netrashetty
Netra Shetty
CVS Pharmacy, or simply CVS, is the second largest pharmacy chain in the United States (after Walgreens), with approximately 7,027 stores in 45 states and Puerto Rico.[1] As the retail pharmacy division of CVS Caremark, it sells prescription drugs and a wide assortment of general merchandise, including over-the-counter drugs, beauty products and cosmetics, film and photo finishing services, seasonal merchandise, greeting cards and convenience foods through their CVS Pharmacy and Longs Drugs retail stores and online through CVS.com. It also provides healthcare services through its MinuteClinic healthcare clinics as well as their Diabetes Care Centers. Most of these clinics are located within CVS stores.
CVS is incorporated in Delaware, and is based in Woonsocket, Rhode Islan
wants to obtain. Many in the market research field believe this is the most critical step in the research process since it provides guidance on what must be accomplished. While the purpose identified in Step 1 may be determined relatively quickly (e.g., sale reports shows an obvious problem that needs to be explained), in Step 2 the researcher may spend a considerable amount of time deciding what to study. For instance, the researcher may engage in numerous conversations with company personal to insure that she/he understands the circumstances facing those requesting the research.
But identifying what needs to be learned is not always easy. For example, saying a drop in sales in a region is the problem does not tell the researcher much since declining sales is a symptom with the real problem resting in some other area. In situations where the party needing the research has trouble articulating what is needed the researcher must probe the client for more details until they can uncover what information is really needed. Doing this helps the researcher decide what to study and, more specifically, what concepts to include in the research (i.e., what questions to ask, what variables to study).
Determining what is to be learned is also important in helping market researchers envision the scope and demands of what must be done. The scope of a research project refers to the amount of information needed. If the scope is too large the researcher may find that it is not worth carrying out the research since they lack the resources to accomplish the goal. Alternatively, knowing in advance what is needed may give the researcher the opportunity to break a larger project into smaller, more manageable parts.
The demands of the project refer to what users of the information (e.g., marketing manager, clients) seek from the research. Most demands revolve around issues related to: acquiring information (e.g., want information that is useable); timing of the research (e.g., want information as quickly as possibly), limits on methods that can be used (e.g., may not allow certain questions be asked) and funding (e.g., limited research money). Again, knowing this in advance can help the researcher design the research plan.
d. It was founded in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1963.
ortation companies coping with this need for marketing research? Surprisingly well. Transportation firms use a wide range of formal and informal market research techniques, from face-to-face information exchange to the most sophisticated uses of computer databases.
Actively engaged
While the larger firms now have a wealth of market research tools at their disposal, their smaller counterparts are making do with smaller budgets and less sophisticated market research activities. Still, even these middle-market and smaller firms are actively engaged in research activities.
Right-O-Way Transportation, Inc. is a $75 million dollar global freight forwarder based in Tustin, California. Right-O-Way offers everything from same-day domestic delivery to five- to seven-day service around the globe, by air and surface.
"Since deregulation, we are free to go after any opportunity that exists to move shipments from Point A to Point B," says Rick Rowland, director of quality. "Second, third and fourth day delivery is our domestic niche, but we can get as creative with our services as we want to be."
And developing new and innovative transportation services is a primary goal of Right-O-Way's marketing research effort.
When the firm sought to explore customer surveys, a relatively new marketing research technique for the firm, Right-O-Way hired Just Marketing, a Scotts Valley, California-based firm that specializes in serving the transportation industry. They developed a written questionnaire, which was mailed to all current Right-O-Way customers.
The questionnaire asked Right-O-Way customers to list the types and quantities of products they had shipped in the past and the types and quantities of products they had shipped in the past and the types and quantities of goods they planned to move in the future. The questionnaire also asked customers to comment on the quality of service they received from Right-O-Way.
The name and address of the customer was printed on each questionnaire. This way, Right-O-Way makes sure that a sales rep follows up with each respondent.
"From a quality standpoint, we meet with customers to find out how we can improve our service," says Rowland. "And if the survey shows that a customer's transportation needs are expanding or changing, our sales rep will try to gain that new business."
In addition, Right-O-Way uses a compilation of the survey information to develop its overall marketing plans. It analyzes overall trends in its customer base and identifies customer needs by geographic region and city. Right-O-Way then develops packages of transportation services to meet those needs.
"We have a broad menu of services to offer," says Rowland. "Marketing research enables us to home in on what specific customer groups need today and tomorrow."
Transborder business
Right-O-Way is heavily committed to international shipping, especially transborder business with Canada. Therefore, much of its marketing research effort reaches outside U.S. borders.
Rowland was manager of Right-O-Way's transborder services in 1985 when the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was passed. Basically, the FTA specifies three schedules for phasing out tariffs and duties over a ten year period starting in 1989. By studying the FTA and communicating directly with Canadian and U.S. government officials, Rowland and his staff found out which industries and product markets would open up first.
"We identified what types of products would be moving across the border and determined how best to tap those markets," says Rowland. "Our FTA research showed that, initially, there would be a great deal of movement of electronics and computers from the Midwest into the Toronto area. So we identified which companies on both sides of the border were most likely to engage in this trade. We went aggressively after those accounts, developing transportation services to match their needs."
