Junicon Newsletter November 2008

If we were to describe in the most fundamental way what Junicon does, it would be anything and everything that starts from direct one-to-one input from your hospital-based customers around the world.

To this, we add market data, close client interaction, objective, cutting-edge analysis and strategic recommendations. This is what we call Information to Insight®. In this newsletter, we are pleased to introduce a few ways in which this works.

VOC can bridge the gap between Marketing and R&D, defining product concepts and design requirements up front, and enabling market-informed filtering of internal initiatives.

One recent trend we see in our VOC programs is more direct client involvement. Clients may choose to attend customer interviews with us, or conduct a portion of interviews on their own following our training and support sessions. One reason for this is the learning that client teams can do by seeing facilities and customers with their own eyes, particularly in new markets. Other benefits may include staff training and budget savings.

Junicon will be happy to develop a customized solution for your research needs.

Sabrina Tam Joins San Francisco Office

Frequent travel for client meetings and field research is an unavoidable part of our work, but this travel obviously contributes to carbon emissions and the related effects on our environment.

Since January of 2008, Junicon is working with the Swiss non-profit organization MyClimate www.myclimate.org, purchasing Carbon Offset Certificates for all travel worldwide.

Junicon Introduces Carbon Offset Program

Click here for a print-friendly PDF version

Voice-of-the-Customer

Meeting customer requirements doesn’t lead to improved business results unless there is purchasing intent and ability. Junicon takes the next step to develop the economic case for your product or service offering.

This is a several step process beginning with a pilot phase of opinion leader interviews to understand current practices and the full list of variables that impact the economics of that practice.

Junicon then develops with the client a concept for evaluation in the wider marketplace. With this, we are able to test the financial implications of changing products or behaviors and identify the most intuitively robust economic arguments for the client to make in launching the product or service.

With many unknowns about future behavior, and with multiple parameters and hundreds of variables, our Monte Carlo analysis identifies those that will really move the needle in favor of purchase intent.

Projects often include defining the relative importance of customer requirements at various stages, including new product development, next generation development, competitive positioning and customer satisfaction improvement initiatives.

Junicon uses systematic methods to predict changes to overall satisfaction and business results based on whether a product or service succeeds or fails to meet spoken and unspoken customer expectations.

One approach is Kano’s Method, which classifies product or service features into four categories:

1. Must-be included
2. Desirable – more is better
3. Exciting – the “wow” factor, and
4. Indifferent – “who cares?”

Junicon also utilizes several different forms of Conjoint / Trade off Analysis. Conjoint analyzes how customers make their decisions, and predicts how these decisions will be made in the future based on changes in the levels of certain product attributes. This can be done via a full profile card-sort exercise, which is useful for in-person interviewing.

Another method is Discrete Choice Modeling, where the respondent chooses 1 product (or none) from among 3 in a series of 20 choice tasks. This is effective for on-line interviewing, self-completion questionnaires or telephone implementation.

We also use a hybrid choice exercise with preference ratings called Adaptive Conjoint using Sawtooth Software. This generates a series of tasks where the respondent indicates their level of preference for Product A or Product B on a scale of 1 to 9.

Any of these approaches yields concrete results about what product and service attributes must be achieved, and at what level, to meet customer expectations and compete effectively.

Customer Requirements Analysis

Sabrina Tam is a native of Hong Kong
and originally came to the States as
an exchange student in 1993.

Sabrina graduated from California
State University, Hayward in 1998
and went directly on to earn an MBA
in Marketing and International
Business from the University of
South Carolina in 2000.

She brings to Junicon a broad range of experience in market research methodologies including competitive analysis, pricing sensitivity measurement, concept assessment, branding and customer satisfaction. Sabrina is fluent in Cantonese and English and conversational in Mandarin.