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Company Reputation Studies
All companies, like the people that run them, have an image, a reputation,
a style that is all their own and that belongs to no one else. In a world
where product differentiation is becoming less pronounced a company’s
reputation and that of its staff and service is becoming increasingly important.
The reason why a buyer deals with a supplier has less to do with commercial
factors such as price, discounts and terms and more to do with service and
quality supported by the simple fact that the buyer likes to deal with a particular
company and its representative. In other words, the buyer relies on the supplier’s
reputation which he has heard or read about and then experienced through his
dealings.
Although price is often treated as one of the most important reasons for winning
or losing business, we have established through our market research
studies that price invariably comes around half way down a list of other more important
attributes that the supplier should be seen as having. Price is, therefore,
not all that important as long as the buyer can be convinced that he is benefitting
from several other more important attributes.
The supplier, having established the relative importance of these attributes
through a reputation market research study for his company, will know which
of them to promote, in which order to promote them and how closely each fits
his own and his competitors’ images. The important attributes can clearly
only be promoted by the supplier once he knows their identity and relative
importance. He must also know in which attributes he is seen to be strong
and in which he is seen as weak. The market research study may show that the
supplier is seen to be strong in some unimportant aspects, implying that he
must restructure the things that are really important to his marketing effort.
Several of companies, on whose behalf we have carried out recent image studies,
had up to eight Divisions or Subsidiaries. The market research studies were
complex because the market research objectives were to identify the image of
each Division since each serves a different market sector with its own set
of products, customers and competitors.
These market research studies, are complex in execution and can only be analysed
by a specialised computer package. The benefits of doing a company reputation
study are far reaching in identifying trouble areas as well as the opportunities
and threats that exist in each market sector that the Divisions serve.
Although the Group normally has several directions from which it derives its
reputation, the reputation market research surveys, more typically, only include
customers, non-customers, own staff and competitors as the types of people
that are interviewed. If required, other respondent types can also be included
– such as opinion leaders, the financial community, students, the general public,
etc; but these would only serve to fine tune the market research study and
are not essential elements.
A further benefit is that Managers and Directors of the Divisions who are
inevitably in competition within their own Group with sister Divisions in terms
of returning the best performances now become better informed of the respective
reputations of their Divisional competitors and are; consequently, able to
compare their own performances with those of the other Divisions.
Knowledge of divisional and regional strengths and weaknesses assist each
division and branch to improve its own position so that a standardised image
can be projected to the market place.
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