After I spent 40 hours of class and study time to create a professional Blog, I would like to share now with you my acquired knowledge on Blogging. In the first place I will enumerate the steps, then give you an explanation how you might do it and afterwards an example how I did it. At first I had to choose a Blog platform.

1. Blog-Platform
Many blog-platforms do exists. But WordPress is the most common used. Via WordPress you have a multitude of gadgets which permits a good navigation of your blog. WordPress is an easy-to-use and free blogging software which focuses on aesthetics and usability. It can be applied for many issues. In the following I will explain you how you can create your own professional blog on WordPress.

2. Topic
In a first place you need to choose of a topic you want to write about. It can be an interest, your working field or something you always wanted to research. Blogging is about researching, analyzing, and commeting on information – not just reporting on it. In addition, you will comment on what other people have written about a specific topic so you can have a detailled look at it. Blogging is about interaction with other people, their thoughts and interests.

As I chose as major Market Research I wanted to create a Blog on Market Research, in order to give other interested parties a guide, a reference to new trends in this field.

3. Title of the Blog
What will be the title of your blog? This is a very crucial question. The title should of course reflect the topic you choose to write about. But then there are many possibilities to entitle it.
In the first place I called my Blog “Sophie’s Market Research Site”. So the reader knows it is a Blog from me about market research. But after some time, I thought of a more neutral, objective way to describe my Blog. As I am giving explanations, guides to new trends in this field, I called it “New Concepts on Market Research”. I learned that a title should always be attractive and refer to the content of the Blog.

4. Overall design
If you know on which platform you will create your Blog and about which topic you want to write, it is important to think of the overall design.

Concise Image
It is important to insert in the image header an image which has a symbolic significance. It should be easy memorable and should fit well to the topic. In search engines you need then to type in relevant keywords to your topic and opt for a photo other people, future visitors of your Blog, could associate with your topic. Under Appearance in WordPress you can then easily upload your image.
As my topic is Market Research, I asked myself what Market Research stands for. For me it is data you analyze now so you can make forecasts for the future. My Image expresses this. It shows a sign with “future ahead” on it. It indicates a movement, a direction.

Theme/ Layout
In WordPress you may thereafter choose a Theme (in Appearance). A theme is the general layout of your Blog. What changes is the alignment of the side bar (categories, posts…), the extent of the widgets, the fundamental colors…
I choose my theme (Pool) according to the colors and the simplicity of my image header.

Categories
The categories you choose will appear on the side bar. You can categorize your posts via them. I learned that categories should closely refer to the blog title.
For me in Market Research there are three important categories:

• Competitive Intelligence: how monitor the competitors?
• Consumer Behavior: Needs and expectations of the target
• Market Study : Business environment (market data, companies, consumption, political, social factors)

5. Research of publications in the field
In order to write posts you need to find the right publications in your field. It can be articles (from the Journals specialized in your field), news, videos, and other Blog articles. You can save some of them in your blogroll if you like.
I am for example going directly to Market Research institutes and am looking there for press releases or the news section.

6. Posts depending on the context and content
The basic structure of a post is divided into three parts: introduction (announce the structure, personal appeal to reader), main part (explain main ideas) and the last part (conclusion, opinion). Depending on the publications you may choose other structures, but every post should be clear and simple, announce the structure, give a guide to a specific topic and you should make usage of the target language of your field. Remember to always indicate the link to the websites you use. After some time when you know something about your field, about your topic, you can go to other Blogs and leave comments there. The interaction can start, because now the people will look out for you page and comment it too.

As I am giving above explanations and examples on my blog, please go to my professional Blog about Market Research on WordPress.  I hope this guide will help you set up your own professional Blog on WordPress. If you like to know the reasons why I maintain a Blog, please go to this Blog entry.

If you are doing a competitive analysis and you know already where to search (internal, external sources) it is important to make a list of what you have researched in order to know which information you can get out of it.

