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A study about the future of journalism

February 18, 2017

Robert Beatus

Introducing the voice of the consumer

The major media players in Sweden have developed the prerequisites for the future of journalism. As a result, nine focus areas are identified of which lead to research projects at Stockholm School of Economics (HHS).

Shown in the media:

Nepa conducted a study of the future of journalism where different data sources combine.

The basis of the analysis has been on consumers´ actual behavior within the largest news sites in Sweden as well as their inner motivations to news consumption. In addition, these studies were based on editorial content; unlike most other panel studies based on the ad business.

The analysis is based on digital behavior of 38,000 unique individuals. Specifically, these individuals are from Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet, Sveriges Radio, Sveriges Television, and Upsala Nya Tidning; in other words, Sweden’s largest news sites.

The digital footprint was supplemented with survey studies with 4,000 participants. Specifically, they were interviewed about six topics; media attitudes, news consumption, privacy, sharing behavior in social media, news commitment, and quality associations.

The nationally representative sample were aged from 15-74 years old and were drawn from the Nepa panels. These panels are consisting of approximately 350,000 consumers in Sweden.

The research projects will continuously measure behavior given the new realities of the outside world

Nepa introduced the voice of the consumer in the discussion on the basis of six consumer-related focus areas. These include:

News consumption in different segments
- What are the different target segments?
- Where do they consume the news today and what motivates them?
- What are the needs of news and news formats they have today?
Viral behavior
- What content can be shared with others?
- What drives sharing in social media?
- How is the shared content be perceived?
Commitment
- What kind of commitment is there?
- What drives commitment?
Quality associations digital media
- What quality associations create a will to pay high perceived value in journalism?
The future news format
- What are the future consumer needs of news and news formats?
Personal integrity
- How does the perception of integrity differ among different segments of the target audience?
- How does the need for integrity change over time?
- In what way do different media brands affect consumers’ attitude?
- How much information will different target groups want to share in the future? What will be their counterclaims?

Summary of the study

The market for news consumption is traditionally based on age, gender, or lifestyle. Therefore, by using consumers’ actual behavior and underlying driving forces, new segments for news consumption can be identified.

The new segments reveal three different groups whose needs are not being addressed today by traditional media. The three new segments satisfy their needs digitally with new types of media formats. In addition, these segments represent approximately 50% of the Swedish population.

However, the segments have different reasons for being active on social media. Some segments are using social media to influence the opinions of others. This is opposed to others whom use social media to enhance the image of themselves in their own network.

Furthermore, the study shows that there is a no one single way to attract the groups that are currently not addressed by traditional media. For example, there are consumers who question the independence of traditional media. While other consumers question the ability to focus on personalized and interactive content. Additionally, there are also consumers looking for more depth and context. Therefore, all these consumers feel that they can’t find this in traditional media.

New consumer segments

The market for news consumption traditionally has been segmented based on age, gender or lifestyle. However, this may be because of the advertising market’s way of dividing consumers based on communicative audiences.

Therefore, to find new insights about consumers’ news consumption, the basis for segmentation focuses on the attitude and the drive of news consumption. Additionally, there is also a focus on the actual behavior of the news sites.

Six different segments identified are:

The Enthusiastic 15%

Large news commitment
Consumes news in all channels but prefers analog channels

The Traditional 13%

Has a high commitment to innovation and community
Consumes mainly traditional media in the analog channels

The Dutiful 18%

Consumes news because they feel they have to keep up
Appreciates objectivity

The Following 13%

Has a high commitment to news
Inspired by news
Follows others on social forums in search of news

The Social 20%

Is the least present on digital services of traditional media
Socially driven in their news consumption
Inspired by news

The Distrust 21%

Is less present at digital services of traditional media
Socially driven in their news consumption
Distrusts traditional media
Appreciates objectivity

News consumption among segments

Within three of the segments, traditional media has a specific challenge; the Social, the Following and the Distrust. These segments together constitute to 50% of the Swedish population. In addition, this specific population satisfies their needs more and more just by the use of digital media alternatives and new types of formats. Therefore, the population uses the traditional news sites less. However, this is because of the result of links from search engines or social media.