Rowland admits that Right-O-Way had a distinct advantage when tapping the transborder market. "Our sister company, Right-O-Way Canada, has offices in every major Canadian airport city. We've been able to coordinate marketing research on both ends and come up with programs that take advantage of everything we know north of the border."
Domestically, Right-O-Way taps a wealth of external sources for research and sales purposes. The company purchases manufacturing guides on computer disk from Database Publishing Company in Newport Beach, California. "From these disks, we can identify companies in a particular ZIP code or group of ZIP codes by SIC code and find out what they ship and where they ship. So if we want, for example, to go after freight lines between Los Angeles and New York, we can identify which companies to target. The disks give us direct leads."
Mail and telephone
Jean McClymonds, president of Just Marketing, also serves as the research chairperson for the Sales and Marketing Council of the American Trucking Association. When transportation firms are looking for basic trends in customers' shipping preferences, they will more than likely use mail surveys or telephone interviewing as their research tools, McClymonds says.
"One of my larger clients sends out an annual survey to approximately 20,000 businesses, customers and non-customers alike. It asks respondents to rate the major carriers on a number of service criteria and to indicate the importance of various transportation factors such as price, dependability, on-time performance and so on.
"It's a blind survey in the sense that they don't tell respondents who's conducting the survey. The survey goes out under the name of a market research company, but they collect the data and do the analysis."
Transportation firms find such surveys very revealing, McClymonds says. "They learn a lot about their reputation as well as the perceived value of current services and prospective new services."
For smaller, more specific research efforts, the firms often switch from the mail to the telephone. "Generally speaking, these telephone interviews can be completed in a matter of minutes," McClymonds says. "And companies can discover some very valuable information about specific aspects of their market and/or services."
In-house databases
To obtain names for their mail and telephone surveys, most transportation firms use their own in- house databases, augmenting them with subscriber lists from major trade publications or list brokers with an emphasis on the transportation and purchasing industries. They generally select names from across various standard industrial classifications (SIC), sorting by size of company, number of employees, or geographically, depending upon the survey's objectives.
In addition, today many of the transportation companies conduct smaller surveys of their current customers, both by phone and mail. In some cases, these surveys will be very sophisticated. In others, they're much more informal.
Sometimes, a customer survey will serve as one part of a larger market research project, McClymonds says. Several years ago, for example, a client conducted a survey regarding the strengths and weaknesses of its customer service department. It surveyed both customers and employees, and held focus group sessions at its shipping terminals.
In addition to surveying current customers, transportation firms will survey departing accounts to determine why they lost their business. "Many companies will conduct a telephone survey of lost business. Basically they'll ask, 'Why did you leave us?' In many cases, the customer might have had a decline in business due to the recession, or they went out of business altogether. And in others, it may have been due to unsatisfactory service. We believ
CVS is incorporated in Delaware, and is based in Woonsocket, Rhode Islan
wants to obtain. Many in the market research field believe this is the most critical step in the research process since it provides guidance on what must be accomplished. While the purpose identified in Step 1 may be determined relatively quickly (e.g., sale reports shows an obvious problem that needs to be explained), in Step 2 the researcher may spend a considerable amount of time deciding what to study. For instance, the researcher may engage in numerous conversations with company personal to insure that she/he understands the circumstances facing those requesting the research.
But identifying what needs to be learned is not always easy. For example, saying a drop in sales in a region is the problem does not tell the researcher much since declining sales is a symptom with the real problem resting in some other area. In situations where the party needing the research has trouble articulating what is needed the researcher must probe the client for more details until they can uncover what information is really needed. Doing this helps the researcher decide what to study and, more specifically, what concepts to include in the research (i.e., what questions to ask, what variables to study).
Determining what is to be learned is also important in helping market researchers envision the scope and demands of what must be done. The scope of a research project refers to the amount of information needed. If the scope is too large the researcher may find that it is not worth carrying out the research since they lack the resources to accomplish the goal. Alternatively, knowing in advance what is needed may give the researcher the opportunity to break a larger project into smaller, more manageable parts.
The demands of the project refer to what users of the information (e.g., marketing manager, clients) seek from the research. Most demands revolve around issues related to: acquiring information (e.g., want information that is useable); timing of the research (e.g., want information as quickly as possibly), limits on methods that can be used (e.g., may not allow certain questions be asked) and funding (e.g., limited research money). Again, knowing this in advance can help the researcher design the research plan.
d. It was founded in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1963.
ortation companies coping with this need for marketing research? Surprisingly well. Transportation firms use a wide range of formal and informal market research techniques, from face-to-face information exchange to the most sophisticated uses of computer databases.
Actively engaged
While the larger firms now have a wealth of market research tools at their disposal, their smaller counterparts are making do with smaller budgets and less sophisticated market research activities. Still, even these middle-market and smaller firms are actively engaged in research activities.
Right-O-Way Transportation, Inc. is a $75 million dollar global freight forwarder based in Tustin, California. Right-O-Way offers everything from same-day domestic delivery to five- to seven-day service around the globe, by air and surface.
