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Using Research Surveys to Maximize Customer Value

Survey companies, survey consultants, and professional research surveys have become some of the most valuable tools a business can have, because these resources get to the heart of what makes customers tick.
Once you do that - regardless of what kind of product or service your company sells or offers - you have the key to maximizing the potential value of each and every customer.
That's why omnibus market research and online research surveys are getting so much attention these days from businesses both large and small.
With intelligently designed research surveys, for example, you not only find out what resonates with your customers but you are able to precisely identify your most lucrative potential customers and lure them away from competitors.
Likewise you can find out how to get your loyal customers to trade up to premium products, how to inspire them to make multiple purchases, or how to strategically "down sell" to them.
Trading up, for example, might happen because your research surveys indicate that some of your customers want higher quality merchandise or VIP services.
Your omnibus market research can also be conducted and analyzed by a survey consultant to reveal critical information such as how much extra those upper echelon customers are willing to pay for this kind of upscale or customized product or VIP consumer experience.
Similarly, many survey companies have done timely research surveys within the past 2-3 years to find out exactly how consumer attitudes, spending habits, and budgeting strategies may have changed to help them weather a bad economy.
Identify those customers who are looking for more affordable alternatives to your current product line, for example, and then you can cater to them with more budget-conscious options.
This is the down-selling approach.
Thanks to insights gained from your research surveys you can retain those customers even during a severe recession; otherwise, you risk losing them to competitors who offer less expensive versions of the same core products or services that are your company's bread and butter.
Using survey companies to continually monitor those consumers through ongoing research surveys also tells you when they are ready to go from those economical items back to something of higher quality and price.
Since you have kept your customers loyal to you by using the "down sell" tactic you can once again cultivate them - with the help of research surveys - back into higher paying customers.
Or you might convert them all the way up the ladder to premium-paying elite clients.
Without the benefit and insight of research surveys, however, you can lose clients both ways - to competitors who offer premium products and services or to those who offer discounted versions of the same things.
You'll never know it, though, and might spend years - and tens of thousands of dollars - trying to lure customers back through advertising and marketing.
Meanwhile you could have been retained them all along - using the leverage of survey insights to maximize profits in any market cycle - if you had simply taken advantage of affordable omnibus research surveys.


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