Synovate Launches Brand Problem Tracker

Synovate has launched a new service called Market Barriers, which measures the obstacles that brands face - such as distribution, pricing and product configuration - and reports back on the impact that these have on customer choice and market share.

Ged Parton, CEO of the firm's Brand & Communications Practice, says the system enables marketers to predict the barriers their brand can expect to face, quantify these into lost sales, and develop sustainable strategies that can effectively overcome those barriers while at the same time optimising sales.

Market Barriers can be added to clients' existing tracking programmes, or provide stand-alone insight into barriers that affect a brand's performance. By working with a normative database across more than 30 product categories, it can identify any stumbling blocks and examine their relative impact to the brand and its competitors.

'For years marketers have known that whether or not people buy their brands is not just a function of how people feel about the brands, but also the extent to which market circumstances might interfere with what people want,' comments Jan Hofmeyr, International Director of Innovation at Synovate's Brand Lab. 'Yet no one has done anything about quantifying this systematically until now.'

The new system is part of Synovate's suite of brand defining tools, which also includes Brand Value Creator which measures the current strength of a brand and the factors inhibiting its growth; The Momentum Engine which segments consumers on their potential to spend more; and PinPoint which provides brand image driver analysis to uncover what motivates customers.

In 2006, Hofmeyr led the launch of the firm's Brand Value Creator, to measure the direct sales impact of a company's brand investments.

Synovate, the market research arm of Aegis Group, is online at www.synovate.com . In its results last month Aegis recorded a 16% increase in full-year pre-tax profits to £133m, and reported organic revenue growth of 8.9% for Synovate.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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