winnipeg was getting another NHL hockey team, as the Atlanta Thrashers were relocating north.

How are these two events related? Certainly one could argue there is a correlation here – I threw an old puck into a swimming pool, and a hockey team moved to back to Winnipeg, but there is absolutely no causality – the action of throwing a hockey puck into a swimming pool in no way shape or form caused the relocation of a hockey team.

While this might be an extreme example, in the marketing world, we are often confronted with similar challenges. Businesses make many decisions, all of which have an impact on how consumers and stakeholders view their products and services – advertising messages and weighting changes, product features are adjusted, direct marketing campaigns are launched, and call center hours are adjusted. Simultaneously, competitors are making similar decisions. Some of these decisions have a strong relationship to an outcome, while others have a weak or non existent relationship. Which ones really matter?

The challenge becomes trying to isolate the cause and effect outcomes, so you can focus on the ones that have the biggest impact. Since causality is a basic assumption of science, the key is to isolate the different elements and observe the impact. In economics, we explore regression models often using pre-existing data, rather than experimental data to infer and understand causality. For instance, the price of grain could be modeled as a function of the amount of rain. We would need to believe there is no reverse causation, in which the price of grain causes rain to fall.

In business, fishbone diagrams are often used to brainstorm the cause and effect relationship.

About Bug Insights

Connect With Us

Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: [email protected]

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

LinkedIn: Bug Insights

#marketresearch #marketing #data #data analysis #data analytics #causation #correlation #buginsights

1 note · View note