Advanved Research Solutions For Strategic Decision-Making

THE MARKETING ANALYSTS is concerned with helping clients identify, select and implement successful marketing strategies.   Our intent is to provide our clients with advanced research solutions to improve the quality of strategic decision-making.

Clearly, the right strategic decision-making produces the positive outcomes that every organization seeks.  However, wrong decisions may produce disastrous results.  As example, here are some startling statistics from well-known American retailers:

•             1990 – 2004         Circuit City grew from $2 billion to $9.75 billion.  Five years later, the company filed for bankruptcy.

•             1930’s   Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward were about equal in sales and profits.  Twenty years later, Sears was about three times larger than Montgomery Ward.  In 2001, Montgomery Ward closed all of its remaining stores.

•             1991       Walmart surpassed Sears and Kmart to become the largest US retailer.  Today Walmart is the largest retail company in the world and is becoming one of the largest grocers in the US.

While these examples are dramatic, every organization is affected by strategic decisions. Thus every company must plan and act strategically.  You can uncover the information you need through numerous ways—from online research to focus groups to predictive models.  With effective market research, we can help you determine the need for your service or a product’s likelihood to sell, target-market demographics, and determine desirable store locations. To help you meet your target market’s needs, we offer a leading collection of tools, resources and professionals.

THE MARKETING ANALYSTS can help you.

Conjoint Analysis • Marketing Mix Models • Brand Maps • Market Segmentation • Product Line Management • Sales Forecasts • Advertisement Optimization • Data Mining • Market Basket Analysis • Customer Retention/Predictive Customer Churn

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Email: info@themarketinganalysts.com

You can probably think of a number of customer loyalty factors that can predict customer churn and customer loyalty.  Some factors that are often mentioned include transience, youthfulness and price sensitiveness.   As you might imagine, the return on your marketing investment will be much greater if you start with potentially loyal customers as opposed to potentially disloyal customers.

How Do I Profile Potentially Loyal Customers?

The best place to start is by building a database that contains both loyal and defecting customers.  A careful analysis of the loyal customers and disloyal customers can reveal some valuable insights.  While this is a good first step, THE MARKETING ANALYSTS recommend further analysis using predictive analytics for customer segmentation.  Once behavior based segments are identified, profitable strategies can then be developed to maximize your Marketing ROI.  For additional information about our customer retention and marketing segmentation programs, please visit our website at http://www.themarketinganalysts.com/en/pages/customer-retention-defection-churn/ and contact us today.

By now, most economists agree that we have entered “The BIG L”, a long, slide down that is accompanied by a long period of flat or low economic activity.  Some economists even believe that we could be headed into a depression by 2011. Unfortunately, the end most likely won’t be good since we are still trying to find our way out by printing money, issuing Treasury Bills, and bailing out inefficient businesses.

As a result, Marketing Departments are continuing to cutback.  However, companies need to focus on making smarter investments in customer retention.  Customer retention strategies must address consumer trends toward less expensive product and service alternatives.  Corporate budget decisions must focus on reaching those customers who are most likely to leave.  When customers alter their purchase behavior, they may be lost forever.

Marketing Strategies

Marketers can initiate a number of strategies to counter customer defection.  Some strategies include adding new product lines and incentive programs.  Highly targeted direct marketing campaigns that utilize customer profiling analytics can also help retailers.  Maintaining a communication strategy with churning customers is also important since low priced retailers will try to retain their new customers once the economy recovers.

Your Retention Solution

THE MARKETING ANALYSTS provides a complete solution to your customer retention needs.  With our advanced technologies, we conduct sophisticated customer profiling and identify cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.  Our services recommend the best strategies to retain customers and provide maximum ROI.  Whether you need a single service or an integrated approach, we have the flexible solutions that can improve customer satisfaction, retention, loyalty and value.

Marketing Solutions with Rapid ROI

THE MARKETING ANALYSTS offers a variety of analytical marketing research, quantitative marketing analysis and predictive marketing mix solutions that can make your firm more competitive by improving its decision making and marketing ROI. Whether you have a project that requires predictive data analysis or you are considering a new marketing research project that requires planning, we offer solutions to meet your marketing requirements.

Data Analysis: Sales Forecasts, Predictive Marketing Models, Analytical Marketing Research, Campaign Analysis, Survey Data and more

THE MARKETING ANALYSTS has the analytical resources to handle nearly any project because we offer the most advanced marketing research techniques. Our team of statisticians and marketing research professionals can analyze your sales and marketing data and provide clear and concise reports with highly relevant insights.

Customer Retention, Predictive Customer Churn, Customer Lifetime Value Analysis

Customer satisfaction studies provide good information but they have weaknesses. Happy customers will leave at the drop of a hat, while unhappy customers may stay for years. You have made a large investment to acquire customers, make sure you don’t let them leave you. Let THE MARKETING ANALYSTS help you identify defecting customers before it’s too late.

Our process begins by profiling active and deactivated customer groups to develop metrics that drive purchase behavior. Next, we train and deploy defection scoring and segmentation neural networks to flag customers who are likely to defect.  The procedure automatically detects customers who have potential for defection but have not been contacted for customer retention purposes in recent times. Preventive actions can then be initiated for customers who have been identified as potentially risky.

Optimal Marketing Mix Models

For decision support, a growing number of Marketing Directors are turning to Marketing Mix Models (MMM). By turning to predictive marketing methods, Marketing Managers can determine the best way to allocate their budgets and maximize their marketing and sales strategies. The typical Marketing Mix model is based on multivariate statistical methods, neural networks and time series forecasting methods that use your historic sales, marketing and ROI data as inputs to determine the optimal allocation of resources and project the impact that various strategies will have on volume, revenue and profitability.

