MRC uses the latest technology to deliver key insights in a rapidly changing marketplace.
MRC uses the latest mobile computing technology and advanced software. This means you get results faster and more accurately. Its features include:
- Dynamic programming which allows automatic skips, routing, piping, rotation
- Nightly transmission
- Para data collection for better field management, quality control and validation
- Barcode scanning for sku accuracy
MRC partners with its own trusted suppliers to access additional technology based applications, including mobile phone, virtual shopping, eye-tracking and more.
Consumer Research
Consumer Research Types
- Attitude & Usage Studies
- Concept/Copy Testing
- Market Segmentation
- New Product Testing
- Positioning
- Pricing, Product, Concept Optimization
- Commercial/Print/Ad Testing
- Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty
MRC’s Sensory Testing Program
Market Research provides answers to how people will ask and react because of those perceptions. Sensory Evaluation information provides the decision support that determines the next course of action at those pivotal points in the journey to a successful new product.
MRC uses sensory research to evaluate a range of existing products, analyze a test sample for improvements, gauge consumer response to a product, and check that a final product meets its original specifications.
In sensory market research consumers use their senses; sight, taste, touch, smell, along with their emotions/perceptions and their judgment to decide which products, brands and services they prefer.
Shopper Research
- MRC’s Syndicated Close-Up Studies
- POS Shopper Centric Intercept™(POS)
- Online Shopper Surveys POS™
- TradeSmart Surveys
- MRC Consumer Decision Tree Research
- Shop-A-Longs
- MRC Retail Traffic Studies (Incidence and Shadow Shopping)
- MRC In-Store Video
- MRC’s POSER™(Point-Of-Sale Effectiveness)
- Retailer Research Services
- Shopper Insight Business Unit Brochure
MRC’s Syndicated Close-Up Studies
MRC Syndicated Close-Up studies deliver a wealth of valuable insights for a fraction of the cost of custom research. Conducted in a variety of trade channels including convenience stores, drug stores, dollar stores, warehouse clubs and across multiple channels. This research looks at what drives the path to purchase using both behavioral and attitudinal data collected in-store.
These shopper insights are then trended across our normative database of information collected in previous Close-Up studies to tell the story of the retail and category evolution in the targeted trade channel.
The research objective of the Close-Up series is to get into the minds of shoppers in order to identify and quantify behavior in a targeted class-of-trade. The results provide the framework for thinking about the positioning of this channel, including how and why consumers shop these stores and insights into how to best target the consumer who shops there.
POS Shopper Centric Intercept™(POS)
POS Shopper Centric Intercept™(POS) focuses on understanding consumer attitudes and behaviors while at the point-of-purchase.
Using our proprietary approach, MRC’s field professionals unobtrusively observe shoppers when they choose their purchases. They also conduct intercept interviews with the same shoppers immediately, after they’ve made a decision and are about to leave the category. This brings together into a single database both behavioral and attitudinal variables.
Every aspect of your marketing mix is tested by this approach, including whether your pre-store marketing, or force of habit was powerful enough to prevail over the in-store deals or trade-offs being offered.
There are no denials and no inflated estimates in the Aisle. Issues of bias, denial, forgetfulness and lack of interest that often undermine other research methodologies are absent.
Online Shopper Surveys POS™
When the most expedient way to explore a consumer or retail issue is via the Internet or the telephone, MRC has the technology to gain robust information out of the store as well, including:
- Competitive problems. Why are so many of my traditional customers now buying from my competitor?
- Store brand imagery and cross-channel shopping studies. Why aren’t they coming into my store more? Under what circumstances do they choose outlet A and what other circumstances do they choose outlet B? How can the balance be influenced?
- Testing “visual” issues with a hard-to-find audience
TradeSmart Surveys™
Many companies spend most of their research budgets trying to better understand consumers but overlook one of the most important and influential buyers in their distribution channel – the retail trade. MRC’s TradeSmart Surveys™ let you study trade or retail decision makers as a regular part of your market research process to gain an advantage in all your product and marketing efforts. MRC TradesSmart Surveys are critical in determining where you stand with today’s powerhouse retailers.
MRC Consumer Decision Tree Research
MRC’s Consumer Decision Tree Research is a product segmentation scheme where items sharing greater similarity with respect to meeting consumer needs are classified together, while items serving different consumer needs form separate branches.
Stronger determining effects appear higher up in the tree, while weaker determining effects appear lower in the tree. Non-determining effects do not appear at all in the tree.
CDT’s are used for optimizing product assortments, product portfolios and identifying unmet consumer needs.
Shop-A-Longs
MRC’s ethnographic Shop-Along Programs put you and your team in the store with your target shopper. See the activities of shoppers first hand, what attracts their attention, engages them and wins them. Learn the issues, concepts, influences, barriers, horse-trading and decision outcomes from their comments and behavior. Choose the video option to capture the total richness of the shopping experience for repeat viewing.
MRC Retail Traffic Studies (Incidence and Shadow Shopping)
Where do you fit in the shopping patterns once consumers pass the decompression zone of entering a retail store?
