This article discusses the decreasing response rates in survey research in Germany and other countries. It explains how very low response rates have become a problem for the quality of market research. On the basis of three surveys, it not only examines the reasons that result in different survey types for interviewees not being available or declining to respond, but also what motivates them to participate in an interview. On this basis, concrete recommendations are developed to generate a possible increase in responses.

The tool GfK Volumetric Price (GVP) improves the method of existing Simulated Test Markets (STMs) in three aspects: (1) Preferences of trial and repeat purchases are measured as willingness-to-pay. The resulting benefit is that different prices can be simulated and a profit-maximizing price can be identified. (2) Retail distribution is accounted for in a convex model. The benefit is that sales volume can be forecasted more accurately and slotting fees can be allocated more efficiently. (3) The dynamic forecast of sales volume is done completely on the individual level. The addictional benefit is that all individual preference information is used in the forecasting process and the possibility to segment respondents is preserved. The present article starts with describing the method of GVP. Afterwards, the methodical improvements and their empirical validation are explained.

The article examines new approaches derived from rational-choice theories, cognitive science, emotion psychology and neuroscience findings in order to understand the relationship between advertising, the way in which it is perceived and the ultimate decision to buy. These findings are then compared with the current practice for advertising pre-tests. This reveals that the two are not compatible. Finally, conclusions are drawn with regard to how advertising research must respond to this challenge.

Emotions are a major topic in marketing science and practice alike (Kroeber-Riel/Weinberg/Gröppel-Klein 2008, p.99). B2B, B2C, and retail brands need to be emotionally charged to ensure differentiation from competitor brands. But how can emotions be reliably measured? Only valid and meaningful measurement of emotions will allow the emotional impact of marketing activities to be optimized in the future. The Institute for Consumer and Behavioural Research at Saarland University together with brand and methodology specialists at GfK joined forces to develop a picture-based scale that is applicable at various brand touch points: it is called GfK EMO Sensor. This article summarizes the theoretical background and the development of the methodological approach. It concludes by presenting initial applications in advertising effectiveness research and their practical implications for marketing.

Data analysis in market segmentation and brand positioning studies is orientated primarily towards the ideal of the launch of innovative, differentiated brands which form a new sub-category in the market. However, everyday marketing is not about establishing new sub-categories, but about gaining a foothold in existing markets, achieving market leadership there or defending such a position, for example. Assessments of market segmentation studies based on false ideals deliver misleading signals, however, and are thus in part responsible for the high rate of flops. This article shows which analysis steps are required in order to obtain information with which success can be achieved in existing markets.

This paper introduces HILCA, a new conjoint analysis procedure with which purchasing decisions on complex products can be better modelled. The survey and analysis procedures are described in detail. The procedure is compared in a methodology test with a standard conjoint analysis procedure used for such research issues. It produces with roughly the same length of inverview much more valid and easier to interpret results.

The brand-specific willingness-to-pay (WTP) represents the maximally achievable price premium for a product. By measuring the buyer’s WTP and by taking into account the individual consumption intensity, brand-generated earnings can be determined. They represent the earning side of brand equity and thereby reflect the success of the brand management.
To obtain an unbiased measure of a buyer’s WTP, an experimental approach is required. GfK Price Challenger (GPC) represents such an approach. More specifically, GPC is a modified choice-based conjoint procedure optimized for measuring individual product utilities. Primarily forecasting a product’s price response function within a competitive market, it also provides information for determining its brand-generated earnings. This is demonstrated with a small example.

Based on state-of-the-art international research and our own studies, we arrive at the following propositions: 1.) Many complex brand architectures overwhelm consumers. 2.) The cognitive brand structures in consumers’ minds grow over time and can only be altered in an evolutionary manner. 3.) Corporate-brand strategies are not always more cost-effective than a strategy with many separate brands. 4.) A high fit among the products associated with a brand is not always necessary or desirable. 5.) Consumers’ perceptions of a company’s brand depend on the brand architectures of its competitors. 6.) The brand architecture needs to be aligned with the organizational structure, information structure, corporate culture and corporate strategy.

During times of tight retail margins and a high degree of restraint in consumer purchasing, the availability of goods on the retail shelves has a strong influence on the success of retailers and manufacturers. Knowledge about consumer behaviour in “out of Stock” (OOS) situations is essential when selecting suitable measures to ensure on-shelf availability.
This paper aims to assimilate typical reaction patterns and factors that influence customer reactions in OOS situations into a model, while considering previous research findings and concluding with the presentation of our own empirical research results.

Despite enormous growth in online retailing, the strong sense of risk felt by many customers is a barrier to the establishment of this form of business in broad customer segments.
This paper develops a range of approaches which are geared towards reducing the perceived insecurity of online shopping. In particular, the study has identified strategies such as the integration of manufacturers’ brands, the development of retail brands, the provision of a customer advisory and complaints service, and the integration of shops into portal sites. To measure the impact of these factors on the success of electronic retailers, they have been operationalised and their effects have been tested by a process of causal analysis. The study concludes by drawing the implications from this.

