Market research : how do sales of electric vehicles in Europe look like?
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
The European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) released recently an interactive maps that presents the state of the market for electric vehicles in the European Union. The figures presented refer to Electric-Chargeable Vehicles (ECV's) sold in Europe in 2016. The numbers remain…
A qualitative market research of the Hollister & Co. brand perceptions
How do you explore customers' perceptions about a brand ? Which methodologies should you use to elicitate brand images ? A recent research published in the Journal of Retailing explores consumers' perception of Hollister and Co. and uses for this…
Uber wants your data to support its own (ghost) kitchen business
This is one of the most interesting articles I've read in a past few weeks. Nick Abouzeid's article on Medium is a excellent, well researched article that sheds light on trends in the shared economy business that are yet unknown in…
Zalando free-returns policy drives customer loyalty up
Online retailer Zalando has announced revenues of €4.5b in 2017, up 23% from the year before. Despite a slight decrease of its Ebit (from 5.9% to 4.7%-4.9%), profits before taxes will be over €200m. This is a very solid result…
Market research combines Big Data and qualitative techniques .. 120 years ago
Visualizing data has become a standard task and one essential component of data science today. But, haven't we forgotten how lucky we are to have all that data available and to be able to use it for various purposes ?…
Which future for Borsalino ?
By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab •
One of the most iconic Italian brands, hats-maker Borsalino, filled for Bankruptcy on 18 December 2017. This story proves that even the most renown brands, those with the longest history (110 years of activity) are not immune against evolving market…
Ghost kitchens : the next disruption in the restaurant industry?
I recently reflected on Deliveroo's and Uber's ghost kitchens which have appeared in various cities (read here and there) of the US and in London (read this article in the Guardian). Those ghost kitchen make perfect economic sense : margins…
New in 2018: step-by-step market research guide for all
Happy new year everybody ! What an amazing year 2017 has been for us. We feel blessed to have carried out so many market research and Big Data projects last year : banking, retail, media, FMCG, luxury, IT, indusrail goods,…
Give me my time back ! I’m a digital slave.
It happens again and again and there is nothing I can do. The temptation is too big. I can't resist staring at my screen and losing my time watching and doing things that I don't really want to do. Rather…
Have black boxes led to bankruptcies in the restaurant industry ?
Back in 2015 Belgian authorities announced that B2C firms selling more than 25000€ per year in food (restaurants thus), would have to be equipped by July 2016 with a new model of cash register containing a black box registering all transactions. This,…
market research : how do Europeans pay ?
My mother-in-law is Italian. She hardly make two payments a year with her credit card. On my way to the University of Mainz a few weeks ago, I met a 64-year old taxi driver of Turkish origin who prouded himself not to…
Market research : 190000 users surveyed on their connected future
The Mozilla foundation released the results of a worldwide market research on digital lives. The survey was entitled "How connected are you?" and gathered answers from pretty much all countries around the world. In today's post I chose to focus…
Tips and tricks : using observation as a market research tool
In our latest article we dealt with an experiment carried out by the Virginia Tech University that used innovative observation techniques to study human behaviors when faced with self-driving cars. Today we want to dig a little bit more on…
Market research : how to study reactions to autonomous vehicles
This is one of the most difficult type of projet market research professionals may face: investigate consumers' behaviors in a situation that doesn't exist yet. In such situations ethnography (a qualitative market research technique) may be the right methodology to go for.…
Combining ethnography and Big Data in market research : a real example
Qualitative research techniques have inherently an ethnographic background that many market research firms tend to ignore. Qualitative techniques are there to help researchers discover what's going on and build their assumptions. This is exactly what we tried to do when…
A nudge at Brussels airport : WWF Panda wins charity competition
We talked about nudges this week on this blog (see our article on the Icelandic nudge to promote public safety). Today I'd like to give you another insight into behavioral economics and show you how human behavior can be influenced…
Customer satisfaction : courtesy ensures everlasting emotions
I happen to be very often on business trips to meet clients. One recurrent problem when you travel alone is to find a place for dinner where you'll feel welcome although you are alone. I was in Amsterdam for a…
Market research : how to set up the price of new products and services
In a recent post I told you the story of my friend Patrick who faced the request of a customer not aware of the price oh his high-end services. This turned into a very frustrating experience for both. In today's…
Customer satisfaction is all about expectations : a real example
My good friend (and former customer) Patrick Mascart is in the photo/video business and has also become an expert in aerial photo and video services. Through his agency he has worked for prestigious clients like the European Commission and many…
Consumer behavior : why do we leave online reviews?