There are also interesting differences in how social media is being used between the segments that traditional media finds difficult to reach. These include:

The Social gladly share news in social media to build and maintain relationships. Therefore, strengthening their own brand by appearing intelligent.
The Following consume a lot of news digitally, much like the Social. However, they are not sharing news as much as them.
The Distrust are happy to share news in social media. However, it is mainly to show their position or convince others of their opinion.

Perceived value for the quality associations

The study shows that there are multiple ways to attract the groups that are currently not addressed by traditional media. The three most traditional segments appreciates three things the most; the depth of sources, the engagement of opinion-journalism, and having more context than the other. This is something that the segments feel they get today.

Therefore, in order to attract the three segments, traditional media needs enhancements of characteristics within the following areas:

The Distrust – “exclusiveness and context”, “depth of sources and references”, and “professional journalists/co-workers”
The Social – “exclusiveness and personalized content,” “content via audio and video”, and “useful in everyday life and work”
The Following – “supplementary content services and benefits” and “depth and context”

Thomas Berthelsen
Head of R&D at Nepa

Blog Posts

Customers Decide What Goes – Building Towards Customer-centric Growth

February 15, 2017

Karen Chandler

Being customer-centric is vital

in an increasingly competitive and fast paced business environment. Most companies understand this and do their best to listen to – and understand – consumers and customers. But how do you get it to work all the way to tangible profitability at the point of action and transaction in your business?

Companies gather vast amounts of disparate data – purchase behaviour, survey results, not to mention all those digital footprints. No wonder big data has been the buzzword for quite some time now, and will continue to be so.

Frustrated by the ever increasing amount of data?

Massive databases are filled with potential knowledge about how to increase sales or how to develop and transform a business. The keyword here being “potential” and not so much “knowledge”.

The data in itself is quite useless unless you extract meaning from it and take appropriate action based on insights. The ongoing digitalization has exponentially increased the amount of data available to companies but making data-driven decisions is lagging behind. For companies, it is difficult to extract meaningful insights from the vast amount of data generated from multiple sources.

“Companies become more customer-centric by using their loyalty club as co-creation engines – fuelled by big data.”

Companies are frustrated because big data holds a lot of promise but simply gathering the data doesn’t lead to customer-centricity. Instead of starting with and focusing on the vast amounts of data at hand, business leaders must take a step back and evaluate what business issues they aim to solve.

The voice of the customer is a very strong voice

Yet it´s more of a sniper rifle than a shotgun. Customer opinions and behavior are totally dependent on context and is taken into account when designing a solution. Specifically, a solution that aims to inject the voice of the customer into company processes and operations is vital for success.

Let’s explore how a large grocery chain in the Nordics, improved their retail store operations and became more customer centric by utilizing a forgotten asset – their loyalty club. The company suffered declining market shares at a steady rate over several years. The average consumer’s view of the company was that it was badly managed (although good natured and considerate) grocery retailer compared to competitors. Consumer associations to the company brand included old fashioned, expensive and even uninspiring.

“The consumer insight department was staffed entirely with people from outside the organisation and had a fairly free role.”

How to unlock the power of the customers’ engagement

A number of re-organisation initiatives and re-engineering projects were undertaken over the years without changing the negative trend. In a drastic attempt to make the company more market oriented and customer-centric, they formed a new business unit. The new unit was set up as an independent entity within the company. It also included old functions such as brand, communication and CRM, as well as a few new functions. One such new team was the consumer insight department. The department was staffed entirely with people from outside the organisation and had a fairly free role.

The new team began exploring the consumer’s perspective on the company and what assets the company had for insight generation. They found two things:

The amount of data the company had about customers and transactions was endless and despite the downward trend,
the company had not lost the engagement of their core customers.

The company asked Nepa – the Consumer Science company – to help them try to harness those two assets. The overall objective given to Nepa was clear: unlock the power of the customers’ engagement and their data in order to involve them in the re-design of the company into a modern retailer.

Nepa did not make the mistake of focusing on data rather than key business issues. Instead, Nepa and the company agreed that the first business problem was to improve the store operations.