… on some or all of the following areas:

• structure, strategy, motivations and objectives
• financial and operating analysis, eg. return on sales, gross profit margin etc.
• marketing strategy, eg. messages and tactics, price flexibility, new services or products, distribution models used, names of key customers
• market perception, eg. why their customers buy from them and their satisfaction levels i. e. what are your competitors’ best practices and key strengths?
• future directions

… then you would be in a strong position to:

• understand their mission and objectives and develop your own accordingly
• develop realistic sales targets through understanding the scale of their operations and turnover
• implement product/service improvements to counter strengths/weaknesses and innovations in their product portfolio
• position your prices appropriately
• target your direct sales policies through knowing their distribution channels
• offer competitive discounts and payment terms
• develop an appropriate marketing communications strategy in response to their messages and where they put them across
• strengthen your products/services and marketing strategy by adopting and adapting the best practices observed in your competitors’ armoury. Not in a blind ‘copy-cat’ way, but creatively shaping those practices to your own circumstances

Source: Business Advantage

… and it is all about comparison:

“Even the simplest competitive analysis displays two critical dimensions: the competitors and the criteria, or what we’ll call the competitive framework. The purpose of the competitive framework is to present the data in a way that makes it easy to compare the various sites across the different criteria.”

Citation of Dan Brown

Introduction: Why Competitive Intelligence?

I’d like to provide you a guide how to do CI and what you have to consider when doing it. It is divided into 3 parts.

Every business has to deal with customers, suppliers, employees and others. In nearly every branch of trade there are many companies dealing with the same reference groups. These companies are competitors because they offer similar products to similar customers. Therefore, it is so crucial to know what the other companies, the competitors, are doing.
This fight for the same resources and territory can be compared to war! It is necessary to understand the enemy:

• how he thinks – his vision in business
• what his strengths are – I have to pay attention to
• what his weaknesses are – where is he vulnerable?
• where he can be attacked
• where the risk of attack is too great

1) Sun Tzu - Historic Competitive Intelligence: Some principles to keep in mind

Sun Tzu (400 BC- 320 BC) is traditionally believed to be the author of “Art of War”. It is a philosophy of War and is based on the Taoist thought and practice. Here some examples of this treatise, which can be directly applied on strategies for competitive Intelligence.

Chapter 1, phrase 19 & 24
19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable
when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we
are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away
when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

24. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

Chapter 3, phrase 18, first line:
18. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles.

As résumé we can say “Understand your enemy so you can surprise him”.

2) My Competitors: Who are they?

Competitors are businesses which are dangerous for me now or which can become dangerous in the future.
Business competitors are:
- Other organizations offering the same product or service
- Other organizations offering similar products or services
- Organizations that could offer the same or similar products or services in the future.
- Organizations that could remove the need for a product or service.

3) The 4 C’s in C.I or the way to get to real Competitive Intelligence

There are four stages in monitoring competitors:

• Collecting the information
• Converting information into intelligence
• Communicating the intelligence
• Countering any adverse competitor actions – i.e. using the intelligence.

At First:
Think how you want to use the information about a competitor before collecting it. Because collecting and gathering information costs time, money and effort. So, before starting to search for information you will need to sit back and define what you are looking for and why. Then identify the key areas of concern for your business.

Here some examples why companies are collecting information:
• “The business may be planning a new product – so information on what competitors are doing in the same area will help in the decision processes and plans for this new product.
• Alternatively, the business may be looking at how the industry will develop over the next 5 or 10 years.
• Or perhaps the board is looking at a potential merger, acquisition or business partnership.”

3.1. Collecting the information
Information can be found in two different kinds of sources: internal to your company and external to it.

