New Web-based phone survey app
QuickTake, a Wilton, Conn., Web-based information ASP and part of Greenfield Online, and NetByTel have joined forces to deliver a Web-based telephone survey application using speech recognition to bridge the gap between online and offiine populations. The partnership enables users of QuickTake, Greenfield Online’s self-directed survey tool, to create customized automated surveys that gather real-time information from offline respondents by standard or wireless phone. The exclusive NetByTel agreement lets QuickTake customers create custom phone surveys for key audiences, and view the real-time results online in a password-protected QuickTake account. The QuickTake interface uses NetByTel’s technology to interact with customers and tabulate the results. A pre-recorded voice or speech synthesizer reads the survey questions, while NetByTel’s voice recognition based technology logs the respondents’ spoken answers in real time. The alliance will also provide NetByTel with access to exclusive online research from Greenfield Online.
IMS tool analyzes global pharmaceutical market
Westport, Conn., health care research firm IMS Health has launched Growth Analyser, a strategic planning tool that identifies the various factors contributing to the growth or decline of a market or market share in the $359 billion global pharmaceutical marketplace. Growth. Analyser enables pharmaceutical decision-makers to compare and contrast growth trends among countries, gauge the effectiveness of sales strategies, and react to local market changes. Growth Analyser measures growth from new products, line extensions, price changes, volume changes, exchange rate changes, and the interactive effect of price and volume changes. Insights can be organized and sorted by country, pharmaceutical company, nationality and product classification group (Anatomical Therapy Class). Sales information is provided in local currency (dollar), U.S. dollar, euro and specific growth categories.
Research site focuses on utility industry
Consulting firms the C Three Group and the Ascent Group have formed a joint venture, Competitive Market Intelligence (CMI), a secure, database-driven Web site, accessible only to subscribers. The content of CMI is driven by subscribers and provides market research and analysis. In addition, subscribers have access to the intellectual capital of the consultants at the C Three Group and the Ascent Group. Initially, the database will cover investor-owned electric and gas North American utilities, but will be expanded to cover government- and locally-owned utilities, and major utilities outside the U.S. Vendor coverage includes all major back-office functions such as billing, call centers and metering as well as addressing the rapidly increasing interest in outsourcing and application service providers. Major investor-owned utilities are profiled including AEP, Avista, Southern Company, Entergy, FPL Group, SCANA, Duke Energy, Dominion, and Excelon. Major vendors to the industry are also profiled including SAP, SPL WorldGroup, Peace, ABB, Siemens, HP among others.
Panel management software from Sage
Sage Research, Inc., Natick, Mass., has introduced PanelWise, its proprietary panel management software. PanelWise is designed to streamline and automate many panel management functions. Its features include: tools to track and report demographic information for each panelist, which eliminates the need to repeatedly collect this data each time a panelist is surveyed; rule-based mechanisms to ensure panel members are not being over-surveyed; automatic e-mail reminders to boost response rates; reports about starvey completion statistics for laggard identification and incentive administration; and selection capabilities that allow targeted samples to be drawn based on a combination of multiple, relevant criteria.
Sage has tested and refined PanelWise by using it to manage its own three panels of pre-screened professionals. The first two panels are comprised of IT professionals from small and medium businesses, and large enterprises, while the third panel is comprised of service providers including ASPs, CLECs, ILECs, ISPs, and IXCs.
2000 retail census from ASW
MarketPlace Intelligence, part of New York-based Audits & Surveys Worldwide (ASW), recently completed an analysis of its National Retail Census 2000, which includes "A Decade of Change" - a retrospective that measures the increase and decrease of retail outlets throughout the U.S. during the last decade. The results, issued in MarketPlace Intelligence’s Report to Retailers and Marketers, reveals a 38 percent surge in the number of chain drugstores from 1990 to 2000. In sharp contrast, the number of independent drugstores dropped by 22.3 percent.
The National Retail Census 2000 contains several statistics to corroborate this theory. The number of retail prescriptions dispensed grew from two billion in 1992 to nearly three billion in 2000. Despite the fact that many chain drugstores are effectively mini-marts built in front of a prescription counter, chains dispensed more than 60 percent of all prescriptions filled - more than four million a day.
Fast-food restaurants are also thriving, with their number of outlets growing by 14.2 percent over the last decade. The last 30 years saw fastfood outlets more than double - soaring from just 50,000 outlets in 1970 to almost 137,000 today.
Beauty salons are also increasing at a rapid pace, with their outlet numbers expanding by 10.8 percent over the past 10 years, helped substantially by the burgeoning subgroup of nail specialty shops, which are included in this category. Other high-growth categories include hotels and motels, increasing by 9:4 percent; and-used car dealerships, growing by 8.5 percent. Conversely, several categories show sharp declines in their outlet counts. Home centers fell by 20.8 percent, while camera shops dropped 18.8 percent and barbershops plummeted by 23.9 percent.
MarketPlace Intelligence gathers data through in-person store visits to a national probability sample of over 35,000 outlets across all retail categories, in more than 800 different geographic areas.
New testing facilities at Shuster
Shuster Laboratories, Inc., a provider of consumer-testing and sensory services, has opened new facilities at its headquarters in Canton, Mass. The firm has added full-service central location testing, new focus group facilities, and expanded its sensory evaluation labs. The sensory labs house technical panel booths for descriptive analysis and difference tests as well as a test kitchen for sensory evaluation and consumer testing.