The relevance of customer satisfaction in SME
Below is the introduction of a working paper on the relevance of customer satisfaction for Small and Medium Enterprises. The purpose of this academic paper is to show the gap which exists in the literature on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty between what has been studied (big companies) and what actually constitutes the very essence of business in Europe, i.e. small companies. This paper is also put at your disposal in a viewer below. Introduction...
50% of the firms created in 2006 have died: all the factors influencing firm’s survival
There is a lot of controversy around survival rate of startups. A survival rate of 25% after 7 years is often mentioned although there’s no evidence around it; other authors speak of a 90% survival rate. The discrepancy is so huge that real actual figures are very valuable. Such figures have been published last week by the French statistical institute INSEE (Link to the original source – in French only). In 2006 a total number of...
Find your audience: how to position your research work
As I explained in an earlier post, I was very disappointed to see my research work rejected at this year’s EMAC conference. Fortunately the very same research work was accepted and presented at the 5th International Conference on Rhetoric and Narratives in Management Research. This conference, though more limited in size than the EMAC and its hundreds of participants, gave me a great boost of energy … and hope. I was finally able to find people...
EMAC 2013 : a lesson of humility
For an academic in the field of marketing research, the EMAC conference is the place to be to meet his/her pairs. I work each year towards this goal but this year the odds have decided I would not present my ideas and my results. My two papers got rejected and this result, although difficult to accept, has positive aspects but brings also questions along. Is there a strategy to increase the odds of being accepted?...
The 7 profiles of social network users
The dynamics of social networks depend on their users. They can be analyzed according to their content creation/consumption profile. There are 7 profiles, which we analyze here. Contact IntoTheMinds research agency The 7 types of social network user Research into the use of social networks generally uses a segmentation such as that proposed by Forrester (see above). This is a practical model for an initial understanding of online behavior. User profile Description Insights Creators Publish blog...
The counterfeiting industry and the consumer behaviour
I already dealt with Bottega Veneta this week, the ultra luxury Italian brand. Like many other luxury bag brands, Bottega Veneta is subject to counterfeiting. A long-debated question is whether counterfeiting is a fate or a sign that a brand is successful. This was the subject of much discussion at the International Marketing Trends Conference in Venice, which ended January 21, 2012. Bottega Veneta, Vuitton and the like are a privileged field of study for behaviorists...
A few key points from RENT conference (#rentconference) introductory speech
The RENT conference started in Bodo (Norway) with a panelist discussion on entrepreneurship and more precisely on the role of entrepreneurship in the current crisis situation that the world is going through. I don’t want to sum up the whole discussion. Rather I’d like to stress a few striking facts or figures mentioned by the speakers. Professor Sarah Carter mentioned that 6 sectors were identified in Scotland as promising for the future of the economy. Those...
Impediments in business transfers (#rentconference)
Yvonne Slots and Loek Swelsen presented at the RENT XXV conference in Bodo, Norway, a piece of research on business transfers. Their research was conducted in the region of Parkstad, The Netherlands, at the borders with Germany (Aachen) and Belgium. This region is characterized by an important number of closed businesses, so Yvonne Slots in her introduction. The two researchers at the Hogeschool Zuid studied in particular the bottlenecks in the transfer of soon-to-be-transfered businesses, owned...
What a face !!
An article published in the latest issue of the « Journal of Marketing » (It’s got the look : the effect of friendly and aggressive « facial » expressions on product liking and sales ; Jan R. Landwehr, Ann L. Mc Gill, Andréas Hermann ; vol.75 May 2011, pages 132-146) confirms in a scientific manner what some of us may have discovered themselves: we perceive human faces in products shapes (the case study of the article...
Open innovation initiatives fail
One of EMAC 2011 participants (from the University of Amsterdam) presented yesterday some facts about platforms of open innovation like MyStarbucksidea and Dell’s Ideastorm. MyStarbucksIdea received some 74000+ suggestions out of which about 300 were actually converted. A mere 0.4%. You can wonder therefore what the value of such platforms really is. Well, I see some positive points: firms using such platforms actually do communicate in some way with customers firms can get suggestions and improve...
EMAC 2011: 40th edition in Slovenia
The EMAC 2011 is the European Marketing Academics Conference and is held once a year. Its purpose is to bring together all marketing scientists (about 1000 members) to present the current status of their research. This year it was hosted by the Faculty of Economics of Ljubljana in Slovenia and we were about 750 to attend. And as usual, no professional marketers attended (excepted McKinsey and … IntoTheMinds). I still not understand why practitioners do not...
New research project: looking for 5 entrepreneurs or marketeers to interview
We’ll be starting a new research project soon and are actively looking for candidates for interviews. The individual interviews will last for ca. 60 to 90 minutes. The topic will be on “customers” in general and the interviews will take place at the Arsenal, in Brussels, where we will settle one day per week with the entrepreneurial community for the coming months. View Larger Map The interviews will be conducted in English, French, German or Dutch...
Show me the size of your logo and I will tell you who you are
The way logo are exposed on luxury goods, and in particular brand prominence, reveals a lot about yourself. This is the conclusion of an astonishing study published in September 2010 in the Journal of Marketing («Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence» by Young Jee Han, Joseph C. Nunes, & Xavier Drèze). The authors carriedout several experiments and first proved that brand prominence on luxury goods was inversely proportional to the price tag....
Experiential sensory marketing at IKEA
One of the amazing researches presented this year at EMAC was authored by Bertil Hulten (University of Linneaus, Sweden). This research, entitled « The Influence of Smell and Vision upon Touch » was carried out at IKEA in Sweden and aimed at studying the behaviour of consumers (especially their purchase patterns) when their senses were triggered. Bertil started explaining the difficulties he faced when trying to convince IKEA to accept the idea of this experiment. The Swedish...
Getting rid of unprofitable customers? Not a bad idea
This is the logical conclusion of a piece of research presented by Michael Haenlein (ESCP Europe) at the EMAC2010. The idea is actually not new and makes a lot of sense from an accounting point of view (do you remember your ABC Costing lessons?). The idea is based on the principle that some customers are more profitable than others (for instance because of their purchase frequency) and that companies should let the less profitable customers go...
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