The first 3 vital steps

As the consumers found the company somewhat old fashioned and uninspiring we decided to:

Get more actionable insights from customers about possible improvements in the store environments and operations.
Gather relevant data and make it actionable for over 650 stores.
Deploy its solution for trigger based research by utilizing the Nepa Consumer Science platform®.

As previously mentioned, the company had an amazing asset in the engagement among their core customers. And they had a lot of them – The company’s loyalty club included more than 3 million members at the time. In order to make these numbers more manageable, Nepa invited the company’s members to join a smaller co-creation engine inside the club. Members were quite eager to join and soon the number of members in the co-creation engine was over 40 000.

Analyzing and visualizing details are key factors

The key feature of the Nepa Consumer Science platform® is having one customer-ID on each panellist – allowing attribution of any type of data to each individual. This allows Nepa to combine behavioral big data with attitudinal data – enabling trigger-based research using big data.

Every time a member of the co-creation engine shopped at a company store, personalized research can be triggered. The research is based on store visits and buying behavior. The company didn’t have to ask if a customer went to the bread section of a specific store in for example Stockholm. Before asking any questions , the customers already knew exactly what baked goods had been bought, when and where.

A continuous stream of development opportunities

To date the co-creation engine has:

Combined 2 billion lines of sales data with over 8 million points of direct customer feedback.
Packaged the data into over 2500 automated reports during a year.
Delivered the reports to over 600 stores each quarter.

“The introduction of the Nepa Consumer Science platform® tailored the feedback to each retail outlet.”

The format and delivery of these reports is key. It keeps insights actionable and not overwhelming the receiver with information and data.

Prior to the implantation of the Nepa Consumer Science platform® the company had general reports available on a regional level – regional managers where responsible for disseminating insights to individual store owners. The feedback wasn’t tailored to each retail outlet which was the problem. The introduction of the Nepa Consumer Science platform® changed this. A short 3-page report detailing key improvement areas in an importance/performance matrix, how the store was faring per department, and performance compared to local competitors and other company stores provided store managers with a clear guide as to what was working in-store and what wasn’t.

The financial impact – catching the eyes of store managers

Coupling sales data to the trigger-based research, the findings and recommended actions was translated into financial impact. For example, a certain level of satisfaction within the produce section is assigned an economic value based on the performance of the company’s stores. We can estimate the economic value of implementing changes suggested by customers and increasing the particular store’s satisfaction within that department.

This meant a greatly increased interest for the reports among store managers. The reports are hanging in the staff rooms of the company stores all over the country. This enables a localized data driven approach to store operations.

The voice of the customer is helping redesign the company

So far, a little over 180 000 customers have engaged in the initiative and have provided store managers with almost 250 000 suggestions, comments and ideas. Most of them are very specific and valuable to the local manager; some of them being complaints and comments regarding price. The average customer experience with the company has improved markedly since the start of the initiative.

In addition to evaluating store operations on a continuous basis – the co-creation engine also allows for extremely cost-effective ad-hoc research. Even though the company has very limited resources in the insight department (only 5 FTEs), they still manage to turn around over 120 ad hoc research projects per year.

The co-creation engine has been vital in redesigning the company and improving their operations. The company has harnessed the power of their engaged customers and the co-creation engine in Nepa Consumer Science platform® enjoys an extremely high response rate, over 50% with no signs of dropping.

“The company became much more customer-centric in their local operations by tapping an incredibly valuable asset – their own loyalty club.”

Beyond CRM – business growth triggered by consumers

To further leverage this quick feedback loop, Nepa built a digital live feedback tool for the company’s headquarters. Digital screens display a map of the country and populate it with customer feedback from different stores across the country – in real time. This is extremely valued by management who are already using the KPIs from the Nepa Consumer Science platform® as some of the main governing tools for the entire company.

The company became much more customer-centric in their local operations by tapping an incredibly valuable asset – their own loyalty club. Many companies today are underutilizing this asset and merely engaging in traditional CRM activities. It’s time for these companies to stop being confused by large data sets, look beyond CRM as a solution to customer-centricity and couple behavioral and survey data to build co-creation engines.

