Avoiding reinvention of the wheel

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

The KM Research Institute is a joint venture between KnowledgePartners and Henley Management College.

The Institute is run in conjunction with the Henley Knowledge Management Forum, which brings together business practitioners and experts from over 39 FSTE 100 companies and government departments to help tackle the new challenges presented by the digital economy.

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Why Knowledge Management?

Much effort within the marketing community is going into improving the understanding of the drivers of consumer decision making, brand loyalty, brand equity and product purchase. From a manufacturer's point of view, internationalization of customers and greater sophistication of customer information lead to the need for increasing levels of customization of products and services and the associated information required for their design and marketing.

Gaps in the knowledge chain, which runs along the traditional supply chain, account for much of the ineffectiveness in leveraging the market information that is produced through customer transactions. Selective understanding of the information gleaned within individual business units and the difficulty of achieving seamless communication across organizational boundaries are seen by many as serious obstacles. In trying to convey market intelligence across the organization, for example, it is often difficult for the sender to know what information the recipient needs today or may need at a future date. There seems to be a need for judging the appropriateness of the information that is distributed. This could be a useful performance measure of marketing intelligence dissemination systems. Unconstrained information does not make for better decisions.

Whilst marketing departments readily point to shortcomings in external market research provision, there seems to be little understanding of the true distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. The results of most research studies are still delivered through the traditional method of a written report. The tacit knowledge of the project researchers is rarely engaged other than through a summary presentation at the end of an assignment. A closer examination of the process of transferring knowledge from the market research firm to the client organization soon reveals the need for more attention to the knowledge chain which runs from researcher through the strategic analyst to client marketing department and finally to the internal user of the market information. It is only at the end of this long chain that the information is employed to support decision-making.

Maintaining Insight - From information to customer insight

Competitive advantage no longer comes simply from superior knowledge, but the ability to continuously create new knowledge and actionable insights. Close collaboration with market researchers who understand your business is a vital element of sustainable market intelligence.

End-user Perspectives

KnowledgePartners’ end-user approach to market research involves a number of KM methods, including an extensive kick-off meeting to identify how the research results will be used, and mapping of the internal research end-users and the business decisions that are to be informed by the research.

Precision Research Method

MR2 Benchmark

Through mapping end-user perspectives KnowledgePartners can identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled. This is achieved in a number of ways:

Selecting representative target audiences, using pre-profiled consumer panels

Undertaking propensity weighting to make the sample more representative

Using online multilayered surveys that capture more information by screening respondents own multiple survey routes that ask different sets of questions.

Using online research techniques to achieve larger samples, ask more in-depth and sensitive questions, which are more likely to be answered online.

KnowledgePartners’ ongoing research on market research (MR2) aims to address the issues of MR effectiveness, usability and ROI. This comprehensive benchmarking tool provides the opportunity for businesses to learn from best practice across sectors, identify potential pitfalls and ultimately get more value from Market Research.

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