Market & Potential Analysis

Is there a market that is big enough for a new product and how is this market characterized?  What markets or submarkets are worth expanding into?

There is a broad range of market analyses to determine market shares, market volumes, market potentials as well as market entry barriers. We conduct primary and secondary market research in order to obtain the necessary information.

Analyses of potential are required in order to answer questions on the introduction of new products, on changes/reviews of the sales orientation, or on the definition of expansion strategies. For a reliable evaluation of market potentials, we combine different approaches like competition-oriented, structure-oriented, or customer-oriented market potential analyses. Optionally, we can transfer the results to a “market potential tool” to assess potentials per product, segment, or country.

Interpreting information is just as important as properly collecting information. Together, we will process and interpret information and we will show you what they imply for your company. We work in a way that focuses on problems and we incorporate already available analyses and studies so that we don’t “reinvent the wheel.”

Customer Benchmarking

Do you want to know where you are positioned in the competitive environment?

Within the context of competitive benchmarking, we determine your company’s current position and, therefore, expand the focus that is usually only performance-oriented. Benchmarking is an integral part of a continuous quality management strategy and a reliable approach to evaluate a company’s performance regarding supply, processes, and forms of organization. It allows for a comparison of similar products or services across companies and industries in order to reveal potential for improvement, identify best practices, make customer’s willingness and reasons to change providers transparent, and detect new, decisive competitive advantages and disadvantages at an early stage. Internal benchmarking helps unveil differences between departments or sites.

Homburg & Partner assists you effectively with benchmarking analyses and identifies specific strengths and weaknesses, e.g. regarding products, services, or the sales force. This includes identifying current and potential competitors, analyses of competitive structures (strategic groups), and developing individual competitor profiles. In doing so, we draw upon our extensive knowledge of the industry as well as upon data obtained in our customer satisfaction surveys.  We also highlight the areas where it pays off to be better than the competition.

Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty Tracking

Are your customer relations of high quality? What are your customers’ performance expectations and to what extent do you deliver? How customer-oriented is you company really? How can you curb an impending drifting away of customers at an early stage?

Loyal customers are a key factor for in every company. The show a higher willingness to buy a product again, they are much more likely to recommend a company to others, they can be won over by up- or cross-selling, and they are more price-tolerant than disloyal customers. But how can one achieve lasting customer loyalty and satisfaction in times of increasing competitiveness and pricing pressure?

The links between customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, and the drivers of satisfaction are not always clear. In more than 200 projects, Homburg & Partner has shown what the key success factors are for customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. To this end, we use a model for measuring relevant success factors and for establishing successful strategies. This model is well-founded in theory and has proved its worth in practice on several occasions.

Our customer satisfaction and loyalty tracking helps us identify global indicators for your company that can be used for repeated monitoring in order to measure sustained success. Moreover, you will learn about your company’s strengths and weaknesses and about its potential for improvement.

Homburg & Partner offers more than an excellent assessment. This assessment is just the starting point for a global customer loyalty management strategy. Integrating market research and consulting lets us accompany our clients to the point of a successful implementation of strategies. We can capitalize on our extensive experience in many different areas with the objective of increasing our clients’ customer orientation and, therefore, their success.

Of course, there is no standard solution that could be used for all companies. Therefore, our customer satisfaction and loyalty tracking is always custom-tailored and tie in with each company’s individual features.

Conjoint Analysis

What does my new product’s standard version have to be composed of in order to be successful? What are important additional product features according to customers? What does the ideal product configuration look like from the customer’s point of view?  What do customers in different segments require of new product (e.g. technical support, system solutions)?

Conjoint-Analyses offer support with important questions regarding product and service designs, pricing, and benefit-oriented market and customer segmentation. This method is a complex statistical procedure. Deciding upon one specific conjoint method always depends on the company’s specific situation and problem.

For a conjoint analysis to be successful it is important to act systematically; especially the conception stage is of utmost importance. Conjoint analyses are usually designed as online surveys, as they can be conducted at relatively low cost on the one hand, and as they are very user-friendly on the other hand. With this method it is possible to present new products in a very graphic way.

Some of our clients already use this method as an inherent part of their product development process. It has been demonstrated that these companies benefit from a decrease in market entry risks and development costs, and from the possibility of a growth in sales due to the customer-oriented design of the product and its services. Especially against the background of an increasingly intense competition, the conjoint analysis can significantly contribute to giving your company a competitive edge.

We have developed new methods for those areas where conventional conjoint analyses reach their limits: e.g. PRE-Conjoint and Discrete Choice Comparison. With its systematic two-step approach, the PRE-Conjoint analysis combines an assessment of market potentials, product requirements, and the willingness to pay on the market. The Discrete Choice Comparison avoids the limitations of other pricing procedures by asking for preferences on the basis of specific scenarios.

Customer Surveys

Do you consider customer orientation to be a requisite? Do you want reliable success monitoring for customer-oriented measures? Is it indispensable for you to know how your customers think and function? Do you want to know where your in-house impression of the customer is still up to date and whether there are possible, fatal misjudgments?

Systematic customer analyses help you identify your company’s customer structure as well as the status of individual customer relationships. This can be done internally through analysis of existing data as well as externally by interviewing current, former, and potential customers.

Customer surveys are suitable for monitoring the success of customer-oriented measures and allow for an analysis of critical points in customer development. Conducting customer surveys at regular intervals helps support a systematic and continuous examination of a company’s customer orientation. You should also not underestimate the inherent signaling effect: A customer survey shows that customer orientation is of utmost importance to your company.

Ideally, we combine internal (e.g. customer contribution margins, process costs) and external data (e.g. customer satisfaction, potential) in our analyses.

These analyses are used by many of our clients as a foundation for customer segmentation based on their needs, wants, and importance. In this context, Homburg & Partner has also assisted leading CRM system provides in developing their customer value / customer satisfaction modules.

Employee Surveys

Your messages don’t reach the market and you assume this could be due to internal communication problems? If there is something amiss with the output, could this be caused by the sales-related input? Could the low level of customer satisfaction be caused by a low level of employee satisfaction?

There probably isn’t anyone who knows your company as well as you and your own employees do. Therefore, to round off the information we collect, we also offer in-house analyses in your company using your internal know-how.

Together with you, we analyze the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization and its processes across interfaces. Our extensive experience in multiple sectors with marketing and sales challenges helps us conduct systematic analyses of critical points.

Additionally, we conduct ‘conventional’ employee surveys on employee satisfaction, internal customer orientation between departments, corporate culture, and management. Of course, the survey method depends on your requirements: we conduct written, telephone, personal, or online surveys.