Research Competencies

Pricing Research

Understanding optimal pricing is essential to managing revenue and sales expectations, planning product line resources, and preparing channels and distribution. By using both experimental designs and choice-modeling techniques, Osprey Market Research can assist you in understanding the price-elasticity of your product or services given the competitive environment.

By understanding the direct relationship between price and demand, the following types of information can be provided:

A price elasticity model (linear and non-linear) that illustrates how product demand rises and falls across a range of prices.
An understanding of which of your competitors is most impacted by changes in your pricing strategy and by what degree.
An understanding of how price elasticity may vary as a function of the target market (i.e., identification of price-sensitive or non-sensitive customers).
An understanding of how product/service features impact price sensitivity and elasticity.
Volume estimations can be produced.

New Product Testing

New Product Development and Product Concept Testing represents a range of specific marketing issues and challenges and can involve the full array of qualitative and quantitative techniques. Osprey Market Research’s philosophy is to apply the most appropriate technique for your stage in the development process.

Typically, qualitative methods will be employed if the concept is in the exploratory phase and initial customer reactions need to be understood in-depth. Quantitative methods are typically more appropriate when choosing among candidate products or conducting product line optimization.

Product development and concept testing research is designed to:

Determine customer needs and requirements.
Articulate required product features, functions, and capabilities to meet those needs.
Evaluate the ability of the product or service to compete effectively.
Identify any market opportunities that may increase potential for success.
Identify any barriers or limitations to success.
Articulate the “core benefits” to aid in positioning and messaging.
In some cases, price elasticity modeling or choice modeling techniques are required to examine price and/or feature tradeoffs for purposes of product optimization.

Market Segmentation

Not all customers have the same needs and requirements, and not all customers represent the same sales and revenue potential. This means that different products, services, and marketing approaches are needed to address disparate needs and opportunities in the marketplace. Osprey Market Research provides Market Segmentation Research as a means of identifying market segments, understanding how they impact your marketing efforts, and targeting your efforts toward the segments that hold the greatest potential. The goal of all market segmentation research is to create a model of the marketplace around which product, service, and marketing strategies can be developed and implemented.

Market segmentation research projects are designed to:

Identify the issues and variables around which your market is segmented.
Segment the market according to these variables and describe each segment in terms of demographics, readership habits, buying patterns, and other key descriptive elements that allow you to target each segment.
Size the segments in terms of relative size, numbers of individuals, and market potential.
Create a working model so that segment “membership” for any customer can be identified. This is particularly important when assigning individuals on a database to market segments for direct marketing activities.

Product Positioning / Messaging

How your products and services are positioned in the marketplace, and the messaging that you use to communicate and reinforce that position, are essential elements to success in today’s competitive environment. Osprey Market Research employs a number of techniques to identify how customers perceive your products and/or services, and to develop the product and messaging strategies required to reinforce or alter the position.

Product positioning and messaging research allows the research team to:

Identify how potential customers perceive your product or service.
Determine whether those perceptions are positive and should be reinforced (via messaging, pricing, product features, etc.) or negative and must be overcome.
Identify the single most compelling position for your product or service and identify the message strategies that drive this position
Explore the language and vernacular the customers use to describe benefits associated with your product (essential for messaging).
Identify the key product/service features and capabilities that support the position.
Verify that your messaging meets key communications criteria such as believability, uniqueness, importance to the customer, defendability, and ability to motivate the customer to purchase.

Advertising Effectiveness

Helping advertising and marketing agencies and departments evaluate advertising effectiveness has been an Osprey Market Research focus since our inception. Our mission is to offer the expertise, tools, and techniques that allow organizations to produce the most effective advertising for all forms of media including broadcast, print, web, and collateral. This is possible because our senior consultants have worked in the advertising industry and have educational backgrounds in advertising and communications.

The list below contains some of the areas in which Osprey Market Research has experience and competence in advertising effectiveness:

Qualitative studies to develop creative concepts and refine messaging.
Both qualitative and quantitative copy testing.
Advertising effectiveness tracking studies.
Message effectiveness tracking.
Brand equity studies.

Choice Modeling

Choice Modeling is a term applied to a broad range of data gathering and analytical techniques designed to understand the trade-offs that customers make when selecting and acquiring products and services. Osprey Market Research uses a range of tools and procedures including experimental design, Conjoint, and Self-Explication to provide our clients with an in-depth understanding of customer choices and decision-making. Typically, the methodology is determined based on the number of trade-offs that need to be understood and the types of reporting and modeling that is most helpful for the client. Osprey Market Research has conducted many choice-modeling studies over the web. This is a very effective use of Web-intercept; that is, interviewing random customers who have come to a website to shop for a product.

Choice modeling can be used to:

Understand trade-offs between features and price.
Develop “what if” models to determine if demand (or competitive share) changes as features and prices change.
Develop a better understanding of the target market by describing those customers reporting high interest in your product or service.
Market Segmentation by isolating and describing customers based on attribute trade-offs.

Customer Loyalty

Customer Satisfaction Research is a primary focus of Osprey Market Research’s custom research services. We recognize that maintaining current customers and recognizing their full value is a critical challenge. Osprey Market Research provides customer satisfaction research services designed specifically to provide the information that you need to meet this challenge. We feel that customer satisfaction research should be more than just a report card of “how you are doing,” but also a strategic tool for increasing customer satisfaction with your products, your services, and your company so that each customer’s long-term potential can be realized.

Customer satisfaction research projects are designed to:

Identify the issues that are most important to your customers in contributing to their satisfaction.
Measure customer satisfaction with you and your top competitors on those key issues.
Identify which elements of satisfaction contribute most to overall satisfaction, purchase intent, brand preference, and other key issues.
Determine what would be required to increase satisfaction in primary areas of dissatisfaction.
Identify the characteristics of customers who are likely to move to a competitor so that remedial steps can be taken.
Identify the characteristics of customers who have growth potential (planned spending increases, expansion, leaving a competitor, etc.) so that the opportunity can be realized.

Work With Osprey

Osprey Market Research believes in building relationships with our clients by understanding your needs and objectives and applying our customized resources.