Investigate where customers go in stores, what they purchase, dwell times and how long they spend shopping in any class of trade. MRC’s Retail Traffic Studies help understand actual in-store traffic patterns at specific store locations or for the entire outlet. MRC’s Retail Traffic Studies utilize our international network of trained auditors to look at new retail formats, new stocking locations/conditions and display effectiveness. Shopper Traffic Studies can also be integrated with actual in-store interviews to help explain the decisions behind these observed actions.
MRC In-Store Video
Sometimes a picture can be worth a thousand words. Meyers Research Center (MRC) has the ability to add in-store videotaping to any study or to use it as a stand-alone product.
- MRC can place fixed cameras in selected store locations to visually capture consumer shopping behaviors. Cameras can be set in one location or can be moved throughout the day to cover multiple locations.
- These cameras can also be directed toward a specific section of the store (or aisle) or at a designated point-of-sale activity. Since shoppers are unaware that they are being taped, the end result is a detailed view of actual in-store behaviors. The final deliverable for this activity is typically an edited tape detailing specific shopper behaviors.
- If video is included in a program with other research activities, selected video clips can be added to the final report or presentation. The end result is a multi-dimensional deck that goes beyond traditional research reports.
MRC’s POSER™(Point-Of-Sale Effectiveness)
MRC’s POSER™ is an affordable, standardized approach to evaluating your point-of-sale marketing, displays and merchandising:
- Traffic passing by your display
- Consumer interaction with the display
- Actual purchases from the display
- Attitudes about the display (by itself or in relation to competing offers)
POSER™ helps determine:
- Whether a display is appropriately located in the store
- Whether shopper attention has been captured by the display
- Whether the purchase offer is attractive to shoppers
Because it is a standard evaluation procedure, POSER™ permits comparison between display pieces, brands, categories, stores, chains and channels.
Retailer Research Services
Video Shopping
The MRC Video Shopping research program is designed as a qualitative, open-ended and in-depth discussion in-store. Conversation takes place as shopping activities occur at the point-of-sale, and can focus on a broad range of consumer-based in-store elements and influences. This allows retailers to uncover real time exploration of shoppers’ activities, reactions, and expectations at the point-of-sale that is unparalleled.
Integrated Research
MRC’s integrated research design combines in-store sales and in-store consumer shopping behavior data into a powerful analytical tool. Understand not only how much is selling, but also behavioral insights: who is purchasing these goods and why.
Purchase Observation Studies™
Purchase Observation Studies ™ deliver the who, why, and how a specific category is performing in your stores (based on current or “test” conditions) by asking consumers who are in the aisle shopping. This retail specific approach to category management is conceived to drive sales through innovative merchandising concepts, creating specialized multi-category kiosks, implementing unique plan-o-grams or developing customized solution selling scenarios.
Loyalty Rewards Research
Meyers Research Center’s loyalty rewards research program helps you to understand how your customers perceive each area across your entire business. Our program focuses on 4 key areas:
o Shift – Acquire new customers
o Lift – Increase the spending of existing customers
o Retention – Improve the natural churn rate of customers
o Profit mix – Shift spending to higher margin products
Our goal is to uncover key elements that will help drive customer loyalty and increased market share.
Category Management Research
MRC’s Category Management Research programs help retailers find the best ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors through account specific insights. Test new and innovative merchandising concepts, understand the purchase decision sequence hierarchy (Decision Tree) that consumers utilize in a product category, evaluate the impact of new plan-o-grams or selling locations, understand the reasons for a stagnant category or evaluate a new product or packaging change.
Store Audits
Meyers Store Audits utilize an international network of highly trained research professionals to provide actionable and timely information on distribution, pricing, and compliance. That means customized in-store information on your schedule with a fast turnaround time.
Retail Distribution Checks
For a quick point-of-purchase evaluation of a product at any point in time, distribution checks are the most economical method for collecting retail product information. It’s like having hundreds of “eyes” looking out for the clients’ products on the shelves. It gives an immediate reading on product availability, facings, pricing, shelf inventories, location and point-of-purchase material, etc. It is an excellent method of tracking the progress of a new product’s distribution level which is an aid to scheduling advertising to coincide with the product’s availability in the market.
Merchandising Services
After all the research is in, it is time for implementation. Every campaign ends up with the same ultimate objective—-to move the merchandise from the shelves to the cash register. Meyers Research Center provides the power to generate sales. Our merchandising services vary depending on the product, market, and activities to be performed. MRC’s services are customized to our client’s needs. Here are some of the merchandising services we provide:
o “Housekeeping” and Shelf Maintenance (Inventory and Facings)
o Packing Out Product
o Ordering In Product
o Setting Up Point-of-Purchase Materials on Shelves, Displays, etc.
o Product Exchanges and Recall
o Product Sampling (either at store site or at other locations as needed)
o Product Pick-Up
o Coupon Distribution
State-Of-The-Art-Technology
Our data collection methods include advanced mobile technology (enabling better quality of data and speedier reporting), cutting-edge visual and emotional technology (recording eye movement both in and out of the store), virtual technology (simulating the in-store experience) and video (to enhance shopper insights). We also offer online interviewing (for follow up or stand-alone studies).