Some examples where the information can come from:
• Sales representatives (customers)
• Research & Development (new patents)
• Purchasing (suppliers)
• Market research (feedback)

Search in the internet:
Online CI Tools
Online CI Databases as D&B, Hoovers

3.2. Converting information into intelligence

As a result of collecting information you should then have a large pile of data on your competitors.
Unfortunately much of this data will be repetitious, out of date, wrong or inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete. However it will give you an idea how your competitor is acting on the market.
The information will then need to be indexed and catalogued and at the end each piece of information needs to be interpreted and analysed. This is where information starts to become intelligence.

3.3. Communicating the intelligence

Competitor intelligence needs to be evaluated and selectively communicated to all who need to make decisions based on what customers, suppliers, or other companies in the market are doing or are likely to do.

3.4. Countering competitor actions

“Having identified what competitors are doing, battle can be entered. Sometimes the battle will be vicious – especially when two competitors have been slogging it out for years. Various military strategies have been used to describe different approaches to beating competitors – flanking strategies, encirclement and siege strategies, frontal attacks and even guerrilla marketing tactics.” However it should always be conducted ethical and within the law (for example SCIP Code of Ethics USA)

Sources:
http://www.marketing-intelligence.co.uk/resources/competitor-analysis.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Tzu
http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html

Nuremberg, February 2nd 2009

Gfk held a press conference and focussed on the question: is there a consumption crisis in Germany?

The answer can be based on three statements of the Gfk:

1) “The level of unemployment is not expected to affect consumption until the end of the year and so consequently, consumers are unlikely to experience much of a crisis this year”

2) “Consumer groups will be affected to varying degrees”

3) “Despite the turmoil in the markets, the consumer climate index rose from 1.6 points last September to 2.2 points in January 2009, with a stable trend most recently”

This gives a clear answer to the question: No, this year (2009) consumers are not affected by the financial crisis. They even profit from it, due to a drop in the rate of inflation and still decreasing gas and oil prices. “According to estimates of the German Institute of Economic Research (DIW), the pressure taken off consumers and companies as a result of the massive reduction in energy prices is the equivalent of some EUR 25 billion to EUR 30 billion.” Gfk even forecast a growth in consumption up to o,5%. May the German consumption balance out the economic recession? At least it provides the condition for hope.

But when will purchasing power be affected? During times of economic crisis the cocooning effect increases. People stay at their homes. They will less enjoy events outside do especially the Restaurant industry will be affected by the crisis.

The situation will have a major impact on food retail. The various sectors will also be affected to varying degrees. There will be losers, but also winners in this crisis. Among the winners will certainly be Discount stores and cheap brands because consumers will pay more attention to their expenditures. “However, the premium segment and brands which boast high levels of customer loyalty will also survive the crisis better than others and emerge from it stronger. The demand for chocolate, ready meals, convenience products and soft drinks is set to rise due to the cocooning effect. Conversely, consumers are likely to save when it comes to products such as wine, spirits, coffee, butter, margarine etc. and cosmetics. They will save in two ways, by consuming less and by choosing more favorably priced products with the same product features.”

If you like to read the whole article, please have a look on this side.

Here is the list of the online CI tools mentioned in the video below. I separated them in free and payable tools, with a short description following each of them. When you click on the tool you can directly join the webpage and get started with your competitive intelligence.

(Source: Youtube)

This video shows many tools aiming to give an insight on competitor’s behavior in the internet. Here you may find some answers to questions you have always asked yourself: How do companies keep their competitors under surveillance, how can they control each step they make? What are the tools to do so?

“Competitive intelligence (CI) is the process of monitoring the competitive environment and analyzing the findings in the context of internal issues, for the purpose of decision support.”

If you wish to know more about CI tools and go deeper in this field you can visit this site:Search Engine Journal. This blog delivers the latest news on these tools and gives tips how to use them.

