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.
One Day One Idea: Let customers try your products and make them buy
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
We already mentioned the increased probability of selling a product when a customer has tried or touched it before. This principle is applied perfectly by Bodum, a Danish manufacturer of kitchen appliances and accessories. The flagship store they opened almost…
An illustration of why you should quickly get back to leads if you want to close deals
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
To follow up on our post regarding the correlation between speed and the probability of closing deals, here's the comment of a friend -and customer- of us. In his business Michel sells goods and services for 5-digit prices. And believe…
How design contributes to the overall customer experience
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The design of your point of sales is of utmost importance. It not only attracts people in the store, but it also keeps them in the store. this is something that Silvera has understood very well. A winner of the…
What you need to do to make your clients sign a contract within 24h
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
If you want to do business and land new customers, time is of the essence. Yet I see that very few entrepreneurs have this culture of responsiveness rooted in their DNA. Here is a story that happened to me last…
The Wine Business Innovation Summit in Brussels
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The Wine Business Innovation Summit (WBIS in short) was organized on Jan 19th in Brussels to gather entrepreneurs and leaders of the wine industry and fuel inspiration among the participants. The least we can say is that it was successful.…
Service quality and the role of employees in the customer experience
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Previous posts have dealt on several occasions with the important topic of service quality. After re-reading what we had written we found out something important: employees are crucial. Employees are of course important to deliver the service quality that customers…
Affordable and efficient design strategies
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
When it comes to design regular readers know that we firmly believe it can be a differentiating factor and it can add value to a business. Yet, design depends on trends, on taste, in other words on lot of external…
The secrets of market research: how to avoid pitfalls when creating a new venture. Part 2
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
In our first article of this series of 3 on market research, we dealt with the methodology of market research and with trends and competition analysis. Today we move to the analysis of demand and will go in depth on…
“Les Causses”, an example of successful retail concept
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Sometimes I feel fortunate. I do a wonderful job, have a lot of wonderful clients, advise a lot of very different businesses. And on top of that I meet inspiring entrepreneurs when going on market research tours. The story of…
One Day One Idea : use offbeat humour to sell your stuffs
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The marketing idea in brief Sometimes in worthwhile to be "offbeat", i.e. not to follow the rules (especially the marketing ones). Look for instance at the example of this store I came across while in Barcelona on Passeig de Garcia.…
One Day One Idea: the management of customer experience by Cerdan Heritage
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Santa Claus brought me this year some very cool “Cerdan Heritage” stuffs. If you don’t know about Cerdan Heritage, read the article we wrote a while ago about this SME started by Marcel Cerdan’s grandsons. The idea in brief Not…
What’s new in 2013: more advices for entrepreneurs with a focus on market research and innovation
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Looking back over our shoulders Looking back at 2012 we’ve written a lot (like in 2011) but took a pretty long break after the summer. With a sudden increase in workload we had to concentrate on clients’ assignments. This is…
L’imprimerie, a new kind of customer experience
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
I was fortunate to meet an atypical entrepreneur, Nicolas Guthart, who started several businesses that are highly complementary and propose an innovative value proposition for brands. How a new marketing concept was born To make a 10-year story short(er),…
How design can help increase your revenues
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The Paris Chamber of Commerce organized this year a contest dedicated to the best design initiatives in retail environments. As we explained in an earlier post we started taking appointments and visiting as many stores as possible that applied (even…
Examples of vertical integration and definitions
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Vertical integration is a relatively rare business strategy these days. Few companies still practise it because the time has come to reduce structural costs and cut costs. Among the large groups that continue to practice it, we could mention Samsung,…
Delhaize seems to be happy about the results of The Cube barcodes scanning campaign
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
When Delhaize launched The Cube earlier this year we were warning that it wouldn’t be as successful as expected. However in a recent press release Delhaize said it was a success and that online sales increased 22.6%. So in the…
Niche markets are sometimes larger than you expect. The case of Pedon.
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Pedon is one of those brands that has a solid market share but is not known very well, even in Italy, its home country. A manufacturer of dozens of private labels product, Pedon has also its own lines of products,…
Innovation at its best at SIAL 2012 food and drink fair
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
As every two years we visited the SIAL 2012, which took place in Paris from Oct 21st until Oct 25th, the largest fair for professionals in the food and drink industry. With almost 6000 exhibitors this fair is one of…
Meeting with a genius: Enric Ruiz Geli
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Sometimes you meet up with people that can inspire you for the rest of your life. This happened to me when I met Enric Ruiz Geli, the architect of the MEDIA ICT building in Barcelona 2 weeks ago. I’ll not…
How design can enhance business innovation
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
I spent 4 days in Barcelona in a workshop at ESADE business school practicing techniques used by designers to create. And the least I can say is that those techniques DO help make a difference in business. Let me explain…
SIAL deadline is approaching: innovations in the food and drink sector
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Every two years the world's biggest trade fair for the food and drink sector is organized in Paris. The SIAL will atract ca. 140,000 visitors and we welcome more than 5000 exhibitors (!) during 5 days, from Oct 21st until…
Rolls-Royce’s extreme segmentation
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
Sometimes brands can go very far as far as segmentation is concerned. In the luxury business the growth path goes through Asia and in particular therough China. I recently came across a crazy example. Rolls Royce actually prepared a limited…
When the consumer interacts actively with the store window
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
To follow up on our latest post on future store windows, we publish today this example we found in Portugal in an ICT store. Located at the bottom of an office building in Lisbon, this store proposes a window with…
Do you want to do business or not?
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
This post is a little be off-topic but it’s a kind of therapy for me. Writing is good for the peace of mind, isn’t it ? Over the last few weeks I’ve been disappointed several times by potential suppliers and…
