CAPABILITIES
Qualitative Research
One-on-one in-depth interviews or focus group sessions for
purposes of developing preliminary insights into market
structure, product positioning, or product or advertising
conceptualization.
Consumer Motivation
Determination of the specific mix of characteristics that
would maximize consumer acceptance of new products or services.
These studies frequently incorporate segmentation techniques
which identify discrete groups of consumers, defined in
terms of differential needs regarding the product or service
category. “Investors’
Choice” is a study of this genre, designed to
define the market for socially responsible mutual funds
on the basis of investor motivations.
Competitive Structure
Definition of the market in terms of how competitive offerings
are perceived by their target audience on characteristics
that are relevant to the purchase decision. These studies
generally delve into aspects of consumer awareness and experience
with these offerings and frequently provide analyses in
terms of market segments, defined on the basis of differential
needs regarding the product or service category. “CORPUS”
(Corporate Responsibility Profiles in the US), a system
for the continuous measurement of company reputations among
investors is currently on our drawing board.
Concept Testing
Determination of the extent to which individual or alternative
product, positioning or communications concepts are compelling
to defined audience segments.
Tracking Studies
Periodic evaluation of the effectiveness of marketing activities,
including the introduction of new or re-staged products
and implementation of marketing communications programs.
CSR Report Monitor is a program by which various aspects of in-market effectiveness of corporate social responsibility reporting can be determined.
Satisfaction Studies
Periodic evaluation of the extent to which investors in
individual corporations,
mutual funds, and
public and private pension funds are satisfied with
the performance of these entities on financial and social
responsibility criteria.
|
SRI LANTERN
Plan Participant Satisfaction Monitor
During the past decade many large public and private pension
funds adopted social screens in the management of their defined-contribution
pension plans. This behavior is consistent with the growth of
social investing, a phenomenon that has resulted in there being
more than $2 trillion in socially screened investments under professional
management in the US today.
SRI Lantern’s, “Plan Participant Satisfaction Monitor”
(PPSM) was developed for purposes of providing empirically-based
marketing intelligence, as relates to the following issues…
- How satisfied are plan participants with your pension fund’s
performance?
- Do they intend to stay with the plan (if voluntary)?
- Do they intend to increase or decrease their levels of participation
(if compulsory)?
- To what extent are these pre-dispositions related to perceptions
of the plan’s financial performance? To it’s social
screening criteria? To operational considerations, including
confidence in the plan’s administrators and fiduciaries?
In addressing these issues, PPSM will first measure the importance
of a standardized battery of financial and corporate social responsibility
criteria to your plan participants, then determine their satisfaction
with the plan’s performance in delivering on these very
dimensions.
The resulting data will enable us to evaluate your performance
in terms of your total base of plan participants, as well as discrete
segments of the same, defined on the basis of differential motivations
regarding the investment decision process.
PPSM will allow you to not only track how you are perceived by
plan participants, on financial and social responsibility criteria,
but also changes in their motivations, i.e., are defined criteria
increasing in relative importance to these individuals?
The study sample would be drawn at random from your database
to ensure that it is representative of that universe. The results
of the survey would be proprietary to you, with the exception
that the data would be anonymously combined with those derived
from comparable surveys. This would be for purposes of developing
norms, against which the performance of individual defined-contribution
pension funds might be compared.
You will have an opportunity to append a limited number of questions
to this survey, the results of which would be proprietary to you.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of this market segmentation
approach to the measurement of plan participant satisfaction,
please contact Doug Wheat or Mel Kram at 802-251-0500.
mkram@sriworld.com
|