Free Tools

• SEO for Firefox (Firefox plug-in): it shows entire the SEO of any website: it is a good profile of the whole domain
• Seodigger.com: It shows the ranking of websites (of the competitor for example) in the national search results
• Yahoo Site Explorer: You can see all links who point to a domain, offers an email alert system
• Alexaholic: compares alexa from 2-3 websites, shows traffic coming to these pages
• Compete.com: which keywords are paying my competitors
• Watchthatpage: It is a monitor for the changes of a website
• Digitalpoint.com: It is a keyword tool: how is your competitor doing in the national search results
• Google Touch Graph: Relationships between websites: real networks of websites
• Xinu returns: Technical information on websites: Server used, IP-Address owned
• Netcraft.com: Information on domain and hosting history
• Wayback Machine: History of changes of the websites, here an example of Google
• MSN Labs: Demographic prediction: Companies can know the gender, age demographics of website user
• Google Alert: If a word of a competitor is mentioned in the internet Google will sent you an email´

If you would like to know other free online tools for Competitive Intelligence, please go to this Blog Article. These are really basic tools, which can help you gain a general image from your competitor. But be careful with the sources. The next tools I listed underneath are tools you need to pay for:

Tools you have to pay for

• Spyfu.com: Here you can search Marketing campaigns of competitors, and even know approximately their daily budget, the clicks the competitor is getting
• SoloSEO: You can check how many pages have been indexed
• Keycompete: shows all advertisers bitting on a keyword

Today, all big companies have an appearance on internet: They have a website, where, as consumer, competitor, investor, employee, you can seek and find information. But as competitor you need often more detailed information. You want to know the next steps your competitors are doing…In order to know this, you have to follow them, and the best way to do this is via internet.

If you know other online CI tools please feel free to leave a comment on this post.

Title: The six costliest mistakes you can make in Marketing to women
Author: Andrea Learned (2002)

In this article, the author gives advice on how companies have to align their marketing in order to reach women. According to the author, Andrea Learned, there are six common mistakes which are made.
First she observes reality, than she gives some advice (factors which should be considered) and at the end she explains how to market products or services to women. This is based on the US market.

The author remarks 1) that women are the primary consumer segment (85% of consumer purchase power). 2) When focusing on women, they should be budget priority. 3) Women are different from each other; they have different interests. 4) Women represent the majority of web users, and do their shopping on the internet more often then men. And 5) last but not least women will not alienate men. All standards will profit all in a whole.

Opinion

The author wrote the article in a sarcastic way. I think she should adopt a more professional writing style and work on an objective expression. (The writing style is like: “let me explain what women are”, or “Women is a complicated species” or even “Women have the power!”). Many progresses were made in Marketing and target group definition. 

Today many companies already know how to communicate with women and how to market the products. For example many lotion producers have a product line “for men” and “for women” and communicate very differently (Nivea). But for small and medium sized businesses it can be very interesting to understand the basics.

Nuremberg, December 22, 2008

Here are the findings of the GFK consumer climate study for December 2008. The financial crisis has still not a big impact on the german consumer indices. But a rethinking is taking place concerning expenses. More and more people are aware of their situation and are afraid of  loosing there job. The GFK statement for the new year:
“The consumer climate is also likely to remain stable in the new year, but at a low level. In spite of the financial crisis and its impact on the economy, German consumer propensity to buy was again up slightly in December. The overall indicator is forecasting a value of 2.1 points for January 2009 after a revised value of 2.1 points for December and consequently remains stable. However, both income and economic expectations declined.”
How the consumer climate will develop in the upcoming year depends hardly on how the job market will develop. This means how will be the degree of impact of the recession on the on the job market. There are still some stabilizing factors which will have an effect on the economy 2009: “good collective wage and salary agreements”, low rate of inflation…. To result, GFK forecast a rise of consumption of 0,5% for the year 2009.
Now, some further explanations to the propensity to buy, income expectations and economic expectations:

1) Propensity to buy

The propensity to buy remained stable at the end of the year. The household budget benefited from further drops in petrol and heating oil and putted the consumers into a better mood. This was reflected by the currently passed seasonal Christmas business, and confirmed by the positive news from retailer.

