A large motor manufacturer was concerned that compared to competitors their retention, particularly amongst non-fleet cars, was low. But how could it be raised and quickly?

By intensively analysing the existing data we were able to show that there were two ways that retention could be increased – the hard way and another way!

The hard way is straightforward – ensure that users are highly satisfied with their car and further ensure that the dealer network delivers high quality service.

However the investigation revealed an anomalous case that set the marketing detectives' pulse racing. The data identified a car manufacturer with very high retention but below average product and service satisfaction scores.  How could this be?  There must be another way that retention can be increased and we set out to determine what it was.

It turned out that the answer was finance.  For those car owners who didn't buy their car outright the manufacturer offered a scheme whereby for relatively low monthly repayments the buyer bought half the car and then, at the end of the period they had to buy the other half - cash.  This was not an attractive offer.  However if they bought another car the scheme would roll over and no cash was required.

This insight came out of left field, finance wasn't even part of marketing's area of control and moreover it was handled by a completely separate division of the organisation. However the insight led to this different type of finance being adopted by our client.

Over the next two years the brand's retention rose from 42% to 55%.  During this period a new model was introduced but it was estimated that half of the increase in retention was due to finance.

A bank wanted to sell more financial products to its customer base.  Traditionally, the company had always had a bias towards communication – advertising, direct mail, POS – as the marketing tools most likely to bring increases about but progress was slow.  The strategy director called for a more thorough investigation.

Over the years various pieces of research had been done on the individual markets – mortgages, pensions, insurance etc.. We analysed these and a pattern began to emerge.  Whenever the reports mentioned a customer who had bought additional products from the bank they had usually done so from someone they knew personally at the bank. A relationship had built up with a cashier or an assistant bank manager who had been helpful to them in the past and this made the customer feel valued and a two-way relationship had been established. 

It was the personal touch that was selling the products! 

Given the significance of this finding, a more thorough validation was sought and new studies were initiated among recent buyers to trace how the sale had come about.  These validated the original insight: customers were buying because there was someone they knew at their branch and despite having little affection and even hostility towards the bank, they were willing to buy from them.

This was salutary because for the bank because it was in the process of systematically trashing customer relationships by forcing them to deal with anonymous call centres.  The organisation took the new understanding on board and is pursuing a new strategy focused on building relationships and personalising customer contact.

A mobile phone retailer was concerned about future growth in the UK.  Past growth had been extremely strong, a winning formula had been rolled out across the country while the market sector had been growing rapidly.  However the number of shops had reached over 400 and was thought to be near saturation while the sector was beginning to plateau.

Where was future growth going to come from?  Forensics’ investigation started at the beginning and took a helicopter view enumerating all the ways that large increases in sales might arise – increasing loyalty or greater conversion of visits to sales, etc.  Each of the avenues was systematically investigated and the achievability assessed.

The result was totally unexpected.  Contrary to the company’s assumptions it turned out that there was huge opportunity for more stores.  The store group was not easily accessible to 43% of potential customers and amongst this group the brand had only a 1% share.  Amongst the customers for whom the stores were easily accessible the market share was 21%.  There was the potential to double turnover because there was huge potential for more stores.  The company rapidly opened 100 more stores, then subsequently another hundred. This led to a sales increase of just under 50%.

The UK team of a global fmcg company in the personal care sector were told by senior management that they had to raise their market share from 55% to 70% over the next three to four years.  Team’s response was ‘mission impossible’! Nevertheless Forensics were asked to provide insights on how the target might be achieved.

The company had retail back data for only three years on their system but delving into the archives we formatted and harmonised the disparate records to create a fifteen year database.  With this newly created instrument we were able to pinpoint when the company’s brands and competitors’ brands had gained or lost share and chase down the reasons why this had happened. 

A number of different types of opportunities were identified. For example, the causal history that we created showed that in the past brands had gained share by launching into a closely adjacent sector and this area of gain was available for several of the company’s brands today. Also there were opportunities for larger pack sizes as well as small sub-sectors to re-enter.  In all, six different types of opportunity were identified and these showed that the ‘mission impossible’ target was actually achievable.

