| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 21/08/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 18 |
| Copyright: Other |
the net result
this week: market research
Every fortnight, Karen Gee from eDreams.com helps agents and operators to get the most out of the Internet
ONE OF the lesser-known uses of the Internet is as a market research tool. While it’s not necessarily a reason to set up a Web site, it’s a very useful tool if you do have one already.Using the Internet to test customer reaction to new products and services is an interesting concept.
A few months ago, I noticed this idea being demonstrated by high-street retailer Marks and Spencer with the preview of its autumn and winter collection on its site. It showcased certain key, style-led products which represented the main trends of the season and offered them for sale over the Net with a small discount.
Now while there’s nothing new in that in principle, what was interesting was the fact it was using this as an opportunity to test customer feedback to the collections.
By obtaining this earlier indicator of consumer appetites, it could see which key themes and styles were of interest and which were of no interest and was able to use this information to improve its sales forecasts and adjust its orders with suppliers accordingly.
The end result of this exercise was that by tailoring inventory to an early prediction like this, it was able to ensure it had enough of the most popular items, less of the unpopular items – or maybe even cut them altogether – and improve overall profitability.
Most important of all, it was able to do all this very quickly, at a fraction of the price in comparison to the inventory cost and within a closed user group of consumers. It could thereby avoid any damage to its brand. Or maybe that should read any further damage to its brand!
I was very interested by this concept and thought it had great potential for use within our own industry.
How amazing it would be to test new concepts, destinations and services on the Net within a closed user group before committing to the expensive brochure production and distribution costs of a full launch.
Use this opportunity to simply obtain feedback and levels of interest in a product or service, or use this opportunity to carry out a full test, making a particular holiday available for sale only on the Internet and promoting it to a key defined audience of customers. It’s an interesting concept.
One of the other ways you can use the Net for research is as part of your customer-satisfaction strategy. Each month you can select a fixed number of people from three customer types – those who visited your site but didn’t enquire or purchase, those who made a holiday enquiry but didn’t book and those who actually made a booking – and different people each month obviously.
Sending them a simple, easy-to-complete questionnaire via e-mail will not only allow you to draw more data on their personal profile and booking habits but also collect their opinions about your site, products, services, expectations versus delivery and so on.
By repeating this exercise each month using a consistent sample quota, you can build up a picture of your strengths and weaknesses, giving you an opportunity to address each point. One very important thing, do not use this as a selling opportunity, however tempting it might be. Provided you collect data on your customers, by way of asking them to become a registered user, this should all be perfectly possible.
You might wish to offer an incentive to encourage completion but this shouldn’t be an essential requirement. The very fact you are doing this will be well received by your customers who will see it as further evidence that you are a very service focused and quality organisation.
The likelihood of them returning to your company for their future holiday requirements will increase exponentially. One of the provisos for this kind of activity is that it can only be used to connect with Internet users which means you are likely to be talking to upmarket, affluent professionals. If this is your market then that’s great and you should have no problems.
If however, it’s not your market and your customer base is mass market, then you will have to use another channel for this kind of activity.
Happy? The Internet can be used to gauge customer reaction to certain products
Practical stepsto take
n demand prediction: test new holiday destinations, services or initiatives by offering them for sale, in advance, to a closed user group on the Net. This is a great way of predicting consumer demand before committing to expensive marketing and distribution costs.n pilot marketing: going one step further than demand prediction modelling, you can sell new products on-line to a closed user group and manage the whole process in this controlled way, including on-line customer satisfaction questionnaires at the end of the holiday. Again this is a great way to test out new ideas from start to end in a low-risk way and with much lower expenditure than normal.n quality monitoring: conduct regular monthly service checks amongst users and non-users to build a pattern of your service delivery, your strengths and weaknesses and use this information to improve your performance. Not just a pure research tool, this is a great way of building customer loyalty and repeat purchasing.n customer profiles: inevitably, the Net can only be used for existing Web users rather than for a mass-market audience. Net users tend to be ABC1, male-biased and with a strong proportion of teens and 20-somethings.