http://www.slideshare.net/WPAOpinionResearch/wpas-key-weekend-charts-120203

The level of satisfaction a customer has with a company has profound effects.  Studies have found that the level of customer’s satisfaction has a positive effect on profitability:

• A totally satisfied customer contributes 2.6 times as much revenue to a company as a somewhat satisfied customer.
• A totally satisfied customer contributes 17 times as much revenue as a somewhat dissatisfied customer.
• A totally dissatisfied customer decreases revenue at a rate equal to 18 times what a totally satisfied customer contributes to a company.

Research has shown that when a person is satisfied with a company or service they are likely to share their experience with other people to the order of perhaps five or six people.  However, dissatisfied customers are likely to tell another ten people of their unfortunate experience.  With social media readily available for consumers to tell their story to all of those online, you can easily go to Twitter or Facebook and read about someone’s experience with a company or service.

However, merely focusing solely on customer satisfaction has its drawbacks in the marketplace as well.  For those companies that focus only on customer satisfaction run a real risk a failing to differentiate their brand from others.  In order to achieve long-term sustainability companies must seek to establish ties of loyalty with consumers that are strong enough to ward off the advances of competitors.  Creating loyalty among customers can help the company to increase purchases of existing products, charge premium prices for appreciation of your added-value services, and create positive word-of-mouth promotion for your company, which is the core marketing objective for companies.

Customer loyalty is much harder to obtain than satisfaction.  Even though customers are satisfied with the company there are several factors that could cause the customer to defect to the competition, such as finding a better value or the competitor is more convenient.  With that said, having high levels of customer satisfaction does not always lead to customer loyalty.  However, a company cannot achieve customer loyalty without having customer satisfaction.

Thus, though customer satisfaction does not guarantee the repurchase from a company but it does play a very important role in achieving customer loyalty.  Conducting customer satisfaction research will provide your company with the necessary insight it needs to make informed decisions in order to retain and increase your customer base and improve customer relationships.

Bovada has released their prop bets for all things Super Bowl.  Want to guess what the over/under is for viewers?  117 million.  Of the top 45 network prime-time telecasts since 1964 in America, 21 are Super Bowls.  It’s one of the guaranteed highest watched events in America.  It comes around every year.  People who don’t even like the sport will watch it just to engage with the brands that sponsor it.  Seriously?  Is there any other event in our culture where people tune in to watch the advertisements?  This is being served up on a platter.  It’s t-ball.  Stop whiffing!

1)      Why do so many companies pay the $3.5 million it takes to get an average 30 second spot and then run the same commercial they’ve been running for 6 months?  Why?  People see it, it doesn’t grab them, and they realize this is a good time for a drink refill or to continue talking.  It’s not enough to be simply seen when you could be grabbing attention.  Missed opportunity.

2)      Even when a company understands that it needs a new ad, why aren’t they all very good?  You’d think if a company was going to spend $3.5 million dollars on a 30 second spot, then they’d spend at least half that making sure that the spot is well produced and grabs people.  Research and production values, in other words.  Why don’t more companies exhaustively research their commercials to make sure they play well?  Because it costs money?  You’re buying a Super Bowl ad, money is relative.  Arguing that it doesn’t matter what the ad is because it’s going to put the brand in front of 117 million people who will see it just doesn’t fly.  If you’re going to the expense of a major ad, then go to the expense of doing a major ad well.  Missed opportunity.

3)      Now for the winners.  These are the ads that make the water cooler cut: you’ll be talking about them the next day.  The Doritos girl, the Old Spice man, Volkswagen’s Darth Vader kid, and some of the best of Budweiser spots are ads that are funny, and what’s more generate tremendous earned media because they were well research and produced.  These are the success stories right?  Well undoubtedly they are.  Still, missed opportunity.  Why?

