Business & Industrial Research

Our Experience:

JRA Research has a high level of expertise in business-to-business and industrial research and our experience spans a wide variety of sectors, including:

• Business services
• Chemicals & advanced industrial materials
• Construction, building materials & equipment
• Financial services
• Industrial manufacturing & engineering
• Metals & fabricated metal products
• Oil, gas & energy
• Paper, packaging & printing
• Utilities

We have a strong track record of interviewing in business-to-business markets and believe that business-to-business interviewing is fundamentally different to consumer interviewing. There are number of reasons for this:

•  It is often not clear at the outset who is the right person in the company to speak to and some perseverance and skill is required on the part of the interviewer to accurately track down the correct respondent.
• Business-to-business/Industrial markets are often made up of a fairly small pool of customers and our research design may often need to be tailored to accommodate smaller sample sizes and different methodologies.
• Projects may cover quite technical subjects that our interviewers are required to gain at least a working understanding of in order to conduct a credible interview and be able to interpret respondents’ answers correctly.
• Business-to-business/Industrial markets are often International and so our research must be able to cover a broad range of countries integrated within the same study.

Our Approach:

 We understand that customers/potential customers can form views of our client’s company based on the interviewing experience. To this end, we invest a lot of time ensuring that the interview itself is presented in an attractive light to the respondent (whether by telephone, face-to-face or online) and that our interviewers are experienced in handling senior decision makers and are briefed beforehand on any relevant technical or market information.

We recognise that research is a means to an end and not an end in itself. Our focus is on providing a service which goes beyond simply the provision of data and our research projects are designed to maximise the practical relevance of the information we collect. On completion of all our projects we will put forward our conclusions and recommendations, based on the survey results and our experience of similar research.

We also recognise that those who have to act on research must have confidence in the chosen supplier. We therefore put great emphasis on presenting our findings in a clear, concise and commercial manner, avoiding any research jargon.

Overall, we are committed to building first class relationships with our clients and delivering to our clients the maximum possible benefit from any research we undertake.

Our Resources:

We have an experienced team of researchers who will quickly be able to grasp the nature of your business and industry sector and advise on the best research design.

Telephone Interviewing:

Our UK Telephone Interviewing Unit (in Nottingham) has 45 CATI workstations and conducts thousands of B2B interviews each year.

• Fully trained market research interviewers, operating according to our stringent quality standards – Our work meets (and exceeds) the market research industry standards through our adherence to MRQSA (Market Research Quality Standards Association) and IQCS (Interviewer Quality Control Scheme).
• A core team of experienced business-to-business telephone interviewers, used to working across a wide range of industrial markets.
• All interviewers working on a project attend a comprehensive briefing conducted by the project manager (often with client participation) prior to commencing the fieldwork.
• The telephone unit incorporates advanced monitoring facilities which are used both for interviewer training and as part of our general quality control procedures.
• All interviews are recorded to facilitate post-interview referencing and are available for client review if required.
• 10% of interviews are back-checked, again for quality control purposes.

Agency Partners:

For international surveys (where we may need additional language skills or knowledge of the local market) we work with a network of partner suppliers/agencies around the world to ensure provision of quality data collection at a local level.

These agencies are either affiliated to JRA through the GlobalNR network or through less formal arrangements and we only work with fieldwork agencies which have demonstrated a track record to us in terms of the quality, reliability and overall value for money of their service.

In order to ensure seamless data collection, we work with partner agencies which use the same CATI software platform as in our UK telephone unit.

Research Types & Methods:

Business and industrial research needs specific skills and techniques that are tailored to the subject matter and respondent type. We are expert in conducting:

•  Quantitative research (normally using our specialist telephone interviewers), to measure the frequency of behaviour or opinion and to understand how segments differ from each other.
• Qualitative research, including traditional in-depth interviews (face-to-face and telephone) and focus groups (face-to-face and online) with all kinds of respondents, to examine motivations/priorities and the factors driving decision making; and to generate ideas and solutions, etc.
• Online research using a range of ground-breaking techniques that can be particularly useful in the business and industrial setting, e.g. for NPD or marketing communications research.
• Collection and analysis of secondary or ‘desk’ research to assess issues such as market size, potential and structure; competitive threats; legislative changes; future challenges.

Our range of experience means that we are proficient in guiding decision-making in the business-to-business environment, covering subjects as diverse as:

• Customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Branding and communications
• Product development and innovation
• Segmentation and targeting
• Market entry/Market sizing
• Distribution and supply chain strategies
• Pricing