Marketing: Hi-Tech Research Aids Development

Market research is rapidly advancing from telephone and direct mail surveys, and financial services institutions are learning what other industries have known for several years: New technologies can dramatically decrease product development time and help companies build highly sophisticated consumer profiles.

The Axiom Group, a Minneapolis-based market research firm, added three major banks and two insurance companies in the last nine months, after five years of serving consumer goods manufacturers like General Mills and Whirlpool. The company's advanced methods offer quantitative and qualitative research results in as little as three weeks. One of the keys to success is being first to market, says Scott Barlass, president of The Axiom Group, so if market research accelerates the process, companies can innovate more successfully.

The institutions have used Axiom's Instant-Insight, a survey technique that gives large focus groups hand-held electronic devices to respond to questions. In the back of the room where the focus group is held, the product development team watches as graphs representing responses to each question appear on a monitor. Speedy analysis allows the team to ask specific questions of respondents later in the day. "The team gets to discuss results in real time," Barlass says.

Axiom also does Internet surveys with WebSite-InSight, a process which hot-links a customer survey to an existing company's home page. Axiom analyzes the results and provides reports. Alternatively, companies can set up password-protected survey Web sites in which Axiom selects respondents according to outlined criteria and issues passwords to access the survey site.--sausner tfn.com

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