URC BEE (Brand Experience Evaluation)-

Your Key to Higher Profitability!

United Research China, Ltd

Brand Experience determines Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

URC BEE (Brand Experience Evaluation) provides directions for improvement

All marketing efforts for your product or service essentially aim to maximize satisfaction of your customers towards your product or service and build loyalty for your brand. Only satisfied customers will become loyal customers. Satisfied customers will also more likely recommend your product or service to other people. Therefore, the more satisfied customers you have, the more likely your product or service will become market leader.

IT should be obvious that degree of customer satisfaction towards your product or service is critical to your marketplace success. And it is the only sure way to create repeat and loyal customers in the long-term. Also, research shows that it is far more economical for a company to have repeat business with an old customer than spending large amount of efforts to convert new customers. Corporations with larger proportion of loyal repeat users are likely to perform better at the bottom-line and are generally more profitable. The so-called “20-80 “rule. The question remains: ”how can you improve customer satisfaction towards your product or service?”

Many enterprises recognize customer satisfaction comes from the perceived value of the product or service exceeding customer’s expectation in terms of the total brand experience, which may include marketing communication, product utility and service value. Undoubtedly, the total value perception has a detrimental effect on the customer satisfaction for that particular brand experience for that moment and their loyalty thereafter. How to make each brand experience superior to that of your competition and how to maintain the minimum threshold to ensure the customer remains loyal is key to the continued success in the war of winning more business and build brand growth.

From our study of global and the China market, we find the retail channel commands one of the most important roles in delivering value for a product or a service. The most critical factors affecting customer satisfaction occur at the last link before a product or a service is finally presented to a customer at the point-of purchase. The moment of truth from your customer will depend on his or her experience at the retail locale. Whether the brand communication, the hardware and the service delivered at the final sale meet or exceed their expectationwill determine how satisfied they are as your customers and more importantly their future loyalty towards your brand. As the brand perception is the outcome of their actual experience, to measure their brand experience will tell you how likely your last customers will become your future loyal customers and hence the source of your repeat business.

Using techniques that measure brand experience evaluation (BEE) information, URC can help you answer the above question: ”how can we improve customer satisfaction towards our product or service?” To know how your product or service is evaluated will guide you how to improve your customer satisfaction, and eventually how to build loyalty of your customers towards your product or service.

URC BEE (Brand Experience Evaluation) is a value-added research technology as well as a management too

To help monitor customer satisfaction and loyalty, URC BEE (Brand Experience Evaluation) as a research technique provides the key measurements for you to refine your marketing strategies at the retail level. This technology begins from the Mystery Shopping technique. Mystery shopping provides fact-based information from people thoroughly educated on what to look for in advance of conducting an evaluation process. URC BEE programs are sophisticated, proven business tools that provide clients with a clear strategic advantage over their competition. As a management tool, it can help improve how customers and potential customers are assisted onsite, on the phone, and online, and helped improve customers’ overall experiences, with the aim of generating greater customer loyalty. Through the experience in the retail channel as the normal customer, our evaluators observe, contact, buy, use or test, and provide feedback. They also track performance and validate with the corporate retail service policies, accordingly recognize the problems in the execution of these policies in the retail level.

URC BEE (Brand Experience Evaluation) programs provide information to efficiently understand and monitor delivery of service at each customer touch-point Firstly, it will measure the critical service level at retail, provide information on employee service quality, and build an alarm system on product and service. Also, it will recognize the changing customer satisfaction level over time or the operational problems in the delivery of product or services. Then, the programs will provide direction for improving competence at the retail level. The whole URC BEE system can be built around the evaluation and incentive system of the stuff at each customer contact point. It can also provide measurements on the training effects. When monitoring of the competitors’ performances is included in the evaluation, it will give an analysis of our service advantages and disadvantages in comparison with our competition as well.

URC BEE (Brand Experience Evaluation) can be applied to most, if not all, industries. The following case studies demonstrate our experience using this system for three different industries: fashion retail, computer hardware and convenience stores in China.

The case studies

1:Fashion Retail

Currently the market size of casual wear fashion in China is about 140 billion RMB. However, no brand has more than 2% of market share. But the brands in the market include many well-known names in China such as Bossini, Giordano, Jeanswest and Baleno. Competition is fierce and it is difficult to maintain market position in this market because of constantly changing consumer trends. There is a cut throat situation also: many new comers enter the market with heavy price discount, sacrificing profit. As a result, the overall profitability for the industry is low. Improving service at the retail becomes a key differentiation strategy.

United Research China (URC) had conducted a Brand Experience Evaluation Study among the key casual wear fashion retailers in 2005. The study was conducted using URC BEE methodology among 108 franchise stores of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The survey compared customer brand experience for different brands at the retail channel measuring store layout, display, service manner of staffs and sales techniques. Results showed that the attitude of staffs was the most important factor determining customer satisfaction. This factor was followed by evaluation of the shopping environment and the selling technique of the shop staff.

The following chart (Graph 1) shows the current problems in the retail channels includes: lack of promotional materials; poor product display and the lack of proper greeting; lack of proactive merchandise briefing to customers and mentioning of the discounted products, inadequate product knowledge; failure to understand customer needs.

From the analysis comparing locations (three cities- Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.) and time (weekend and weekdays), most franchise stores of casual fashion brands have inconsistent service standard. URC’s study found that the service quality of surveyed franchise stores in Shanghai is better than that of Beijing and Guangzhou. We also found the service quality in weekend better than that in the weekdays. Some brands may have regional advantage, but have not reached a unified image and the consistent higher quality service nationwide.

To develop greater competitive advantage in this market, we consider necessary to improve the retail channel service. We will need consistent and high quality service standards to be applied to all stores nationwide, especially in the service and mannerism of the sales staffs. We should aim to apply consistent operation standards in different cities. For example, through regularly conducting BEE (Brand Experience Evaluation) measurements, we can understand the extent of service problems. From these evaluation results, we will direct our training of the retail service staffs towards improvement of the major inadequacies. Building these evaluations in the incentives and punishment system of the company, we can strengthen the service quality; improve customer satisfaction and value to our brand.