Temat: small pre sales market research project in multiple...

hi

the scenario is this. There are 1275 ski resorts in Europe, The company I am working with has developed a new competitive ticketing solution for ski passes that can be used by some ski resorts in Europe. They are well able to deal with the Polish market but want to investigate foreign markets. The aim is to find out about the ski pass systems of ski resorts in Europe If the ski resort has the most modern contact-less ski passes then this Polish made system won't work but for some ski resorts the Polish solution may be very competitive.

I've got the questions in English - which are to ask ski resorts in Europe about their ski pass systems.
You can see a list of the resorts here https://hackpad.com/DeucW3YQnf6
I;ve also got main phone numbers of but not names and phone numbers of the people responsible for ticketing systems.

The objectives are
1. to find out what type of ski pass system they are using
2. find out who is responsible for the system in the ski resort
3. Find out their name, e-mail and direct phone number
4. Find out what the process would be to submit a competitive offer

The main countries where there are ski resorts are
Austria
Bulgaria
Czech Republic
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Norway
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland

The challenge is language, scale and research .. it may be the case that the information is available on a resort web site, but not necessarily, for example here
http://www.haideralm.it/en/winter/information/prices.asp
there is no point in calling to find out what sort of system they have if if it is on the web
there may be good tricks to reduce the survey size - for example eliminate resorts which are cooperating with Swatch Snowpass http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=4753 as they must have RF-ID

So to sum up, what s the best approach, what sort sort of budget, and time scale would be appropriate.

Thanks.regards

Richard

The questions are as follows

1. Who is responsible for ski pass systems, name, direct phone number e-mail
2. which system do you have for Ski passes Skidata or other?
3. Who would be responsible for receiving an offer of a ski passes competitive to Ski Data tickets
4. What type of tickets are you using at the moment?
5 When will you be purchasing ski passes for the next season ?
6. what criteria are important when deciding who to buy supplies from ?
7 what is the process if someone want to make an offer of alternative supplies
8. do you accept offers in English ?

Temat: small pre sales market research project in multiple...

Dear Richard,

What is the question? :) :)

It is quite simple multicountry b2b study. You are chairman of PMR - I think it is the same PMR company : http://www.research-pmr.com/international-research. PMR company is able to do international study :)

First step - desk research (collect all info avaiable on the web sides)
Second step - B2B CATI study (in local language - in local CATI studio or find a company with multi-lingual cati interviewers). Recruitment part will define the person (name, adress, phone number) responsible for ticketing systems.

If you'll still have a problem (because of refusals) go f2f by local agency.

The budget? There is no other way to ask every country about quotation. You'll prapare master qustionnaire and each coutry will prepare the local version - and rock and roll :)

P.s. decision tree is rather qualitative part. Maybe 2-3 interviews (IDIs) will be enough to find main objectives.Ten post został edytowany przez Autora dnia 06.09.14 o godzinie 15:02

Temat: small pre sales market research project in multiple...

hi Dagmara,

thanks.. You reply is very useful.. I have been wondering about pre sales market research for a while..

you are right to make the link with PMR.. I don't work there day to day, and never was a MR professional..
I did have some background in consulting when I invested (in 2001).

As a shareholder it is surprisingly difficult to work with your own company as a client, when it is more - as in this case - than an hours work. there are lots of issues from:

amount of attention. -
- I might get too much - and 'real' clients suffer
- I might get too little "it's only Richard , he is not going to get annoyed if we are late"
-
pricing.. can of worms.
If it is too cheap then the other shareholders, employees may feel I am "cheating the company". How are people mean to hit their 'real targets' when the 'bosses' boss' is around.
If it is too expensive the company with the project. ... which I am also involved in - feels I am cheating them

People.. if I use the external vendors a company like PMR use when we don't have in house language resources then I might take up capacity that PMR needs, so again it might not be in the company interests.

I like the idea of intensification of desk research to reduce the amount of calling. It occurred to me that their might be a clever way of going from
lists like this
http://ski-ski-ski.com/Austria.html
this http://snowpark.at/preise
I keep on thinking that somewhere their is an excel with all this information .. :-)

In terms of the best places.portals to find freelancers who are a) good at desk research - for example crack the above problem. How do you even test when you don't know yourself. put a "wanted - desk research wizard" ad on a freelancer portal ?

and b) speak the right European languages what would you recommend.

when I am posting in English I used to use Elance, now it Freelancer.com. Googling let me to Odesk. in China where I have local language assistance we are testing http://freelancer.cn/ because the rates are lower if you are not perceived as English language tan foreign client....

Finding high quality foreign language freelancers presumably is a challenge many Polish MR-ers have faced.

Cheers

Richard

Temat: small pre sales market research project in multiple...

Dear Richard, you are incredible :):) That's nice that you have this point of view - it is really good for your company. Stop worrying about your people - start trust them :) Treat this project as a standard external project. Use your resources.

You have a field managers (operation managers) in so many countries. Send them request, collect methodologies and OOPs. I'm sure your collegues will help you.
I'm not represetative, because I'm not afraid of bosses :). I even say - quite the opposite :)

When I worked in Nielsen CR it was a standard: we are doing internal projects for Nielsen RMS.
Using of external vendors will be not in the company interests as long as this project will be not cost-effective for PMR. You are not doing this project "because of that" or "because of your own curiosity" am I right? Collect the data (budgets, timing) and count it :)

Honestly - you have a operation manager (or field manager) in Poland to solve this problem. You pay him for that. Ask local field manager about desk research specialists - they have a knowledge about local market and local desk research people.
You can looking for them on your own, but it will be a little tricky (LinkedIn, Esomar directory). An why do this, when you have people for that ?

It is simple project : collect contact data of people, collect some data (internet and phone) - it could be done by a student (only one excell sheet). Only decision tree is more difficult - that's why I'll do it by IDIs and professional IDIs moderator (only few in each country). The rest is a piece of cake.Ten post został edytowany przez Autora dnia 07.09.14 o godzinie 14:06