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1.

Market Research High on ROI; A Growing Commitment

Many professional service firms are ultra-sensitive to near-term opportunities and dangers. . . as a result they may actually respond too quickly — without enough due consideration — either by pursuing something that looks promising (but may not be strategically appropriate), or by taking evasive action to avoid damage (that isn’t, in the long term, the right answer).

Market Research, with its proven ROI, can help PSFs be less vulnerable to the vagaries of the market. Here’s how they are using market research:

• to discern clients’ purchase criteria, desired price points, attraction to a spectrum of service attributes, and more.
  
  
• to identify (through qualitative and quantitative research analysis) the clients’ desired psycho-social end-states, ethnic or cultural biases, and perceptions of value.

Professional service firms with a formal marketing research budget report they are 2 to 5 times more effective in implementing client attraction and retention methods.

Case Studies

Law firm Winstead Sechrest & Minick used sophisticated qualitative research techniques (projective interviewing, laddering, and hierarchical value maps) to reveal buyers’ underlying motivators and value-based purchase criteria. The result was an award-winning web site that featured astutely crafted brand images and messages that appeal to the firm’s attorneys as much as they do to its targeted clients.

QRST Associates, a pseudonym for a venerable global professional service firm, used a research analysis method called dynamic price sensitivity modeling to successfully introduce a new service that equaled its clients’ value perceptions and simultaneously allowed the firm to realize a much higher profit margin than it could have had with a standard hourly billing approach.

Figure 1.1 Professional Service Firms' Use of Market Research

source: Expertise Marketing, LLC

Figure 1.2 ROI on Professional Service Firm Market Research