TNS Introduces New Approach to Identifying Growth Opportunities for Businesses

NEW YORK, Oct. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Pinpointing how to win a greater share of a customer's spending in an increasingly crowded and dynamic marketplace has been made easier for brands around the world as TNS unveils a re-engineered version of its market-leading solution ConversionModel.

Developed to address the flaws of traditional brand tracking, which fail to take into account the way that people actually make decisions, the new ConversionModel reflects TNS's deep understanding of the specific factors at play when people choose which brand to buy.

Jan Hofmeyr, Head of Behavior Change at TNS and founder of ConversionModel says: "With the new ConversionModel, we are tackling some of the fundamental weaknesses of traditional research. These issues have been long ignored by the research industry, but are profoundly important to ensure an understanding of customer behavior that is accurate and predictive."

In conventional tracking studies, brands often appear to be strong, yet that isn't reflected in sales success. A failure to both recognize the dynamics in markets, where people frequently shift their spending between brands, and the factors at play when it comes to making a decision, result in a false impression of strength.

The new ConversionModel addresses these weaknesses in traditional models by analyzing two critical factors affecting the way people make decisions:

• 'power in the mind' - how people feel about a brand
• 'power in the market' – external factors, such as price and availability

By identifying the 'power in the market' barriers which may prevent people from buying the brands they want to, as well as assessing people's emotional connection with brands, ConversionModel enables TNS to predict accurately the exact reasons that prevent customers from spending more on a brand. TNS applies these insights to place a precise monetary value on how much a brand stands to gain by overcoming these barriers. 

"When we look at the way in which people actually choose a brand – we see a number of factors at play which are never normally captured in brand tracking. With ConversionModel we can combine our insight into sliding customer spending within a category and the market factors that result in that slide, enabling our clients to fine tune their marketing strategies for greater success," said Jan.

The Commitment Economy, a TNS study of 39,000 consumers in 17 markets uses ConversionModel to show that on 42 percent of occasions, people buy a brand that is not their first choice.  This contradiction tends to be due to 'power in the market' factors such as affordability, availability and the influence of others in the household, which if overcome would lead to greater sales success. 

Jan concludes, "There are brands that stand to gain millions of dollars by really understanding the barriers that they need to overcome to ensure that strong share of mind really does translate into strong share-of-wallet."

ConversionModel is available globally, with TNS consultants in 80 countries able to provide insights into the opportunity for brands. All measures from ConversionModel are validated against panel data to ensure accuracy.

About TNS
TNS advises clients on specific growth strategies around new market entry, innovation, brand switching and stakeholder management, based on long-established expertise and market-leading solutions. With a presence in over 80 countries, TNS has more conversations with the world's consumers than anyone else and understands individual human behaviours and attitudes across every cultural, economic and political region of the world.

TNS is part of Kantar, one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy groups. Please visit www.tnsglobal.com for more information.

About Kantar
Kantar is one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy groups. By uniting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 28,500 employees work across 100 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The group's services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies. 

For further information, please visit us at www.kantar.com

SOURCE TNS