On the occasion of the RecSys 2017 conference I was fortunate to attend Prof. Lowenstein's inaugural talk that offered an inspiring overview of behavioral economics applied to recommendation systems. In particular Prof. Lowenstein explored the psychology of information sharing which…
Market research : evolution of food purchasing behaviors on the French market
What are the significant trends in the food market? What is consumed, and how? In this article, we return to the evolutions of this market. Discover also the prospective study that we carried out on the future of the retail…
3 key principles to follow for your good customer satisfaction surveys
I hear companies claiming they have x% or y% of customer satisfaction, proudly claiming Net Promoter Score (NPS) of so much and that many returning customers. While these figures seem great at first sight, this doesn't tell us much. Read…
How Big Data will influence the future of advertising
"What is the impact of Big Data on online advertising" is the question I was asked to answer on the occasion of an EGTA (European Group of Television Advertising) workshop that took place on 29 and 30 June 2017 in…
French President Macron listens to his customers
We discussed in our latest article why CEO's and top executives should talk directly to customers (especially in B2C) to understand problems with their products and services and help them find remedies to customer dissatisfaction. If you follow French politics…
How to use single-sign-on in retail to improve customer experience
I recently gave a speech on identity management and GDPR at the Gigya Identified 2017 conference in London. There I had the opportunity to listen to another Julien Marlot who is the head of digital activities at Unibail. Unibail-Rodamco is…
Big Data and ethics : how visualization can screw it up
Following our first article on the Big Data and Ethics meetup organized at Digityser on 15 June 2017, we'd like to cover today another very interesting presentation by Leenke De Donder. Lenke dealt with an aspect the importance of which…
Airlines loyalty programs : different countries, different benefits
Loyalty cards have been an important innovation when it comes to increase customer loyalty. It ll started with American Airlines and the least we can say is that the airline industry is the one which has probably pushed the concept…
Moncler and DKV don’t care about customer complaints
Who said big companies are customer-centric and focused on customer satisfaction ? Besides firms which tweak their satisfaction surveys to obtain better results (see the example of Belfius), others simply seem to ignore the basic principles that ensure satisfied customers.…
Facebook doesn’t tell you really why you get targeted advertising
In the data world, the topics of transparency, privacy and ethics are more and more discussed. As we predicted a year ago, this may well be the next revolution in data science. We ran an experiment to understand the level…
Ugly vegetables look more natural and give stores a better image
Consumers perceive "ugly", misshappen vegetables, as more natural. Moreover communication campaigns promoting these "abnormal" products benefit also the stores , such campaign convey indeed a positive image in the minds of the customers. Those are the results of a study…
Personalized car insurance has unexpected effects on customers behaviors
A recent article in a French magazine sheds light on progresses made by insurance company Allianz in the field of personalized car insurance. Like many other firms in the field, Allianz believes in the usefulness of telematic units (black boxes)…
Customer loyalty : 3 sets of KPI’s that should become your priorities
My good friend Christian Barbaray published an article (in French) where he listed the KPI's that firms most commonly monitor. He split them in 3 categories ("global", "asquisition", "loyalty") and concluded that firms on average monitor 11 KPI's. What I…
Youtube recommendations : user experience and algorithmes better than ever
If you are addicated to YouTube, chances are high their recommendation systems play an important role in your addiction. Our deep interest in recommendation engines and algorithms makes us naturally gravitate towards the YouTube app to assess their latest developments.…
Amazon’s new business move will lock customers further
Amazon looks to me as one of the most innovative companies in the world, far more innovative actually that any of the electronics giants out there which have done poorly at inventing any real breakthrough innovation for the last 10…
4 hints to avoid your customer satisfaction survey from failing
In our latest article we discuss the Goodhart's law and what it meant for customer satisfaction measurement. In short, if satisfaction scores become a company's objectives, the likelihood is high that results will be biased. Contact us for your B2B…
How the Goodhart’s law makes customer satisfaction surveys fail
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”. This is the Goodhart's law and it explains in my opinion why why an awful lot customer satisfaction measures fail. Let me take two concrete examples that…
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