Search Blog

The importance of anchoring in pricing research

Identifying the right price for your product or service can be challenging. This is especially true in B2B markets where the decisions are often complex, have high dollar amounts associated with them, involve multiple decision makers, and prices are often fluid based on discounting and other sales strategies.

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Overcoming the skeptics – Turning research into action

One of the challenges with customer satisfaction and NPS surveys is turning the results into strategic and tactical actions. This post provides some steps that can help address this challenge.

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Overcoming Groupthink

In their book Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter Cass R. Sunstein of the  Harvard Law School and Reid Hastie at of University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business provide an explanation of the causes of groupthink and offer practical steps organizations can take to overcome them. Their observations and recommendations align with how we at Isurus view the risks of groupthink associated with focus groups and the concrete actions we take to avoid it.

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Should M&A due diligence incorporate primary market research?

The due diligence process for mergers and acquisitions is intended to validate the decision and minimize risk.  Unfortunately the resources and rigor devoted to the activity can be undermined by common biases that distort reasoning.

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If organizations value it, why won’t they pay for it?

A client recently asked us this questions as part of a market sizing exercise. Fortunately this client asked the question before entering the market and was able to plan accordingly. The buzz surrounding new products or technologies often attracts established vendor that can find  after investing in a new category the market does not live up to their expectations in terms of market size or revenue growth. The disconnect stems from behavioral gaps in the typical market adoption curve.

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Does statistical significance matter in the real world?

To make a claim more believable simply add a chart – that is the key finding of a study by Aner Tal and Brian Wansink of Cornell University. Their research shows that people find data presented in a chart more believable because they associate charts with science. Their findings shed some light on the artificial importance sometimes placed on statistics in quantitative B2B research.

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Amplified experience: What is it and does it occur in focus groups?

A common concern with focus groups is group think. In most cases what appears to be groupthink is actually poor moderation – the moderator fails to control dominating personalities and elicit comments from the quiet ones. Beyond being strong moderators to further combat the possibility of group think Isurus includes individual exercises in most focus groups. This ensures we collect feedback from everyone and provides the more timid participants with a stick in the ground they can stand by when aggressive participants try to sell their point of view.

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Meta surveys vs. detailed explorations: When to use each

An organizational chart of trust has made its way around LinkedIn and Twitter. It’s a great reminder that many elements contribute to feelings of trust. We can use it to ask ourselves how well we and our organizations perform in these areas. It also provides a framework for thinking about other measures such as quality. But should organizations use frameworks like this to formally measure attributes such as trust, quality, loyalty, etc?

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Improving the B2B Customer Experience

Accenture recently released the results of a study of how B2B companies perform in providing the customer experience (CX) B2B markets want today. They don’t expect to buy enterprise software or raw materials on their smartphone. But they do want their experience to be focused on their needs and for complexity to be reduced as much as possible.

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Using research for content marketing

A recent Content Marketing Institute study found that 44% of B2B marketers use research reports in their content marketing strategy. Isurus regularly conducts custom studies to provide data for content marketing initiatives; the sponsoring client leverages the results to create reports, webinars, infographics, whitepapers, microsites, and a range of social and email marketing to promote and share the content.

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