"Since deregulation, we are free to go after any opportunity that exists to move shipments from Point A to Point B," says Rick Rowland, director of quality. "Second, third and fourth day delivery is our domestic niche, but we can get as creative with our services as we want to be."
And developing new and innovative transportation services is a primary goal of Right-O-Way's marketing research effort.
When the firm sought to explore customer surveys, a relatively new marketing research technique for the firm, Right-O-Way hired Just Marketing, a Scotts Valley, California-based firm that specializes in serving the transportation industry. They developed a written questionnaire, which was mailed to all current Right-O-Way customers.
The questionnaire asked Right-O-Way customers to list the types and quantities of products they had shipped in the past and the types and quantities of products they had shipped in the past and the types and quantities of goods they planned to move in the future. The questionnaire also asked customers to comment on the quality of service they received from Right-O-Way.
The name and address of the customer was printed on each questionnaire. This way, Right-O-Way makes sure that a sales rep follows up with each respondent.
"From a quality standpoint, we meet with customers to find out how we can improve our service," says Rowland. "And if the survey shows that a customer's transportation needs are expanding or changing, our sales rep will try to gain that new business."
In addition, Right-O-Way uses a compilation of the survey information to develop its overall marketing plans. It analyzes overall trends in its customer base and identifies customer needs by geographic region and city. Right-O-Way then develops packages of transportation services to meet those needs.
"We have a broad menu of services to offer," says Rowland. "Marketing research enables us to home in on what specific customer groups need today and tomorrow."
Transborder business
Right-O-Way is heavily committed to international shipping, especially transborder business with Canada. Therefore, much of its marketing research effort reaches outside U.S. borders.
Rowland was manager of Right-O-Way's transborder services in 1985 when the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was passed. Basically, the FTA specifies three schedules for phasing out tariffs and duties over a ten year period starting in 1989. By studying the FTA and communicating directly with Canadian and U.S. government officials, Rowland and his staff found out which industries and product markets would open up first.
"We identified what types of products would be moving across the border and determined how best to tap those markets," says Rowland. "Our FTA research showed that, initially, there would be a great deal of movement of electronics and computers from the Midwest into the Toronto area. So we identified which companies on both sides of the border were most likely to engage in this trade. We went aggressively after those accounts, developing transportation services to match their needs."
Rowland admits that Right-O-Way had a distinct advantage when tapping the transborder market. "Our sister company, Right-O-Way Canada, has offices in every major Canadian airport city. We've been able to coordinate marketing research on both ends and come up with programs that take advantage of everything we know north of the border."
Domestically, Right-O-Way taps a wealth of external sources for research and sales purposes. The company purchases manufacturing guides on computer disk from Database Publishing Company in Newport Beach, California. "From these disks, we can identify companies in a particular ZIP code or group of ZIP codes by SIC code and find out what they ship and where they ship. So if we want, for example, to go after freight lines between Los Angeles and New York, we can identify which companies to target. The disks give us direct leads."
Mail and telephone
Jean McClymonds, president of Just Marketing, also serves as the research chairperson for the Sales and Marketing Council of the American Trucking Association. When transportation firms are looking for basic trends in customers' shipping preferences, they will more than likely use mail surveys or telephone interviewing as their research tools, McClymonds says.
"One of my larger clients sends out an annual survey to approximately 20,000 businesses, customers and non-customers alike. It asks respondents to rate the major carriers on a number of service criteria and to indicate the importance of various transportation factors such as price, dependability, on-time performance and so on.
"It's a blind survey in the sense that they don't tell respondents who's conducting the survey. The survey goes out under the name of a market research company, but they collect the data and do the analysis."
Transportation firms find such surveys very revealing, McClymonds says. "They learn a lot about their reputation as well as the perceived value of current services and prospective new services."
For smaller, more specific research efforts, the firms often switch from the mail to the telephone. "Generally speaking, these telephone interviews can be completed in a matter of minutes," McClymonds says. "And companies can discover some very valuable information about specific aspects of their market and/or services."
In-house databases
To obtain names for their mail and telephone surveys, most transportation firms use their own in- house databases, augmenting them with subscriber lists from major trade publications or list brokers with an emphasis on the transportation and purchasing industries. They generally select names from across various standard industrial classifications (SIC), sorting by size of company, number of employees, or geographically, depending upon the survey's objectives.
In addition, today many of the transportation companies conduct smaller surveys of their current customers, both by phone and mail. In some cases, these surveys will be very sophisticated. In others, they're much more informal.
Sometimes, a customer survey will serve as one part of a larger market research project, McClymonds says. Several years ago, for example, a client conducted a survey regarding the strengths and weaknesses of its customer service department. It surveyed both customers and employees, and held focus group sessions at its shipping terminals.
In addition to surveying current customers, transportation firms will survey departing accounts to determine why they lost their business. "Many companies will conduct a telephone survey of lost business. Basically they'll ask, 'Why did you leave us?' In many cases, the customer might have had a decline in business due to the recession, or they went out of business altogether. And in others, it may have been due to unsatisfactory service. We believ