We help businesses to thrive with customer-centricity by utilizing the power of continuous consumer insights. There is no end to what you can achieve with real-time consumer insights, customer feedback and footprints. It changes the way your business engage with customers.

Please do get in touch if you’d like to find out more.

Lindsay Cowan
Managing Director of Nepa UK

Blog Posts

Get personal and monetize your customer data

February 12, 2017

Sam Richardson

Zoom in on the individual consumer

A consumer centric approach is not just a passing fad that we all use for a while and then disregard; like that Tamagotchi digital pet you swore to keep alive. It is an absolute necessity for all modern companies. But what does it actually involve? To summarize, it’s one of the best ways of monetizing your customer data by zooming in on the individual consumer.

In this connected world, consumers are bombarded by a vast array of information and choices. If you want to break through that with your message, you must understand the consumer’s desires. You must get personal on an individual level to gain and keep their trust. Marketing today is more complex than ever before. However, our tools at Nepa have evolved with the times. The companies that apply consumer-centric strategies will have plenty to gain. The companies that don’t must beware of the hungry competitors waiting to swoop in and steal their customers with just the click of a mouse.

“Data is the friendship-link between your company and that individual from New York (or Stockholm) that just ordered your product.”

Get to know your consumers and gain their trust

Data is the first building block towards a consumer centric approach. Ensuring the collection of data and understanding of customer behavior from the start of the consumer purchasing path will help you discover the vital trigger that determine why consumers act on your offer and vice versa. However, you will need even more data variables to fully understand what actually makes a consumer buy from you and also become a repeat customer. Data is the friendship-link between your company and that individual from New York (or Stockholm) that just ordered your product. Data can be collected using methods such as scripts, forms, observational techniques, and classic market research; all of which we support at Nepa.

Customer data in itself is useless if you don’t put the 1s and 0s into action

My experience reveals that these mountains of data often become overwhelming. Therefore not surprisingly, most companies need help to get started and also need help to keep the momentum going. This is an ongoing process that grows in value the more you work with it. A lot of energy is often fueled very early into the project of data collection. This leaves very little for when you need it the most; specifically at the analysis stage. That is why we at Nepa like to take a long-term approach and evolve with you and your consumers, always staying one step ahead of your competitors.

Dashboards and action plans – tools to engage your entire organization

Your data needs to be filtered, sorted, and ranked according to importance. In addition, the data needs to be summarized into segments and the findings need to be visualized so they become easier to understand.

“In front of you lays a consumer centric action plan, upon which your decisions and your next best actions will be made – throughout your organization.”

Many companies halt at this stage; thinking that the job is done. But they are actually missing out on the crucial analysis phase. You must also consider the data in the context of what you are trying to achieve; uncovering trends, relationships, and reasons to continuously act within all those data sets. Once the analysis is complete, you will feel the presence of your customers. In front of you lays a consumer centric action plan, upon which your decisions and your next best actions will be made – throughout your organization.

For instance, lets say your customers turn out to be male joggers who also like highly educated women that love all sports. Finding the triggers that will make them buy their next pair of sport shoes from your company (and not your competitor) is crucial. To do this effectively, you need to implement consumer centric strategies. This will make your customers feel that you are talking to them and not a mesh of target groups bundled into one.

Using a holistic approach; no bits and pieces left behind

Many companies hire someone to find the “big data”. Then additionally hire someone else to provide the necessary analysis, insights, and actions. This leaves these companies with an abundance of information, often stored in silos, but with no real strategy on how to actually implement it. Therefore, the abundance of information is not helpful. It can get more complicated when you consider how all of that information is intended to be used; whether it is your marketing, sales, product development, or product placement in stores.

“We believe in a holistic approach, taking into consideration all of the factors that eventually determine your success in the marketplace.”

There is no universal template for gathering and analyzing consumer data. Since most companies don’t work through this problem at outset, many end up with disappointing results. That is why at Nepa, we believe in a holistic approach. We take all of the factors into consideration that will eventually determine your success in the marketplace.

Just having relevant customer information alone is worthless

Unless you are able to use it to take effective action based on the data; but not just any action. Actions bring you financial rewards; whether it’s earnings from new sales, developing new products, or simply keeping your existing customers far away from your competitors. This can be enough to make even the savviest CEO worry.