2) Income expectations

“Over the past four months, consumers have seemed comparatively optimistic despite the recession, however, this changed towards the end of the year and income expectations have dropped 8.5 points to their current level of just -15.4 points.”
The decline in the economy is affecting people. Many of them fear to loose their job, and consequently, are more pessimistic in their evaluation of their own financial position. Anxieties concerning loss of income are currently playing a more important role than factors which tend to increase purchasing power, such as lower petrol and heating oil prices.

3) Economic expectations

“Reduced production, a steep fall in new car registrations and declining exports will put pressure on economic development in the coming year.” As a result, the forecasts for 2009 are downgraded. Experts are assuming that the German economy will shrink, but do not know how much.

The GfK Group
The GfK Group is the No. 4 market research organization worldwide. Its activities cover the three business sectors of Custom Research, Retail and Technology and Media. The Group has 115 companies covering over 100 countries. Of around 10,000 employees (as of September 30, 2008), 80% are based outside Germany.

November 25, 2008

GFK conducted its monthly “consumer climate MAXX survey” where 2000 consumers are interviewed. GFK is assigned by the EU commission to do so. GFK states in its report that the financial crisis will not affect consumer sentiment in the near future. Evidence is the consumer climate index which is still slowly growing.

Both the rise in income expectations and the improved propensity to buy support this.
Falling prices for heating oil and gasoline have somewhat eased the pessimism when it comes to income expectations. Falling energy prices support purchasing power. Oil price has halved, gasoline and heating oil are down their record values…consumers save money they can dispense again. Due to wage agreements concluded in the metal and electrical industry, the income expectations of employees of other sectors are optimistic.

GFK noticed a clear rise of 11.5 points this month concerning the propensity to buy. Consumption will withstand the general recession. Consumers believe that they will not be particularly affected by the economical weakness. In the moment they see no need for restrict themselves. “ The easing of inflationary pressure” can be another contributory factor for the stabilization of the propensity to buy.

To conclude, Consumer climate for November 2008 made for the fourth time in a row gains and now stands at -6.9 points.

In a contrary to this, the expectation concerning the overall economic situation, economical expectations indicator continue its downward trend, reaching in November 2008 -30.1 points.

Comment

I think that this is very contradictorily. German consumers are aware of the economic situation. There know that there is a recession (if there watching tv or reading newspapers). But still they are consuming, and even tell they will not directly be affected, and do not see a need to be more careful in spending their money. This is the psychological factor: people repress a negative incident from their conciousness.

To have a more detailed insight of the study, please go this webpage, where you can find the whole article or visit the GFK site.

In this article Jim Heskett is answering to the question “how much can you ask of your customers?” He starts by explaining the procedure of consumer involvement in companies.

As my interest is market research, and especially consumer behavior, I was wondering how companies can “use” their consumers in order to be more profitable. I searched the net with keywords as “Consumer in the companies” and found this interesting article I would like to share with you. In the first place I will give you a short summary, and at the end I will give my opinion. Feel free to comment if you do not have the same opinion or if you like to give new ideas.

Summary

Through the internet and related technologies consumers can express their feelings as well as exchange their ideas and information. Now companies can benefit from this. Some businesses are even restructuring their business models. On the one hand, consumers can now actively contribute to the development of products. On the other hand, companies get to know their consumers better.

He states that it is important to take the consumer into consideration, because a satisfied, well informed consumer will tell its friends. In the contrary a not satisfied consumer will tell even more friends. The author declares that by letting the consumer “in the company”: the company will be supported with new ideas, with proposition of changes, with resources, behavioral data…This is called by him “ownership behavior” or the whole new concept as “ownership quotient”.

But giving the consumer the chance to be involved in the decision making process, the company occurs risks, risks only a few are willing to take.

The author concludes by asking several questions at the end of the article as for example: Which risks do occur? Can they be minimized? Is the involvement a comparative advantage?