This paper starts out by discussing the marketing models which have been available up to present, then goes on to describe a new model which is based on scanner data from a consumer panel. The data input and the model structure are described, the quality of the model is discussed and some possible applications are indicated. Finally, the paper describes the limitations to the model as well as possible further developments.

The study examines how the effectiveness of price campaigns changes during the course of time. To this end, dynamic price campaign elasticity models are established using as an example two food retail products for which sales data is available over a period of two years. Since many food retail products are seasonal, this factor has been taken into account in respect of the variable demand.

This contribution presents the bid price model as an online price-finding mechanism. The auction concept enables consumers to generate individual price levels, which can then be used as the information basis for customer-driven pricing structures. Price management can consequently be more closely aligned to the demand and prices can be structured to generate the maximum profit. By assessing a set of data obtained from Ihrpreis.de, the bid price model can be used as the basis to define various processes relating to price/sales functions for the following product groups: telephone (linear model), designer chair (multiplicator model), scanners (attraction model) and computer games (Gutenberg model). The findings show that the price-finding mechanism presented is highly relevant to corporate practice.

Irrespective of the criteria used to measure it, the success of a brand remains a decisive core factor for the success of a company. The strategic importance of brand success has led to the development of an almost bewildering number of instruments to measure, assess and steer it in practice and there are similarly numerous scientific theories attempting to do the same.
This contribution gives an overview of the various theoretical concepts and practice-based methods of brand assessment. Using the Manfred Bruhns “brand success chain” as a basis, a reference framework is developed to analyse the different points of contact of various brand assessment approaches.

Although the construct of corporate reputation has attracted significant attention among marketing practitioners and scholars, little work can be found in terms of defining and conceptualising the construct. This article aims at clarifying the notion of corporate reputation by: delineating it from corporate image, examining and evaluating previous definitions, and creating a general definition and conceptualisation of corporate reputation. Corporate reputation is explored within a new conceptual model that considers determinants of corporate reputation as well as related outcomes of corporate reputation such as customer satisfaction and trust. Research and management implications are also discussed.

The analysis of new product launches involving daily consumer goods shows how a considerable share is attributable to Aldi (Germany’s no-frills nationwide discount grocery chain) and other store brands. Most new products are available just for a limited time (e.g. promotional products) or simply adaptations of already existing ones; only some 4% of all new products use an entirely new brand name. Innovations prove to be essential for growing both the market and the brand.
The decisive factor for market success of a new product is that it demonstrates a certain degree of innovation for the market. Where this is not the case, the degree of innovation should be kept relatively low from a manufacturer perspective. On average, line extensions are more successful than brand transfers or new brands. Finally advertising is about twice as effective for new products than it is for existing ones.

This article focuses on segmentation as a central marketing instrument employed in the context of an expanding detailed knowledge of markets and consumer behavior to generate homogeneous market segments which are manageable from a marketing perspective. Specifically, it demonstrates how suitable project management can achieve success when employing this instrument and the ultimate characteristics of success in a segmentation project.
Orientation aids are offered for the various phases of segmentation projects, some in the form of standardized questions to be answered and others in the form of identification of project phases and the steps to be taken during each phase.

The internet offers consumers a variety of means of obtaining information on commercial products and services from other consumers. In view of the decentralized availability of such information at any point in time, it can be expected that "electronic word-of-mouth" has an influence on the behavior of the information reader and is correspondingly of relevance for the market success of products and services.
This paper derives consumer motives behind reading product or service related information on virtual opinion platforms from a variety of theoretical backgrounds. The relevance of the different motives is tested using data from 2,903 online questionnaire respondents. The influence of the different reading motives on the subsequent buying and communication behavior of the consumer is then examined using structural equation modeling. The results show that the behavioral relevance of customer articulations on virtual opinion platforms depends upon the motivation of the reader.

Customer management scorecards are a concept for structuring systems in the reporting system of the enterprise. Recently such scorecards are increasingly being discussed in academia and in practice as a basis for the development and implementation of holistic CRM concepts. The present paper sketches the concept of the customer management scorecard and its primary configuration possibilities.

In this paper an approach is developed, based on considerations relating to behaviour theory for measuring the satisfaction of franchisees. The results of a survey of franchisees in the Weser-Ems region of Germany which used this approach are also described. As a result of applying an exploratory factor analysis, the items used in the measurement of satisfaction have been consolidated into satisfaction factors. The value of these factors in measuring the satisfaction of franchisees at the total level has been calculated using a multi-stage regression analysis.
On the basis of the results generated, a concrete approach is developed for improving franchisee satisfaction.