What if there was someone who could actually guide you the entire way?

Through the customer path to purchase
Through the process of combining and analyzing feedback and behavioral data
Deciding upon your continuously updated consumer insights
With daily actions no matter where in your organization the potential for improvement is pointing
With having the result addressing your own KPI´s
By automating the entire process to ensure your growth opportunities never stops.

This is what Nepa, and our Nepa Consumer Science Platform®, is all about. Real-time optimization based on continuous consumer insights, customer feedback, and footprints. All this with a single goal – to improve customer experiences and ultimately your financial results throughout your organization.

In this post I have only scratched the surface. To become a true customer-centric business, there is of course a number of tricky tech issues, complex analysis, specific understanding of your business, and more to consider. This is our area of expertise at Nepa. So, why not get in touch with me and I promise to get you started.

Ola Bergfeldt
Head of Global Communications at Nepa

Blog Posts

Of course you should automate your insights work

January 22, 2017

Sam Richardson

Actions speak louder than words

as we keep talking a lot about creating customer-centric organizations and the importance of bringing the customers to the center of your business. In order for your organization to get a significant commercial effect of your insights work, you have a lot to win by automating the entire process. If not, this is what you will be missing:

The momentum in your business development throughout your organization
The commitment from your organization
The commercial drive that sets you apart from the competition

Importantly, these are all crucial accelerators in successful businesses. However, there are many and extensive benefits of insights automation.

6 killer reasons to automate your customer insights work:

1. You will keep your customers close.

Knowledge will be fed to you with the latest and customer-based insights on a daily basis.

2. Your entire organization will keep running in the same direction.

A new customer insight might have a different meaning to different stakeholders in your organization. Imagine doing this continuously while using the automated insights process to always distribute relevant insights and the next best actions to relevant decision makers – where the point of action is.

3. You will have a full understanding of the customer’s symptoms and the root-cause of problems.

Let’s call it a valuable by-product of every customer insight. This new insight can feed directly into product development teams to support continuous innovation and improvements. This often exterminates customer issues that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. You can iteratively prototype, build, test, and adjust accordingly to meet the changing consumer requirements. Iterating fast lets you economically test ideas and change them until you find the recipe to achieve better business outcomes.

4. Less costs and errors.

You substitute human weaknesses with the accuracy of smart and reliable machines. Therefore, you will bypass the expensive costs associated with manual errors and inefficiencies. In addition, automation done right also saves a number of administrative labor costs.

5. Stay updated of the ongoing process.

You will not only have a detailed view of each and every individual and their needs and footprints, but you will also have a bird’s-eye view of your whole insights process and results – wherever and whenever you like.

6. Spend your time where it generates the best effect.

The automated process will save you a lot of manual hours because you can make changes more quickly and frequently. Therefore, you can spend more time on perfecting the business processes and empowering your colleagues about profit driving daily actions.

Constantly changing consumer habits calls for constantly new insights

The behavior of the consumers and the buying public has changed and will keep changing dramatically. Additionally, consumers can come from any part of the world and they all value very different things. Therefore, this will take a deep understanding of the consumer insights that shape the buying patterns of your customers.

Consequently, without gaining insights into these continuously changing individuals, groups, and their needs and behavior, your organization will never be able to efficiently develop the processes, products and services the consumers want from you. Hence, you risk spending vast amounts of money trying to promote offerings they don’t want in a way that won’t gain their attention.

A speedy process of automated insights supports more relevant decisions. So, you need to accept the fact that needs and behavior today changes often and fast.

7 insights proving the need of automated insights management:

Social media has made the response from consumers quick and unrelenting.
Social media influencers can swiftly “build up” a product that they like to their own circle of influence, or just as easily bring it down.
What appeals to customers one day may not work the next. Consumer-centric marketing is not just a buzzword, it’s hardcore reality.
There is a growing desire for multiplicity and customer experiences are expected to offer more than before. People are craving more active participation.
We want to be hyper efficient. We are seeking ever-smarter and more efficient ways to manage our day and solve issues.
There is a new appreciation of the digital as a source of inspiration. The means to create and participate are now in the hands of everyone.
Personalization is booming. Advances in technology mean that products are able to read consumers and give them what they want; sometimes without even being asked.

