Constructing a new name

Editor's note. Edwin P. Slaughter is director of Parkwood Research Associates, Allentown, Pa.

The decision to change a company's name is one that shouldn't be made without adequate research. The information a properly conducted survey obtains not only can justify the step but also guide the choice of a new name and provide additional insight into the marketplace. One company survived the transformation successfully and launched a new era of growth in the process.

Allentown Pneumatic Gun, Inc. was one of the oldest and most respected names in the construction industry, dating back to 1916, when it developed the "unite process for the application of concrete. From the beginning, the pneumatic "guns" used to apply "unite and other cementitious materials have remained the company's primary products. While many other suppliers entered the field over the years, the small, privately held company in Allentown, Pa., continued to hold a small but respectable share of the market.

In 1963, William C. Roberts succeeded his late father as the company's president. Within the next decade, he witnessed increased competition, changing technology and a new breed of customer coming into the picture. Roberts responded by initiating research toward the development of wet process equipment, the concrete pumps he rightly recognized would some day take over many of the applications originally handled by the dry process guns.

After several exploratory ventures into the pump field, Allentown refined the hydraulic swing-tube technology it had pioneered earlier and began to reap the benefits of its prior efforts. By the late 1980s, its Powercreter pump sales were rapidly increasing while its gun sales leveled off. In 1992, when the company was acquired by Master Builders, Inc. to operate as an autonomous unit, Roberts (now director) saw the new association as an opportunity to position the company for new growth. But how should the company be positioned?

His principal concern was the company's name - did it effectively communicate the company's position?

The basic questions he needed to answer were

(1) How well recognized was the company's name today?

(2) Did potential users associate the company's name with the products it offers?

(3) What was the company's reputation in the marketplace vs. competition?

To obtain the answers, Allentown retained Parkwood Research Associates of Allentown, Pa. Parkwood took the assignment a step further, designing a survey that would yield not only the basic information required but also additional data that would facilitate Allentown's planning; that is, the potential for expansion into new markets and the demand for a new specialty product by concrete contractors.

Interviewed contractors

For this project, Parkwood Research Associates interviewed 300 contractors who had attended the 1993 World of Concrete Show in Las Vegas. The sample of attendees was provided to Parkwood by The Aberdeen Group, sponsor of the show. Interviewing was conducted by telephone during August and Sept. The margin of sampling error one can reasonably expect from a 300-case sample is +/- 6 percentage points.

The questionnaire was designed to qualify respondents in terms of both their business activity and specific function. Only those who identified themselves as buying decision makers for either wet or dry process equipment (pumps or guns) were considered qualified.

The list posed several problems, none of which proved insurmountable. A number of registrants were not actively engaged in concrete contracting but were merely affiliated with contractors. Even among those who were contacted initially, there were a sizable number who sub-contracted the pumping and placing function, so Parkwood obtained the names of sub-contractors for those instances. Interviewers made as many as 10-15 callbacks to reach respondents who were out on the job and available only at certain times.

New name was easy

The survey achieved its primary purpose of measuring awareness and providing direction for the name change decision, and it also yielded a wealth of valuable marketing information.

Based on the results, the new name was easy to arrive at. "Allentown Pneumatic Gun" is who the company is and has been. Furthermore, the "Allentown" name seemed to be well recognized and respected within its current market. At the same time, "pumps and guns" are what the company makes and markets. Accordingly, the company needed to be associated with these new products rather than the "pneumatic guns" which no longer represented the company's principal product line.

Thus, Allentown Pump & Gun was introduced to the marketplace on January 4 at this year's World of Concrete, the industry's major trade show and exposition.

Research showed that national awareness of Allentown Pneumatic Gun was relatively low compared with major competitors. Fewer than half (46 percent) of the contractors surveyed had ever heard of Allentown Pneumatic Gun, and only 5 percent specifically mentioned Allentown Pneumatic Gun as a company that came to mind in association with wet-process pump manufacturers. Additionally, more than half of the respondents were unable to identify the kinds of products the company makes. Furthermore, awareness levels of the various pump manufacturers reflected their respective market shares.

Results also demonstrated that Allentown Pneumatic Gun had a good overall reputation among contractors who had experience with the company. Only one other manufacturer, the dominant force in the marketplace, consistently received higher ratings than Allentown for performance in such key areas as parts availability, service and technical support, and overall performance. The contractors' positive assessments on these factors are extremely important to the company's overall image, because the respondents rated these same factors as very important in their selection of pump suppliers.

"We were particularly pleased with those results," Roberts says. "They reinforced our belief that there was sufficient opportunity to move ahead with our plans for growth and expansion in the market for concrete pumps."

Strong demand

Of equal and perhaps greater value was the marketing data obtained. Parts availability, service/technical support and reputation for performance, the attributes on which Allentown received high scores, were rated most important to users, while price, distribution and delivery were of lesser importance.

One of the most important conclusions drawn from the survey was that there is a strong but untapped demand for Allentown's new "all-purpose" pump. More than two in every five contractors (42 percent) said they would be very (19 percent) or somewhat (23 percent) likely to purchase such a pump for their respective companies sometime during the next three years. That type of pump was more appealing to concrete contractors than to general contractors. The concrete contractors said they were significantly more likely to purchase one or more for their companies.

Interestingly, the likelihood of purchasing an all-purpose pump varied according to whether or not the contractors had heard of Allentown. Among the contractors who were aware of the company, 31 percent said they were very likely to purchase while, in contrast, only 10 percent of those unaware reported being likely to make a purchase within the next three years.

The relatively low awareness of the availability of an all-purpose pump, coupled with the likelihood of purchase, reaffirmed Allentown's confidence in the pump it had developed and facilitated the company's decision to make its new AP-10 the focal point for product promotion in 1994.

Made the right moves

Armed with the supportive data obtained by sound research, the company that introduced gunite to construction launched a new chapter in its already lengthy history under the new name - Allentown Pump & Gun - with an expanded product line. The company is confident that increased sales as well as follow-up research will prove it made the right moves at the right time