Opinion: “Consumers have the power, but companies can make them participate”

In my opinion consumers have gained in the last years more power over companies. If something bothers them or they do not like a product, they do not buy it. And even worse, through word-of-mouth potential consumers are frightened off. Consumers decide what is appearing on the market and what stays there. As for example, when I stayed a year in France, I made good but also bad experiences with French companies. I did a lot bad ones with BNP Paribas, a French bank. It is a bank, I think, which is concentrating more on company’s wishes and needs. The “normal” customer stays behind. I told this many people. Just a few I told to take as cell phone supplier SFR, because they have a good after sales service. So BNP Paribas has lost at least 10 potential consumers because of me!!

That’s why it is so crucial to know the consumers. It is even better to involve them actively in the processes. This involvement can be supported and alleviated by the internet.

In the internet, you can find many platforms (also blogs) which deals with this issue. TRND is such a platform for the German area. Companies use this platform as pretest for their products: so called test-persons can adhere to this platform and try the products out, which are sent to them. After the trial the test-person has to fill out a questionnaire about the product, consequently gives feedback to the company.

Consumers do know what they want and their ideas can flow in the company. 

I searched the internet for an article on consumer behavior and I found an article about the influence of television on our buying decisions.

Source : http://www.acrwebsite.org/topic.asp?artID=351

This article analyses the television behavior of Americans in relation to their buying behavior. In order to prove the thesis that television cultivates our material values, two studies were conducted in America.

The three authors are professors of US universities which are specialized in Market Research and consumer behavior. They conducted two studies (independently from each other) with the aim to reveal the influence of TV on materialism in the USA. They structured their article into three paragraphs: the presentation of the research done, the significance of this and the implications for consumers.

In the first part they begin by telling the reader a fact: Americans watch around 4 hours TV per day. Most of them are aware of that, and feel they are watching “too much”.
The authors continue by mentioning all the assumed negative consequences of watching a lot of television: increasing violence, loss of family and sexual mores for example.

Then they state that TV also has an influence on our increasing materialistic values. In order to prove their thesis they conducted two surveys: a national survey (questionnaire) and a laboratory experiment (showing movies to the test persons).

They result that people who pay attention to what they watch are more likely to be influenced then those who do not pay attention and it is really the TV which influences materialism, not the other way round.

In the American TV the world displayed is unrealistic: it shows that possession gives status, and happiness and a wonderful life…TV even influences our thinking. Consumers make their decisions of purchase while watching TV, because they would like to have the same “positive feelings” shown by the protagonists of the spots or series. “That is, as we view portrayals of desirable products, or see wealth and affluence consistently paired with luck, success, and happiness, we may (consciously or unconsciously) update our attitudes and our value systems to place more importance on material values.”

The research proved the relation between the time spent before the TV and our increased materialistic values. The authors insist in the fact that the television should now be considered as a real causable variable for market research for instance. They recommend consumers to be aware of the effect so they are not so vulnerable to this any more.”(…) viewers may combat materialism by being aware of what they are watching (…) in other words, reminding ourselves that the television world is distorted.”

Opinion

In this article with as subject the influence of TV on our buying attitudes and materialistic values, I found especially interesting the fact that consumers can be influenced on their decisions. Before reading the article, I was not aware of this. For me, TV is just for relaxation and advertising is “annoying”. I was conscious that the TV World is not realistic and I thought I would never buy this product or it is ridiculous to dress like this… But as said in the article TV will affect us anyway because we are also influenced unconsciously.

It is known that nowadays TV is the most important media in an advertising campaign. In addition to that, many companies use the internet as marketing platform to attract also there the attention of their consumers.

With the steadily growing internet connections it has become indispensable to advertise in the internet. But watching TV films for example, we are interrupted by commercial spots on most channels. Here the consumer can be more controlled and guided unconsciously. This is up to the fact that ads in the internet (as for example pop-ups, interactive banner) are perceived as being disturbing. Besides, the internet user can switch to other web pages and seek there for more information.