It is because these ads made it through the gauntlet and into public consciousness.  They won, but then they didn’t follow through.  They’re like the contestant winner who never picks up their prize.  So many of these ads function on the old paradigm of pushing your message on the consumer, but not engaging the consumer.  Some of the best, like the Old Spice man, understood that you can get people to engage your brand on their terms through social media, but they treat social media like any other message pushing ad platform.  If you’re looking at a major Super Bowl ad buy, with a massively researched and well produced ad, and all you hope to get out of it is 30 seconds and some water cooler talk, you’re missing a major opportunity to involve people further.  It’s not a good ad if it doesn’t give you an avenue to engage them after they’ve seen it.  Direct people to your Facebook page.  Give a benefit for following you on twitter.  Social media is SOCIAL; it’s a media that works through relationships.  It’s not enough to go meet everyone in the room at a party.  If that’s all you do then you’re just that person that everyone kind of talked to for 5 minutes.  You need to engage people, talk to them on their terms, and then you’ll be the person that everyone else is talking about (in a good way, one hopes).

And that’s why these are missed opportunities.  Everyone knows it’s great to put up a Super Bowl ad.  But so many of them are missing the real rewards that they could be reaping and that they’ve already paid for.  They’ve got it half right.  But they’re not quite there yet.  Sort of like the Patriots, with their high powered offense and total lack of defense.  I’m looking forward to seeing which companies show just how much they “get” the new media environment almost as much as I am to seeing the Giants D go to town.

The findings are from a Gallup poll conducted Jan. 23, 2012, to gauge support for specific economic proposals President Obama was expected to raise during his State of the Union address. Despite Americans’ dissatisfaction with the size and power of the federal government, they tend to favor specific proposals on how the government could accomplish high-priority goals.

In this case, large majorities of Democrats and independents — and at least 4 in 10 Republicans — favor each of the proposals Gallup asked about, pushing national support for each of the five well above the majority level. Overall support is highest for tax incentives to encourage corporations to bring back manufacturing jobs and for increasing federal spending to help the unemployed find jobs.

Americans’ views of these economic proposals can be partially explained by their specific economic concerns. The two most popular proposals — giving tax breaks to companies that bring manufacturing jobs back from overseas, and increasing government spending for education and job training for the long-term unemployed — directly address what Americans clearly perceive as one of the most important problems facing the country — jobs and unemployment.

With Americans less concerned about trade, energy, and taxes, it makes sense that the other three proposals — regarding fair trade with China, the development of alternative energy, and increased taxes on high-income Americans — are less popular.

Implications

Politically, the challenge for President Barack Obama and members of Congress is balancing Americans’ concerns about the role and size of government with their concerns about jobs. These Gallup data make it clear that Americans are more likely to favor federal government action that addresses their top economic concern, jobs and unemployment. Proposals on less top-of-mind concerns are not quite as popular. Still, a majority favors each of these specific proposals Gallup asked about, perhaps because respondents aren’t given a trade-off, such as the specific price tag.

It is also worth noting that despite the large Democratic-Republican divide on increasing taxes on upper-income Americans, federal funding for the development of alternative sources of energy, and education and job training for the long-term unemployed, a majority of independents favor each of these proposals. Further, lawmakers should expect widespread support for legislation that gives tax breaks to corporations that bring back manufacturing jobs from overseas and efforts to pressure China for fairer trade.

My first reaction was that they were failing to control for an important factor: the rising number of Americans who self-identify as Independents.  If fewer Americans are identifying with either political party, it’s possible that those who still do are more partisan in their feelings and thus we would expect opinions of President of either party to be more divided.

As it turns out, this is somewhat true.  Looking at Gallup data for the last several election years, in 2006 and before Independent identification ran between 25% and 26%.  In the run-ups to the 2008 and 2010 elections, it averaged around 29% for in each year.  This may not be enough to fully explain the partisan gap over the President, but controlling for it would be important to understanding the whole picture.

Later in the day, The Fix published a “rebuttal” from a former Democratic staffer who said, predictably, that Obama is not polarizing; it’s the Republicans’ fault.  Whoever had nine hours as how long it would take a Democrat to get into print blaming Republicans wins the pool on this one.