Targeting Marketing: Customer Profiling & Marketing Segmentation for Customer Acquisition

THE MARKETING ANALYSTS understands that you have limited resources and can’t market to all of your customers all of the time. That’s why we offer solutions to make your marketing programs as effective as possible. By using information contained in your database, we can generate highly targeted lists of customers who are most likely to respond to your next marketing campaign.

Marketing Analysis

Did your marketing program provide an adequate return on investment? We can answer this question and even develop automated reports for your future campaigns. If you need reports from your IS system, call us today. We have the expertise to provide the information that you require.

Cost Effective with Quick Turnaround

THE MARKETING ANALYSTS provides a similar (and often better) portfolio of advanced predictive marketing research and analysis solutions as large marketing research firms but at prices they can’t beat. In addition, we guarantee your complete satisfaction with our services and solutions. Contact us today and learn why we’re your best choice for Predictive Marketing Services.

To learn more, please visit us today at http://www.themarketinganalysts.com/en/pages/analytical-predictive-marketing-research/

Market Basket Analysis can recharge the marketing strategy for your retail business.

Market Basket Analysis (also called MBA and Association Mining) is a data mining technique that is based on the idea that if you buy a certain product, you will be more or less likely to purchase one or more additional items.

For example, if you shop at Amazon.com, then you’ve read their  recommendations like . . . ,“ Customers who purchased this book also bought. . .”, . . .,“ Amazon also recommends. . .”, “ Buy these 2 books together and save . . . .” Amazon.com has been successful by using this data mining marketing strategy to generate additional sales through product promotion, cross-selling and product placement.

There are natural product affinities in the market place. For example, people who buy hot dogs frequently buy hot dog buns, ketchup and relish. Although some product affinities are obvious, others are often unexpected. A classic example involves an affinity between diapers and beer.

A number of large retail companies use market basket analysis to develop promotions and generate incremental sales. But while the analytics required for this technique are relatively simple, Market Basket Analysis requires tremendous processing capabilities to analyze transaction-level (individual market basket) data. As a result, most retailers can’t conduct this type of analysis.

THE MARKETING ANALYSTS have the servers, processing power and software needed to quickly define the likelihood of two (or more) items being purchased together. With our capabilities, we can identify the products that drive drive customers to your store and that should always be in stock. We can also analyze the contents of each basket and classify the shopping trip into a category: weekly grocery trip, special occasion, etc. Finally, we can perform store-to-store comparisons based on units sold per customer, revenue per transaction, number of items per basket, etc.

Market Basket Analysis is a breakthrough that can recharge your marketing strategy in your retail business. Visit http://www.themarketinganalysts.com to learn how your transaction data can be used to provide better product assortments, planograms and promotions.

Predictive Data Mining & Neural Networks

What is Predictive Data Mining?

Predictive Data Mining combines data warehouse with advanced multivariate statistical analysis and artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence is gained through the use of a neural network, a powerful data modeling tool that is able to capture and analyze complex input/output relationships for the prediction of future customer behavior, classifying customer segments and forecasting events. Today, predictive data mining has become an essential tool for strategic decision making at many mid-size companies and large corporations.

Like a human brain, a neural network acquires knowledge through a training process and its knowledge is stored within inter-neuron connection strengths known as synaptic weights. When trained and deployed correctly, perceptron (MLP) neural networks, sometimes used by THE MARKETING ANALYSTS provide superior results when analyzing linear and non-linear relationships.

How are Marketing Neural Networks Being Used?

Right now, there are vast databases and powerful technologies crunching numbers about your lifestyle and the lifestyles of millions of other Americans. They know the value of your home, the type of car you drive, the ages of your children, your credit rating and more. This data is being mathematically processed to determine if you are the best target for the latest gadget to hit the market.

While this sounds like something from a George Orwell novel, it describes the predictive modeling power behind neural networks and modern data mining technologies. While data mining conducted at this magnitude is limited to certain government agencies, the price of this technology has dropped substantially due to new mathematical discoveries, lower technology costs and improved processing power. As a result, many corporations are now embracing the power of predictive data mining to gain competitive advantages through customer segmentation strategies, predicting customer behavior and by making projections about the future.

Here are a few additional ways that predictive data mining is being used today.

Marketing Predictions

Producing accurate sales forecasts is an important part of measuring your marketing strategy. Inaccurate forecasts lead to missed opportunities, avoidable costs, inefficiencies and many other problems. Although Microsoft Excel provides certain forecasting tools, its forecasting tools fail when non-linear relationships and missing data are present, this is often the case when analyzing marketing data. In these cases, neural networks provide superior forecasting accuracy.

Market Segmentation

When neural networks are correctly designed and deployed, they can accurately identify people who will be most receptive to a product, promotion or advertising campaign. Some of the most frequent methods of segmentation with neural networks combine metrics such as recency of purchase, frequency of purchases and amount spent. Other factors include age, sex, income, location, education level, occupation and household status. Today, neural networks are a primary method for highly predictive marketing segmentation.

Prediction and Classification

Neural networks are a proven technology for solving complex classification problems. Credit companies often deploy neural networks to spot fraudulent credit card activity and identity theft. Other companies deploy neural networks to identify defecting customers in order to maximize their customer retention.

About THE MARKETING ANALYSTS

The Marketing Analysts are experienced in developing and deploying predictive marketing models and neural networks that discover marketing opportunities, segment customers and enable you to discover complex relationships in your data. With our technology, we can develop more accurate and effective predictive models for better decision-making. Contact us today for more information.