The profitability of marketing investments can be evaluated from two perspectives. On one hand, the evaluation must determine the extent to which the investments serve the main objectives of the brand management, i.e. to profile and differentiate the brand. Furthermore, the marketing investments must be evaluated with regard to their profit-orientation.

The following article presents an approach to brand performance measurement which takes both perspetives into account and which helps management executives to allocate future marketing budgets effectively and efficiently.

Market research with children must address the specific requirements made by the respective age group of the market researcher. The idea of using children’s role play as a market-research tool is a logical response to this.

This article reveals that, by using complex psychodrama techniques that go beyond simple role play, it is possible to gain a deeper and more comprehensive insight into the way in which children and young people think and feel. This provides important information for future marketing measures. For the successful marketing of both new toys and the "old favourites", it is essential that the need structures of children are recognised, understood and used to optimum effect and as accurately as possible.

From the beginning of the 1980s, (sports) sponsorship has developed faster than any other component of the communications mix. Since then as a "peripheral effect", an increasingly large number of companies have set themselves the objective of profiting from the benefits of sports sponsorship without accepting the obligations of being an official sponsor. That necessarily weakens the effectiveness (in communication terms) of official sponsorship activities. Due to the connectivity of the participants in sports-sponsorship, the consequences of this development are not restricted just to the sponsor, but have undesirable consequences for the whole sponsorship market. It seems therefore that a careful examination of the whole subject of what is called ambush marketing is very much required.

Although the windows of local McDonald’s outlets are often smashed by its opponents, the question of who is responsible for the globalisation and who is actually driving it forward remains regularly unanswered: Is it the international companies, which simply for their own benefit expand their activities to cover all the countries of the world, or is it the governments, which have the interests of their citizens at heart?

Taking as a starting point the objectives of the international companies, and also of the organisations which are attempting to establish free trade, it is easy to see that there is very little overlap between these two sets of objectives. A careful examination of the role of consumers in all parts of the world, however, shows very clearly that it is they who are the true "Masters of globalisation".

Even though price plays an important role in customers’ buying behaviour, surprisingly little attention has been paid to price satisfaction. There are some theoretical and practical arguments for treating price satisfaction as a multi-attributive construct.

Therefore, the objective of this paper is to investigate theoretically and empirically the antecedents and consequences of price satisfaction. The focus relies on the assessment of the multi-attributive nature of price satisfaction and its impact on overall customer satisfaction, word-of-mouth and repurchase intentions.

For a long time, pricing took second place to other areas of market research such as brand and communication research. Today, it is becoming increasingly important as a result of weak consumer demand and the growing role of discount stores and retail brands.
The paper describes the strengths and weaknesses of the various types of pricing research and recommends specific types for specific questions.

Heterogeneous customers and limited budgets of marketing and sales force suppliers to carry out analyses of the monetary value of customers. Particularly, the reference value, i.e. the monetary value of customer recommendations gets increasingly seen as a significant component of customer value. This contribution is a description of a brand new and innovative tool developed by GfK Marktforschung (GfK LoyaltyPlus value) that focuses on the monetary reference value as an important "driver" of the overall customer value. It will be demonstrated that the reference value is founded on factors such as degrees of opinion leadership, the size of social networks and the satisfaction of the customer providing the reference. An empirical study "Customer evaluation in the car sector" will then be used as a basis for measuring examples of financial customer reference values of private car purchasers. Finally it will be shown how reference values measured for customers can be integrated into a customer value management system.

The shareholder value and the customer lifetime value approach are conceptually and methodically analogous. Both concepts calculate the value of a particular decision unit by discounting the forecasted net cash flows by the risk-adjusted cost of capital. However, virtually no scholarly attention has been devoted to the question if any of the components of the shareholder value could be determined in a more market-oriented way using individual customer lifetime values. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to systematically explore the contribution of both concepts to the field of corporate valuation.



At first we present a comprehensive calculation method for estimating both the individual lifetime value of a customer and the cusomer equity. After a critical examination of the shareholder value concept, a synthesis of both value approaches allowing for a disaggregated and more realistic corporate valuation will be presented.

The Internet offers novel opportunities such as customer profiling that provide new insights into the needs of customers. Such insights can be used to target customers with customized offerings. This paper aims to discuss methodological issues of customer profiling and to give an example of how customer-specific offerings and transactions can be designed and implemented on the basis of customer profiles in eCommerce.

For many companies the Internet has become an important medium to attract customers and to increase loyalty, generally because of the advantages they believe this new medium offers compared to other media. Interactivity and the, at least in theory, individual customer relationship building opportunities, in particular, are perceived to be useful features of the Internet for marketing purposes. But some disadvantages are neglected in this context, such as the fear held by Internet users of losing their anonymity when buying online. In this article, we present the findings of a survey of Internet users’ fear of loss of anonymity. Based on these results, we make recommendations as to what companies can do to reduce this fear.