I call this a “rebuttal” because the argument was entirely with the headline, that Obama was polarizing, not with the data and analysis, that opinions of Obama are polarized.

But, let’s take the argument on its face.  Former Democratic aide Manly cites an impressive array of political scientists and think tank folks all saying that Republicans have moved right over the last few decades faster than Democrats have moved left.

In other news, water is wet.  Of course Republicans, formerly the party who wanted exactly what Democrats wanted but slightly less of it, have moved right faster than the Democrats who brought you a massive, bloated federal government and spent a century incrementalizing their way toward a cradle-to-grave welfare state have moved left.  There was a lot of room to the Republicans’ right and little credible room to the Democrats’ left.

But here’s the interesting thing about the Gallup data.  What we did worked, electorally.  The data looks at every President since 1953.  The ten most polarizing years are all 1984 or after and nine of the ten are after 1994.   In other words, as the distinctions between the parties have become stronger and we have provided a real alternative to the Democrats, we have also started winning Congressional elections and recapturing majorities in one or both chambers at various times for the first time since early in the 20^th century.

To a former Ted Kennedy aide longing for the “good old days” of a permanent Republican minority who served as a virtual rubber stamp to Democratic expansion of the federal government, this must all seem horrible.

To a Republican who wants to see Republicans actually win elections, govern, and change America, this is a strong endorsement of the idea that drawing real contrasts with Democrats on the issues and offering a fundamentally different vision for America works electorally.

The problem for Obama is that the swing states include in the poll are all states won by Obama in 2008 by an aggregate of 8 points. These states also represent 151 electoral votes in the 2012 election.

If you needed more confirmation that 2012 will not be a repeat of the 2008 election, here it is. After 4 years of failing and delivering on hope and change, Obama continues to lose ground.

1)      People are lazy.  Most of us will take the mentally easy path, confident in our intuition to guide us through, rather than take 5 seconds to think about what we’re being confronted with.  I’m going to ask you a question and pay attention to the first thing that pops into your head.  Are you ready?  Here’s the question:  What do cows drink?  If you thought “milk”, you’re not alone.  That’s your intuitive and associative mental system answering a question for you before you’ve thought about it.  It’s also wrong.  But it’s even more likely that, instead of pausing to think at all, you kept reading to the answer you guessed would follow shortly, not taking the time to think about it at all.  If you want real results in research you need to make sure people are engaging you on the level you need them to.  And when in doubt, people are lazy, they’ll take the path of least mental effort as a matter of course, so if you don’t want that, help them change it.

2)      Amazon’s kindle device has a little bar that goes across the bottom of the display that tells you how far through your book or article you are.  Why?  Because when people are reading a paper book, they have that information easily to hand.  People like to know they’re progressing through a thing, it lets us set up expectations and gives us a mild sense of accomplishment.  If you say you’re giving people a short survey, don’t make it a 60 question monster that’s going to take them half an hour.  This is especially true online.  If you hit people with a never ending survey and don’t give them a realistic sense of progress and completion, be prepared to see your drop rate jump to the next valence shell.  You’re on point two of three, by the way, nice job.

3)      Just because people only pay attention for a few seconds doesn’t mean your message needs to die when your respondent sees something shiny.  Striking images and phrases can reach out through the informational clutter and grab attention.  Likewise repetition and exposure to information, even if we don’t like it or disagree with it can shape behavior just as decisively as messages that reach out and grab.  Case in point would be the negative advertising that flooded Iowa before the Republican primary election or that’s flooding Florida right now.  Nobody “likes” it.  But it sure slowed Gingrich’s momentum substantially in Iowa.  Negative advertising is used because it works.  Research can help make sure that those few seconds of attention remain with voters, donors, and consumers long after exposure, regardless of whether they like it or not.

So to sum up on attention spans:

-Be sure to engage on the desired mental level, but remember that most minds follow the path of least resistance.