To what level are your customer insights-actions automated today?

Launching products or services without digging into the reasons why consumers want them is putting you out of competition. To become a successful customer-centric business, there are of course a number of tricky tech issues, complex analysis, specific understanding of your industry and more to consider. We are good at that here at Nepa. So, why not get in touch with us and we promise to get you on track.

Ola Bergfeldt
Head of Global Communications

Blog Posts

Customers decide what lives or dies – building towards customer-centric growth

January 19, 2017

Sam Richardson

Towards customer-centric growth

in a drive to achieve goals, organizations tend to lose sight of who their customers are. They start to see them as “things” that need to be optimized for different purposes. To turn your business into a customer-centric and profit-driving mode, you have to bring your customers to the center of your business and make them feel your honest intentions.

What´s your centricity?

Turning your business into full customer-centric mode, you have to walk the walk. Can you recognize yourself in any of these crucial don’ts?

Staying fully sales-focused in fear of losing business deals hence making it hard to deliver necessary customer-oriented experiences. You just want to sell and deliver your short term reports.
Insisting on a strict marketing focus. You will most likely end up being more or less brand- or product-centric; not customer-centric.
Consumers are fed up with corporate, ungraspable messages, and advertising. They want to find what they need fast and without hassle. That is in relation to the navigation of your website, the interactions with a shop/contact center, and more.

If you recognize yourself in any of these crucial don’ts, then maybe you should reconsider your strategy. Becoming a more customer-centric business will result with better alternative results.

Becoming customer-centric makes commercial sense

Consequently, without changing your own mindset or treating customer centricity as a business strategy, you will most likely fail. Becoming customer-centric is not a temporary campaign. When handled correctly, it can become your continuously growing and positively differentiating money machine.

According to the bestselling author and consultant, Peter Fisk in his book Customer Genius: Becoming a Customer Centric Business (great book by the way), you have some heavy stats to lean on in your decision:

98 % of dissatisfied customers never complain, they just leave you.
65 % of lost customers are due to negative experiences.
75 % of the negative experiences are not related to your products.
The biggest reason people leave is because they don’t feel appreciated.

Your business objective should be to provide great experiences for your customers at the:

point of sales
point of service (after an actual sale)
different points of innovation and development in your organization

From doing this, you will benefit a lot from incorporating the voice and footprints of your customers in early stages of innovation and development. You will drive profit and gain competitive advantages that your business most certainly haven’t touched before.

Who is the right customer for your business?

Who are your most valuable customers? How do you make sure they stay happy? When you have found the recipe of success, you want to copy that recipe and apply it to more customers and prospects.

It’s your customers who decides in what way your organization should be organized to “please” them. After all, they are the source of your profits and the ones who dictate what lives or dies – eventually. In organizations with outstanding business success, corporate strategies ARE customer-centric strategies.

6 steps on the way to customer-centric growth

Let’s stop talking about fluffy business opportunities and let’s start talking about a customer-centric approach that will get your business going:

You must access more data than what is generated from the static survey reports and the “experienced” gut feelings you might trust today.
Start gathering customer data from multiple channels from both feedback and actual behavior – the footprints of your customers.
Gather and analyze the data continuously – more or less on a daily basis; as today’s consumers tend to change their behavior very often and unexpectedly.
Combine the data and analyze it deeply to better understand and categorize the needs and actions of your customers. Ask your research/insights supplier about their data science skills as well as how they solve this “issue”.
Distribute the customer insights throughout your organization and provide your different stakeholders with the next best actions. This should be accompanied by the financial value that comes with the action being performed and that is related to your own KPI´s.
Automate the entire process and begin to harvest the fruits of your investment.

Overall, I have only scratched the surface. To become a true customer-centric business, there is of course a number of tricky tech issues, complex analysis, specific understanding of your industry and more to consider. That’s actually our area of expertise at Nepa. So, why not get in touch with us at Nepa and we promise to get you started.

Ola Bergfeldt
Head of Global Communications