Wednesday 24 November 2010

Look Abroad for New Markets...But Do Your Homework First

The Irish crisis and the downturn across the Eurozone has potentially far-reaching consequences for home grown British brands – and with a challenging year ahead now is the time for brands to take steps towards spreading risk and finding new markets in the months and years ahead.



The current crisis has highlighted the UK’s failure to redirect its own economy towards emerging markets. Not only do we export more to Ireland than to the BRIC countries combined, but our trade with Holland is worth more than most of our trade with Asia. We are, to an extent, at the mercy of the Eurozone even if we are not party to it.



So, is now the time for brands to begin exploring emerging markets in Eastern Europe and in Asia? Tesco clearly thinks so. It has just announced plans to nearly double its selling space in central Europe and Turkey over the next five years, whilst also aiming to quadruple sales in China to £4bn by the 2014 financial year.

Put simply, to grow the UK economy and for brands to achieve sustainability let alone profitability, they must start to find new markets outside Western Europe.



This needs to be a research-led process. Initial research can deliver insights that will help assess the viability of a particular market or markets for your products. Carefully structured research can provide extensive information on purchasing habits, particular taste buds and food choices, variations in brand meanings across different languages and even behavioural and cultural issues that would need to be considered. Start that process now and you will be ahead of the game if 2011 remains a little rocky.



There’s only one thing worse than not taking steps to explore new markets and that’s doing it without being armed with the research and customer insights you need to make informed decisions.

Friday 19 November 2010

Evolve Creative

This week we have launched our new tool, Evolve Creative, which to designed to inspire better, braver brand advertising.

Email us to find out more (engage@engage-research.com)

Here's our first bit of press

http://www.mrweb.com/drno/news12667.htm

Monday 15 November 2010

Engage Brain Latest!

Latest news on the 'Engage Brain'.... What’s So Cool About Being Cool? Part 1 of our search for all things cool!

Email us at engage@engage-research.com if you want the report.

Friday 5 November 2010

Ideas aren't everything - the devil is in the detail!

We have seen an interesting article in 1to1 Magazine (http://bit.ly/aHqbKn) that looks at how companies are embarking on innovation management strategies that draw more heavily than ever on customer insight which, claims the article, ultimately leads to more successful product launches.

The article claims that, “fuelled by a hunger to succeed in this ailing economy”, companies are increasingly turning to customers, employees, and other stakeholders to come up with the ideas that will ultimately lead to new products and services.

The piece raises some interesting points, not least in setting out the increasingly varied ways in which companies are looking for and finding innovation within their own businesses. What it doesn’t demonstrate, though, is how necessarily to do it well. Ideas conceived in isolation are only half-formed. The real challenge for brands is in whether they are brave enough to implement the ideas that will create genuine stand-out for them in their market place and the attention to detail that goes into the execution of the concept.

And that’s the point at which customer insight agencies have a genuine role to play, providing the information that help brands prioritise those ideas for development and ensuring that budget is put to work on the most important and viable of the concepts developed via the engagement strategy.

Monday 1 November 2010

October Article in ADMAP

We have an article in October's ADMAP on New Product Insight

...Consumer insight research can help to get the market positioning of a new product right and act as a pathway to success.

Email us and we'll send you a copy!

engage@engage-research.com