The Internet and the Web provide several resources for product man-agers to use in conducting marketing research. By way of definition, the Internet is a network of computer networks—a way of linking busi-ness, government, and other networks to one another electronically.
Initially started as a text-based system, the introduction of the World Wide Web (or www.) now allows transmission of graphical bits of data as well.
A product manager from a software company stated, “I use the Web daily to perform competitive research and look for new product ideas. I really don’t know how I survived prior to using the Web.”2 Another product manager from a music equipment company also finds several uses of the Internet:
I search for end-user opinions by going to DejaNews (www.dejanews .com) and searching the news groups for relevant discussions. Also,
I can visit my competitors’ websites to obtain product specs and search for the “street price” of various products on-line. We have a company compile the information from returned warranty cards into a database that we can search to learn more about our customer base.
We also offer on-line product registration for certain products.3
There are several tools for accessing market intelligence using the Web, as indicated in Figure 4.1. Some are free, some require registration (with or without fees), and others offer a combination of some “free”
information, with fees required to access more detailed data. For gen-eral content searching of new ideas, customer issues, and trends, MetaCrawler, DejaNews, and ForumOne are example sources. Meta-Crawler is a mega search engine that searches several search engines simultaneously. It reduces overlaps and redundancies in the search process. DejaNews is an archive of discussion (usenet) groups. ForumOne is a search engine of Web-based discussion groups. The two latter sources can be somewhat overwhelming, since several discussions can be extraneous to your product, but unique ideas can emerge. To obtain specific information more consistently, you might try prioritizing top-ics in the news to create a variation of an on-line clipping service using NewsPage.
For market data (e.g., analytical data on segment sizes by SIC or NAICS classification), the U.S. Census Bureau is a good starting point.
Although much of the information cannot be obtained on-line, the website describes the types of censuses available and provides examples of how to use the data. Several sites can be accessed from the home page, including The Statistical Abstract of the United States and The State and Metropolitan Area Data Book. The Bureau of Labor Statis-tics website provides links to the eleven principal federal statistical agencies, as well as to the official government-sponsored statistical ser-vices of several countries. Another tool, published by The Population Reference Bureau, organizes information by state as well as informa-tion general to all states. Sometimes the best sources of market infor-mation are trade and industry associations. If you are unaware of specific associations and websites, a place to start looking is the Inter-net Public Library (IPL) Associations on the InterInter-net. This is a page of the Internet Public Library website with a collection of over eleven hundred (as of August 1999) Internet sites providing information about a wide variety of associations.
For company-specific data on competitors, the best places to start are your competitors’ websites. They frequently contain information on new products and suggest positioning strategies. If you don’t know a site address, you might try Switchboard, a telephone, E-mail, or Web direc-tory. Some information on competitors and competitor site addresses may also be available through industry trade associations, as mentioned in the previous paragraph. In addition, there are a handful of industry portals (sites to connect buyers and sellers) that have emerged with extensive lists of suppliers. PaperExchange, for example, includes a directory of suppliers to the paper industry. For financial information on the competition, the SEC is a starting point; you can use the Edgar database to look up common SEC forms for a designated company.
Hoovers is a commercial organization that provides company and prod-uct information on numerous firms. In addition, Hoovers publishes industry overviews that may provide useful information and additional industry website links. The Thomas Register of American Manufactur-ers provides product information on a variety of firms.
General Information Sources
MetaCrawler (www.metacrawler.com) DejaNews (www.dejanews.com) ForumOne (www.forum.com) NewsPage (www.newspage.com) Market and Statistical Indicator Sources
U.S. Census Bureau (www.census.gov)
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://stats.bls.gov/oreother.htm) The Population Reference Bureau (www.prb.org/news/stateweb.htm) IPL Associations on the Net (www.ipl.org/ref/AON)
Company-Specific Sources
Switchboard (www.switchboard.com) SEC on-line, including Edgar (www.sec.gov) Hoovers (www.hoovers.com)
Thomas Register (www.thomasregister.com)
Figure 4.1 Example Sources of On-Line Market Intelligence4
Internal Systems
One of the ongoing challenges of product management is the need to sort through, analyze, and synthesize large amounts of data. Organiz-ing competitor and customer data into convenient formats for decision-making requires significant time and effort. Most existing companies are mired in a mix of different databases, computer systems, and func-tional processes, making integration difficult. At the same time, cus-tomer demands and competitive pressures are escalating the need for this level of integration. A financial institution, for example, may have different databases for checking accounts, savings accounts, CDs, and other financial vehicles. Without the ability to integrate these systems, customers receive separate statements for each of their accounts.
