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MR Perspectives is a twice-monthly newsletter that provides perspectives on market research topics of interest, best practices tips, emerging trends, quick case studies, and other useful information.

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May 10-12, Chicago

Strategic Marketing Conference

The American Marketing Association is hosting a strategic marketing conference featuring some of the great minds in marketing today. It will be held at the Westin River North in Chicago.

May 11, Atlanta 

Atlanta Market Research Lunch

The Atlanta chapter of the American Marketing Association will host a lunch for marketing researchers in the Atlanta metro area starting with registration and networking 11:15 a.m., and lunch with a program from noon to 1:15 p.m. at Maggiano's Buckhead. Make reservations by Friday, May 7.

May 19, Arlington, TX

International Research Conference

The Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) is holding a one-day conference on international research at the University of Texas at Arlington.

May 20-21, Atlanta

Training Series: Branding

The American Marketing Association is hosting a two-day training session on how to use your brand to improve your company's execution capability and to communicate your organization's strategy and goals. The session will take place at the Crowne Plaza Atlanta- Buckhead.

What is Churn Research?

Customer churn rate is a term that started in the telecommunications industry and has now been adopted by many service industries. Specifically, it refers to the percentage which results from dividing deactivated customers by total customers. Long distance, local carrier and wireless companies commonly conduct churn research, as does cable television, Internet service providers and advertising directory publishers. Companies in other industries, however, can benefit from examining why their customers leave.

Typical churn rates for larger service companies are in the low single digits, so a change of two percent in churn rate realistically translates into six months of additional service per customer. Therefore, the health of a company often depends on measuring its churn rate and understanding the factors that contribute to customer retention.

Most companies have a good understanding of their churn rate but don't know which key factors affect customer churn and to what degree. Clearly, many types of customer surveys can be used to better understand customers throughout their typical lifecycle, such as customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. Surveying recently lost customers, however, is often the best approach toward understanding what drives customer churn and how to retain your customers. 

By surveying lost customers, you can learn specifically when and why they left your company, what (if any) competitor they selected and why. The information will give you the quality intelligence needed to create vulnerable customer profiles. These profiles can then be used to flag vulnerable customers (by service plan type, length of service, products in service, geography, demographics, etc.) so that proactive measures can be undertaken to prevent vulnerable existing customers from going to the competition. 

Internet vs. Telephone ... The Weaknesses (Part 3)

Following up on our earlier discussions on the value of Internet vs. telephone surveys (Issue #5) and the strengths of each (Issue #7), now we will examine the drawbacks of the two common research methodologies. 

Weaknesses of the Internet survey methodology:

• Internet population demographics are not directly representive of the off-line population.
• For general population surveys, there is a need to control for the Internet's demographic skews (i.e., income, education).
• Non-response bias can affect sample representation and validity (passionate positive/negative responder bias).
• Verification of survey respondent identity is more difficult.
• As a passive methodology, forcing necessary quota groups can be difficult.
• A moderate to high relationship with the respondent is needed to achieve necessary response rates.
• The survey subject needs to be relevant and interesting to the respondent.
• The ability to probe a respondent is often not as effective compared to an interview with a live person.
• Respondents often have a lower level of trust regarding the guarantee of anonymity and confidentiality.
• There is a greater likelihood of technical "gliches," for example, due to required 24/7 availability and tendency for large volume of respondents to reply within first 48 hours.

Weaknesses of the telephone survey methodology:

• Response rates can get low if not carefully managed, leading to representation issues.
• Some respondents perceive telephone surveys as more invasive.
• Surveys can only be conducted during certain times of day.
• Data collection often takes longer compared to an Internet methodology and is less convenient to respondents.
• Unskilled interviewers can affect results by leading/influencing respondents.
• Unsupervised interviewer cheating can occur.
• Telephone surveys are more expensive than an Internet methodology.
• Open-ends need to be transcribed.
• The same survey often takes a little longer on the phone because it takes longer to have questionnaire read to respondent.and some respondents can be wordy.

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