The CEO of a major electrical retailer asked Forensics how they could increase their market share.  By analysing and combining three different types of customer data, we established that over 80% of the retailer’s sales came from customers who visited the company’s stores first – customers never bother to go anywhere else!

This was a completely new finding.  The marketing effort was re-directed to boost front-of-mind awareness rather than extol the virtues of the store and its products by running a large number of highly branded 10-second commercials. These replaced press advertising and conventional longer commercials.  Front-of-mind awareness increased from 51% to 73%.  Same store sales rose rapidly by 10% in a market that rose by only 2%.  On the same cost basis, the sales uplift increased profits by 40%.

A major brand had sponsored a top UK football team.  A newly appointed brands director wanted to know how well this was working.  His new company had previously bought a branded market research project – a general tool for evaluating sponsorships.  The methodology was based on what might be termed a ‘similarity rub-off model’.  The research measured various consumer attitudes to the sponsored team – its ‘personality and life values’ – and compared these to the personality and life values of the brand.  The assumption was that if the personality and life values of the sports team and brand were similar then this would benefit the brand and lead to greater sales. 

However, using available survey data on the brand, it was possible for Forensics to focus on consumer behaviour and understand how the sponsorship was affecting it.  The analysis revealed that those brand customers who were also supporters of the sponsored team, became more loyal to the brand.  And non-brand users who supported the team were more likely to switch to the brand – so far so good!

However the problem came when looking at those who supported other teams.  Potential customers who supported other teams were much less likely to switch to the brand.  And everything was made worse because brand users were more likely to switch away.  everything was made worse because the supporters of other teams greatly outnumbered those of the sponsored team.  The millions of pounds spent on the sponsorship was destroying the brand’s market share.

A biscuit brand was losing market share. Own label was gaining share. So it seemed obvious that brand users were switching to own label. To stem the leaking bucket maybe what was needed was advertising to reinforce the message that the brand's biscuits were better.

But was this the right diagnosis? A clue that it might not be came from observing that the sector was declining and this led us to look deeper to see what the underlying behaviour was. It turned out that the top-line picture was indeed misleading: brand users were not switching to own label. They were simply buying fewer biscuits overall and as brand sales declined this gave the illusion that they were switching to the supermarket brands. Advertising had been severely reduced in recent years and the answer was to restore the advertising and extol the pleasures of eating the brands' biscuits. This strategy was pursued and the brand's share decline turned around.

A European fixed-line telecommunications company was losing over 50,000 customers a month to cable companies, costing it over €200 million a year in lost revenue. Along with cheaper call prices, the cable companies also offered access to a selection of TV channels. The cost of calls with the cable companies was a lot cheaper so our client introduced two cut-price schemes. The amount spent on these discounts and their promotion was very large but brand share continued to fall.

The company's marketing library had nearly 3,000 research reports. When Forensics dug into these we turned up a long-forgotten qualitative research report that clearly indicated that the price diagnosis was wrong. According to this report, the main motivation for customers to switch wasn't to get cheaper calls, it was to get more television channels.

We needed to prove this. Billing records not normally analysed for strategic marketing purposes were sourced and marshalled for use. We created several groups of 10,000 customers who were either on the one or other of the new lower price schemes, or not on any price scheme when cable arrived in their area. It was then possible to look at what had happened with them over a 12 months period. The results confirmed that the price schemes were having virtually no effect in preventing defection. We filled in this understanding by analysing existing tracking data in a new way. This showed that where a house already had satellite ownership which gave extra TV channels, the likelihood of switching to cable fell massively (from 33% to 11%).

The best way for our client to inoculate customers against the cable threat was not to price promote – but to form a joint marketing venture with the providers of satellite to accelerate its penetration, particularly in areas where the cable companies were in the process of laying their cables.