Market research news
The blog of the market research agency IntoTheminds lists opinionated articles, examples of alignment with marketing theory, highlights and bad buzz, carefully selected by Pierre-Nicolas Schwab, his team and influential experts.
Paper & Tea: a superb concept store in the middle of Berlin
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Among the nice retail concepts that were born in Berlin, I liked particularly Paper & Tea, a small “concept store” where tea meets paper Art. This store proposes a customer experience that differs substantially from what you can find in…
This video will show you that you lack observation skills
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Usually I’m not a big fan of videos “making the buzz” on YouTube (not to say that I actually hate the mere expression “to make the buzz”). This being said I was recently deeply interested (and touched) by one of…
Mono-product marketing strategy : examples from Paris
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
In a previous post we reported on a store in Paris selling only one type of product : Éclair. L’Atelier de l’Eclair has reached the excellence and its reputation spreads online has you can see if you browse consumers’ forums.…
What does it cost to be a franchisee ?
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The questions and myths around franchising are very present in the heads of entrepreneurs. Would-be entrepreneurs dream of creating a brand with the potential of launching a franchise, while others are interested in becoming franchisees. The question of the costs…
Lessons learned from launching a creative leisure store in Brussels
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
After we announced in a previous post that Myriam and Nathalie opened their store in Brussels, we interviewed them to give you a more thorough overview of their entrepreneurial venture, what they learned out of it, and which advices they’d…
Interview : trials and tribulations of an entrepreneur in the food sector
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Steve Gravy started Ethnik, a quality food-over-the-counter shop, near the European Commission in Brussels a few month ago. He was accompanied by IntoTheMinds for the realization of his project. We come back with him today on his project, its joys…
The top 3 reasons why customer satisfaction surveys fail
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
In this post I’d like to remember the main reasons what your results to customer satisfaction surveys will not be representative. Eventually I’ll complete this post with another one: a reflection about Belfius’ advertised 95% customer satisfaction rate. 3 top…
Audi City : an incredible interactive customer experience
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Chances are high that you never visited an Audi City store. There are only three of them : in Beijing, London and Berlin. The one in Berlin opened in February and I was fortunate enough to get a thorough tour…
O2 and Deutsche Telekom create an innovative customer experience
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Choosing a new smartphone, tablet or accessories can really be difficult for most customers. Not only does technology constantly evolve, but you won’t be allowed to actually touch, feel and try real devices in cell phone stores. The risk to…
A map of the best and most innovative retail concepts in the world
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
How do you get inspiration for creating a unique customer experience in your store ? By visiting other stores and understanding emerging consumers’ behaviors. This is what we do by visiting once a month a new European city, spotting and…
Uber banned: Brussels taxis remain up to 122% more expensive.
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
On the website of the European Commission Neelie Kroes attacked publicly minister Brigitte Grouwels for the "crazy court decision to ban Uber in Brussels" (read more about Djump and UberPop business models in our article published a few days ago)…
Crowdsourcing: three examples of concrete results
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
On his blog Yann Gourvennec, with whom we share ideas and exchange posts regularly, has just published an excellent article about the actual goals of crowdsourcing. Yann has rightly focused its effort to synthesize the concrete results reached through crowdsourcing.…
Successful market research and yet another store opened in Brussels
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
After last week’s announcement that a new store was opened in Brussels after a successful market research, we are also proud to report (with some delay however) that yet another store (this time in the HORECA sector) was opened by…
Franchise Expo Paris : what’s new and what we liked
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The professional fair “Franchise Expo” has been organized for 30 years in Paris. The 2014 edition took place from March 23rd until March 26th and more than 500 companies were presenting their franchising concept. Several sectors were represented : services,…
Innovation in the postal sector. Episode 5 : automatic lockers
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The postal sector is one of the most innovative and adapts constantly to new or emerging consumers behaviors. Automatic lockers is one very successful example. Episode 5: automatic lockers to better match customers' needs and behaviors Contact us for our…
A call for a revolution in customers – firms relationships
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
You may remember the post published two ago about managing expectations to increase customer satisfaction. In that post I also mentioned a recent negative experience with Coolblue. The guys at Coolblue proved once again their professionalism by handling the complaint…
Innovations in the postal sector. Episode 3: new delivery options
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Here is episode 3 already of our series on innovations launched by postal operators. You can access the first episodes of the series here (episode 1) The innovation we’ll be dealing with today is driven by societal and behavioral changes.…
Luxury: shocking bad service and low customer satisfaction
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Service quality is essential to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Personal encounters are crucial to increase the level of service; yet some brands in the luxury sector recruit employees that don’t master the codes of the sector which leads to…
Off topic : a unique story-telling experience with kids
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Recently something happened to me that I found just amazing. It was one of those Aha moments that my friend Kevin Cottam wrote about in his book. This was a "story-telling" experience, the power of which is well described in…
Innovations in the postal sector. Episode 1: 3D printing
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
As announced in our post last week, time has come to give you a comprehensive view of innovations in the postal sector. Some innovative services may be known to you already (depeneding on where you live and how innovative your…
Increasing customer satisfaction through expectations management
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Managing expectations is key to increase (or just ensure) customer satisfaction. In this article we explore bit the mechanism of expectation creation based on one actual example : Coolblue How do expectations influence customer satisfaction You’ve experienced already it :…
Innovations in the postal sector: business models revamped
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The postal industry is unique. Its original business model is threatened and the industry is forced to reinvent itself. What can be observed there in terms of innovation is just unique. I met with Delphine Desgurse in Venice in late…
Western Union blue ocean strategy to increase loyalty
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
At the International Marketing Trends conference in Venice, Maureen Sigliano presented Western Union’s global loyalty strategy. Maureen is Vice President Global Loyalty Development & Customer Experience at Western Union and her speech, besides being highly inspiring, also shook up some…
These business cards are amazing
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Over the years I’ve met with hundreds (if not thousands) of people and have collected an impressive collection of business cards. While most of them are very classical and do not trigger any particular emotion, some of them have remained…
