Moving companies forward, with a little help from our friends

Written by Marc l'Amie,
Senior Research Consultant at Millward Brown

Marc l'Amie: "At Millward Brown we always seek for the best expertise possible, in order to deliver excellent consultancy to our clients. We have experienced in the last two years that working with SKIM offers great value to our clients. Why...?"

"These days one sees more and more companies which find themselves in a difficult situation due to the economic recession and seek an escape from downward price spirals due to retailer price wars and huge promo pressure in many categories. Often this results in budget cuts because they are less able to develop completely new introductions and set up extensive (and expensive) launch campaigns. Companies are therefore forced to look into their existing portfolio first and optimize it where possible.

When this happens to a company they are confronted with issues concerning ideal pricing of their products, the feasibility of eventual product re-launches, possibly accompanied with minor product improvements and new or amended packaging. Another important challenge they face is how to optimize promotional strategy when retailers expect a high promo activity from brands."

SKIM's role: consultancy & development of research design

"When one of our clients in such a situation asked for help, we came to the conclusion that choice-based conjoint could be the method to provide us the most robust and workable insights possible within a reasonable budget. Since Millward Brown's expertise lies primarily in pre-testing, tracking and communication research, we decided to seek help from an external party. We already had some good experiences with SKIM in the field of conjoint research from past studies, so we decided to take on the job in joint cooperation."

"For starters we organized a session with the three parties involved; SKIM, Millward Brown and the client. Together we explored the business case and discussed possible solutions of which conducting a choice-based conjoint study seemed the best one. Thereupon the consultants of SKIM started doing their magic and developed an inventive research design which would provide an answer to all the issues our client struggled with. In the end we were able to tell them what they could expect from their new package design, their introduction in a new category and in the end provide an estimation of the profitability of the entire operation."

"Our client was really enthusiastic about the output of the study. They were amazed by the possibilities of the Excel simulator and started working with the tool themselves right away. Ultimately it helped them a great deal in taking well-contemplated decisions of great strategic importance. Throughout their company word spread like fire and requests for similar studies in other categories poured in. A choice-based conjoint study, and especially the simulator it yields, became something all marketers wanted to have. By now we conducted three big studies for this particular client with a possible fourth on the way."

Successful cooperation between Millward Brown & SKIM

"So, all things considered the cooperation between Millward Brown and SKIM has proven to strike gold. We both are of the same mind and have similar, high standard, working values which leads to great joint determination to deliver the best possible collective service towards our clients. Because in the end it's just about one thing: Moving companies forward... with great help from our friends!"

October 2010

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