-Set realistic benchmarks for progress and give a sense of accomplishment.

-You only have a few seconds, make sure they count.

This is forcing hospitals to market specific services, particularly ones that are revenue producers, to attract new patients and retain existing ones.  Often the services that are big revenue producers are services where the patient has a choice and hospitals in the marketplace are fighting to build brand equity in the mind of the consumer and among the physicians in the market.

With a marketplace that is quickly becoming highly competitive, hospitals have sharply increased their advertising spend.  The majority of the advertising investments focus on differentiating the hospital services in the marketplace and into educational materials that provide patients information about hospital services such as bariatric surgery, which has become a highly competitive business.

Due to the competitiveness of the market for these services coupled with the time and investments that are put into the campaigns it is critical that hospitals are able to maximize their returns on their advertising and marketing investments.  This requires a truly effective message that has the ability and power to get into the mind of consumers and physicians in the market, and since misguided efforts related to branding and advertising can create powerful setback that can ripple through an entire organization hospitals cannot afford to wait for hindsight to determine how effective their marketing strategies were.

The good news is that a hospital can partner with a market research firm to conduct research prior to a hospital’s campaign that will provide valuable insights determining the optimal messages for the target population for the services the hospital is promoting.  With a little bit of research, hospitals can ensure that every marketing dollar is used most effectively.

These results are based on a Jan. 5-8 Gallup poll. Since 1991, Gallup has periodically asked Americans whether they are worried about each of these financial events happening to them. The trend includes updates in January of four presidential election years — 1992, 2004, 2008, and 2012.

Americans’ economic anxiety today is most similar to what it was in 1992, though Americans are slightly less worried about not being able to pay medical bills now (43%) than they were then (48%). The economic angst at that time helped contribute to George H.W. Bush’s re-election defeat that year. Far fewer were worried in 2004, when George W. Bush won a second term.

The late January/early February 2008 survey was conducted as the U.S. was in the beginning of an economic recession and Americans were becoming increasingly worried about the economy, but before the financial crisis unfolded later that year. Americans were less worried at that time than they are now about losing a job (23% versus 34%) and paying medical bills (33% versus 43%), but about as worried about not being able to maintain their standard of living (50% versus 51%).

Gallup did not ask this question in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, so it’s possible the levels of financial worry were higher then. However, the January 2011 update showed that economic concerns were elevated in all three areas nearly two years after the recession officially ended. Importantly, Americans’ financial concerns remain high even as economic confidence is improving.

Americans Worry Most About National Economy

The poll also included three items — worry about home values not increasing, worry about outliving one’s money after retiring, and worry that the economy will get worse in the next year — in addition to the core items that date to 1991.

Of the six items, Americans are most worried that the economy will get worse, at 72%, followed by outliving their money in retirement (57%). The 51% worried about home values not increasing matches the percentage worried about not being able to maintain their standard of living.

Lower-income Americans express more worry than upper-income Americans about being able to maintain their standard of living, being able to pay medical bills, and job loss. However, lower- and upper-income Americans show surprisingly similar levels of worry about their home values and outliving their money in retirement.

The lack of income differences in worry about housing values may result from the likelihood that many lower-income Americans are renting their homes or perhaps are disproportionately older Americans who have paid off their mortgages.

Implications

Americans continue to express concerns about their financial situations, with half worried about maintaining their standard of living, 4 in 10 worried about being able to pay medical costs, and one in three worried about losing a job. A separate Gallup question found roughly half of Americans saying they are financially worse off now than a year ago.

To a large degree, Americans’ level of economic worry is similar to what it was in 1992, when Americans denied Bush a second term in office. President Obama remains vulnerable to defeat, with approval ratings still in the mid-40% range. One difference between Bush and Obama, however, is that Obama was elected during a sluggish economy while Bush took office during healthy economic times. Still, voters may hold Obama accountable if they perceive that conditions have not improved much in four years.

WPA is out with our January 2012 National Assessment.   Please follow the link below to view the presentation: