Page 53 - DMGT408DMGT203_Marketing Management

Marketing Management/Essentials of Marketing

Notes service-oriented companies are looking at customer retention and loyalty programmes to
strengthen their brand and services. And what is Rao targeting?
“Automotive companies, banks and hotels, initially. Then, it would extend to other
businesses as well,” says Rao. But reliability is one issue that has always raised eyebrows
when one mentions research reports in India. How is he planning to get over it? “We work
with clients and offer tactical and strategic recommendations to satisfy their needs, as well
as the needs of the customer with commitment from our end,” explains Rao. The company
already has clients such as Arvind Mills, BPL, Hindustan Lever and Reckitt & Coleman
among other big names.

“Our first attempt will be to replicate our global customer base to India and also add new
clients,” adds Rao. With vast experience in customer satisfaction research, employee
satisfaction research, new product development, brand health management and custom
research tools to meet demands of clients, Market Probe is geared to face the challenge
with its diverse and unique research. “Matured markets pose a problem as many people
are not willing to speak. I guess India being still new to such research techniques, the
response will be far better,” explains Rao.
Rao, an alumnus from Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and his team have developed new
quantitative applications of Kruskal’s Analysis for derived attribute importance and LISREL
models for loyalty modelling and survival analysis for customer retention forecast. There
are proprietary products too under the Market Probe stable that include Satisfaction Navigator
(SATNAV) and Customer Retention Forecasting System (CRFS) based on company’s
experience and extensive client list. Not to be just left with quantitative research techniques,
the company is also into qualitative research, wherein it has copyright tools and projective
techniques such as Life maps, Auto Drive and Interactive Workshop Method to facilitate
focused outputs for strategic management of brands. “We also plan to have research and
training in India to facilitate spreading our research techniques in Asia and Pacific regions,”
adds Rao. With an international client list like AT&T, Xerox Corp, Kodak, American Express
and General Motors, among other Fortune 500 companies, Market Probe is all set to make a
definite impact in the Indian research scenario. “We are confident about our services and
I feel that Market Probe will have a very favourable response from India,” adds Rao.

Source: Narain Krishnamurthy, “Stats and Facts,” A&M, July 2000

Task Develop a questionnaire to find out what four important services a beauty
parlour should offer to females aged 18-25 among middle-income groups.

Self Assessment

Fill in the Blanks:
8. MIS is more than raw data or information suitable for the purposes of ..........................
9. Marketing research is a proactive search for .........................

10. ......................... search describes the situation where a fairly limited and unstructured attempt
is made to obtain information for a specific purpose.
11. ......................... is deterministic in that the relationships between variables are expressed in
exact mathematical terms.

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