Evolving Research

Is market research as practiced in your organisation at Stage 1, Stage 2, or Stages 3 or 4? If you are like 90% of businesses you are probably at Stage 1 or 2 as illustrated in the chart. It is from a report by the Boston Consulting Group called The Consumer's Voice - Can Your Company Hear It?

If you're not sure then take the quiz in the report to determine where you are. But more importantly: figure out how best to evolve from market research as insight to market research as foresight. There'll be an office in the C-Suite for you if you succeed ...

ht Research Live

Irish Business Firmographics

We do a great deal of research concerning small and medium sized enterprises in Ireland across the finance, software and telecoms sectors in particular. One question that regularly comes up is: what are the demographics (or 'firmographics') of Irish SMEs?

There are several sources to answer this question (but no definitive one), and it is especially difficult when you try to examine Irish SMEs in an international context. However, one useful source is the recent work of the European Commission on the vexed issue of SME access to finance from banks. You can read about the Enterprise Finance Index here (and access a large number of SME survey reports).

We culled some of the firmographic data in the charts below, which compare the profile of Irish businesses to the EU27 as a whole (from a Gallup survey for the European Commission). Taking company size first, it is clear that Irish businesses have much the same profile as the rest of the EU in terms of employee numbers. However, there are slightly more 'medium sized' businesses in Ireland when comparing turnover:



Turning to other business firmographic data, we can see in the second chart that there is a higher concentration of Irish businesses in the wholesale/retail sector than in the rest of the EU, and that significantly more Irish businesses are 5-10 years old than in the rest of the EU:



Some of these differences undoubtedly reflect the higher than average standard of living in Ireland compared to the Accession countries in particular. They also reflect the impact of the Celtic Tiger boom which saw a surge in business start ups etc at the start of the decade.

Comfort Eaters

Has the recession turned us back to eating porridge and drinking instant coffee? To comfort foods familiar from our childhood? The short answer is: No. We recently revisited our food segmentation of the Irish population first identified in 1991 (and revisited in our Food for Thought report). The segments are as follows:

• Good Foodies: those individuals who only eat and drink things that are good for them.
  

• Healthy Balancers: They don’t worry too much about what they eat and drink as they consume enough healthy things such as fruit and vegetables.
  
  
• Debit-Creditors: They claim they can eat and drink anything as they take lots of exercise.
  
  
• Hedonists: They eat and drink the things they enjoy and don’t worry about it.
  

• Grazers: These are individuals who are not interested in food and will eat anything.

If we were responding to the recession by becoming a nation of comfort eaters then we'd expect the Hedonists to grow substantially. But they haven't. As the chart shows, the single biggest group in 2009 (and the one enjoying the largest increase since 1991) is that of the Healthy Balancers. Irish consumers seem to have finally got the message ...



There do remain some significant differences in terms of segment demographics. For instance, women are more likely than men to be Healthy Balancers, whilst men are more likely to be Hedonists. The young are more likely to be Debit-Creditors, whilst 25-34s are more likely to be Good Foodies.

So the recession does not appear to be ruining the nation's dietary habits. At least not yet anyway.

Future Shocked

Too much of a good thing can be ... alarming. That's one take on the findings from our latest research into changing Irish values. Back in 1994, roughly equal proportions of Irish people thought the rate of change in society was either too slow or too fast. Fast forward fifteen years and things seem to have 'overshot'. Over half (53%) of all adults think things are changing too fast nowadays and fewer than one in five think change is too slow:



Women are more likely than men to be suffering from 'future shock' (i.e.: change too fast than too slow); and even young people (16-24s) are more likely to say things are changing to fast than too slow (though more likely to say the latter than older age groups not surprisingly).

The market for nostalgia just got bigger.

Thank God It's ... Sunday?

Sunday is the happiest day of the week: that's according to nearly six thousand Irish people interviewed over the past six months. This is just one of the findings from an Amárach Research study presented at the recent Economic Psychology Ireland Conference.

Enjoy the presentation below - or better still, leave it until Wednesday when you'll be at your most stressed and in need of something for the weekend!

Thank God It's ... Sunday?

View more documents from Amárach Research.

Tough Time for Pubs

The Drinks Industry Group of Ireland have today published a Survey of Licenced Premises written by DCU economist Mr Anthony Foley. Amárach Research conducted the fieldwork as part of the study.

Among the key findings are that:

The overall picture is one of a sector suffering a period of sharp decline, with a large majority (70%) of all licensed premises surveyed reporting a decrease in net sales over the past five years.

Moreover, the majority of licensed premises have relatively low annual sales revenues. 49% of all premises have annual sales revenues below €200,000, while at the low end, 27% of pubs located outside Dublin have annual sales revenues of less than €60,000.

These declining revenues have had an impact on employment with 47% of all premises surveyed reporting a decrease in their staff levels over the five year period. This figure rises to 65% for pubs and bars in Dublin.

You can download the DIGI report here.

Small Business Survival

It isn't just tough in Ireland for small businesses. The latest EIU report on Surviving the Drought: Access to Finance Among Small & Medium Sized Enterprises paints a sobering picture from around the world.

The chart shows responses from 730 SME directors to the question 'when do you expect the availability of finance to return to 2007 levels in your domestic market?' The majority expect it will be 2011 and later. One in ten don't think finance availability will ever return to 2007 levels. A percentage that just might grow if the current contraction in eurozone bank lending continues.

Still, this will create substantial opportunities for those selling to the SME sector who can offer alternative financing arrangements where appropriate to facilitate sales. We can anticipate a good future for leasing in the years ahead it seems.