In many situations, several product managers “share” the same customers. If information is maintained simply on a transaction or product basis, there is no repository of common customer data to learn from and grow in an effort to serve customers better than the compe-tition does. This type of integrated system is a necessary prerequisite to effective E-commerce.
Having a good database on customers and being able to use it effec-tively is becoming increasingly significant for companies in today’s com-petitive environment. Various terms have been used to describe this process, including data mining, customer asset management (CAM), and customer relationship management (CRM). Data mining refers to the process of extracting knowledge about a particular topic (in this case, customers) from a compiled database. CAM and CRM more specifically refer to marketing and sales automation or software that facilitates a firm’s ability to build relationships with customers. Product managers and salespeople have historically managed customer relationships quite well, but now there is software that links the whole company together to manage customers.5 The idea behind CRM is to provide a holistic approach to using customer information throughout the company.
The majority of companies have websites today, most have intranets, and a growing number are doing business with customers and suppli-ers via extranets. However, the individual components may not be used as effectively as they could be, and the components are generally not linked well to one another. The processes and software used to link databases together not only improve interactions with customers, but
also provide the foundation for E-commerce and broad-based customer relationship management:
[I]n order to do a good job with your website, you’re going to need to integrate it tightly into many of your company’s back-end sys-tems. Ideally, you’ll want to design a generalizable integration strat-egy for all those applications, not a piecemeal approach. Second, you’ll begin to recognize that you could use many of the same fea-tures you design into your website to enable customers to help them-selves using Touch-Tone telephones, kiosks, or hand-held devices.
You can even use much of the information and streamlined processes in the call centers where your sales and service people are interact-ing with customers on the phone. And you can reuse a lot of the processes and information you develop for your end customers to serve your channel partners.6
Companies are looking for ways to use the intranet for knowledge management. Knowledge management, in general, refers to a corpo-rate-wide program or process for organizing, filtering, sharing, and retaining key corporate data as an asset. Whether E-mail, GroupWare (such as LOTUS Notes), data mining, or other approaches are used, intranets are becoming a forum for discussing ideas, sharing new infor-mation about competitors and customers, and comparing notes on product development projects. Product managers can and should work with their information technology group to evolve their intranets into tools to enable market-driven decisions. Many experts are confirming David Packard’s ubiquitous quote that “marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department,” by highlighting the importance of this information-sharing.
In small organizations where product and customer discussions take place informally on an ongoing basis, information is continually shared and intellectual capital can thereby grow into a competitive edge. As corporations have evolved into massive global structures, product man-agers may find it necessary to replace some of the face-to-face sharing of expertise of the past by using technology as the “virtual office water-cooler” of the twenty-first century. The pharmaceutical firm Wyeth-Ayerst has realized the importance of this phenomenon:
Wyeth-Ayerst has discovered remarkable benefits from the imple-mentation of a global knowledge sharing database. Benefits that range from quantifiable increases in market share through the adoption of
successful business strategies across the sales organization, to the development of product launch models which have taken into account the organization’s most successful practices. They have found that one of the most interesting comments received from employees who utilize the knowledge sharing database is the realization that, no mat-ter their location, when they go to work each day, they firmly believe that their ability to access a repository of company-wide knowledge and expertise provides them a distinct and significant competitive advantage.7
Similar knowledge sharing can occur between companies through use of extranets. A firm can, for example, link up with another firm’s intranet to allow authorized people to access inventory records, review sales information, and/or order electronically (a Web-based version of EDI, electronic data interchange).