Flip de Bruyn – Vision Africa

The value of price audits

The value of price audits For a business to remain competitive and make informed decisions about its product pricing or the business’ pricing strategy, it needs information. It needs insight and understanding of its competitors’ strategies and activities out there. A starting point in gaining that information and understanding would be benchmarking your prices against competitors by means of a price audit. In our modern times, customers are constantly looking for better pricing on the items they love to buy. Everyone is shopping around. While there will always be a portion of the population that remains loyal to specific retail outlets or products regardless of the prevailing economic conditions, most people will shop around to try to manage their budgets. Therefore, distributors and manufacturers need to be aware of product prices in the market to remain competitive. Regularly reviewing price, promotions and stock availability of Key Value Categories (KVC) and Key Value Items (KVI) is a wise business strategy. Through having this information or data on the same products at different stores, enables wholesalers or agencies to manage the Recommended Selling Price (RSP) as well as making sure that outlets are properly merchandised and promotions are being executed and visible to consumers. When normal price audit reads are combined with qualitative research such as focus groups (to gather actual customer insights) and for example mystery shops (to accurately perceive the customer experience in the retailer that sells your product), pricing audits offer you a near-complete portrait of a customer’s in-store experience. At Vision Africa, we can customize your research plan to fit your business. Customizable competitive price audits can be as granular as you need – providing pricing information on a few product lines or as much as you need to cover. We have the expertise. Talk to us at Vision Africa. Let us be your research partner. – Libertina Shiweva and Anéle Molzahn

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Workplace morale

Workplace morale Workplace morale is proven to have a direct link to any organisation’s success. This commonly overlooked factor could make or break your business. I work for a company that has a positive environment. Working in such an environment motivates me to do more, gives me a feeling of satisfaction and ensures greater productivity. When a workforce is motivated, it leads to greater output to the benefit of the company. Workplace morale is key to any organisation’s success. It creates an upward spiral, fuelling success and driving outstanding performance. “Acknowledgement, opportunity, and training and development typically outrank remuneration in importance.” (The Best Companies to Work for in South Africa) Good, positive workplace morale is infectious and will lead to more customers choosing your business above others. The employees of an organization are the best advocates and ambassadors of any business, and if they are indeed happy, they treat your customers with the same lively attitude culminating into excellent customer service. If they are not happy, satisfied, or enthusiastic, they become disconnected from the company, its vision and overall strategy. This creates “carelessness” and as they become less interested in what they do or why they do things, your customers will feel it and go find the magic elsewhere. Management and owners of a business must be curious about what their employees think and feel. The best companies to work for rank their human resources as their most valuable assets and their communication lines are clear and always open. The management style in those companies also play a big role in enhancing workplace morale. Managers who guide and encourage instead of intervening directly, create more success in their departments. People choose to have the freedom to succeed and even – occasionally – fail. Understanding what type of culture to create goes hand in hand with creating a company that people aspire to work for. For these reasons successful companies have a well thought out, unique culture, that is nurtured and intentionally grown over years and goes beyond mere performance and rewards – they are “living” value systems with which staff can identify. Vision Africa can help you better understand your employees and how well they understand your business’ strategy and goals. We can answer your questions on where you should prioritize your efforts that will create a high-performance organization everyone wants to work for, and where your customers want to come and spend their money with. “You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins.” – Jim Stovall.

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Professional Responsibility in Research

Professional Responsibility in Research Due to the fact that participating in market research will always be voluntary, the business community must remain mindful of certain key factors. The Business Dictionary defines professional responsibility as the “Legal and moral duty of a professional to apply his or her knowledge in ways that benefit his or her client, and the wider society, without causing any injury to either. Research is about caring Marketing research is governed by the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research and the very first article in the Society’s code of conduct refers to “Duty of Care”. As a marketing research agency, it is our duty to take care of (protect) the individual from whom we collect information, while adding value to our client. At Vision Africa we recently discussed the topic of Corporate authenticity and at the core of this discussion was human care. Market or marketing research requires additional care since we want to understand how humans behave. We want to understand why consumers (a.k.a. humans) buy certain products, love certain brands and why they watch and listen to specific advertisements. As the voice of the consumer we are trusted to ensure that the public is not harmed (victimized) as a direct result of them sharing their opinions and for this reason participating in research will always be voluntary. Research relies on public confidence The business community must remain mindful that research relies on public confidence in the integrity of the research organization and the confidential treatment of information provided. In these modern times protecting personal information is an especially important component of marketing research and strict guidelines are applied. Whenever a truly professional marketing research agency collects data it will always separate any personal information from the data before submitting the information to their client. Reputable research In recent times it has become twice as important for Businesses to make use of reputed research agencies that instil confidence in the public and that consumers are able to verify the identity of the individual(s) they are letting into their living room. Vision Africa has for the past 21 years been conducting marketing and advertising research in Namibia and surrounding countries and has developed a sound reputation that ensures accurate information is gathered through its professional approach. Talk to us about your next research project and let us help you conduct professionally responsible research. Vision Africa…. Evolve with us By Cornelius D’Alton

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Caring about your reputation

Caring about your reputation Do you know how your customers perceive your brand and does it reflect your real brand identity? When your brand feels real, your customers will almost definitely come back for more… The key to Corporate Authenticity A company’s positive preach in their mission statement or slogan is not enough anymore. Today’s consumer wants more. Consumers are in search of honesty. They want to be associated with businesses with integrity, transparency, and values that reflect theirs. The above characteristics can be wrapped up in one term, “Corporate authenticity”. “Corporate authenticity” makes an organisation accountable for the way it operates publicly and privately, and how well it lives out its own values. Companies occasionally need to be reminded that they’re communicating with real people, and that the best way to do that is not to try to sound human, but to be human, and being human means being real. Having a “real” voice is one of the tenets of corporate authenticity. When a brand feels real, customers will almost definitely engage. One of the fundamental values of being a real human, is to care. If care is taken seriously for the brand’s purpose, employees’ wellbeing will also be at the forefront. Employees are your best ambassadors and strongest advocates. They are the ones spending 40 hours or more per week caring about your company by thinking on how to serve customers better, or how to design better products… or are they? When it comes to employees, corporate authenticity translates into corporate culture. Getting staff on board with the goals and values of your company and enabling them to work in a positive environment will mean they are speaking positively about their work to friends and family. Customers respond to companies that function as meaningfully on the inside as they do on the outside. Another way companies can be authentic is by admitting they have made a mistake. After all, nothing makes people more human than the cycle of failure and recovery. Authenticity requires companies to display vulnerability, transparency & integrity. This honesty — be it positive or negative — resonates in numbers too, and market research proves that 91% of customers list honesty about products and services as the most important part of corporate authenticity. As in the case of an individual going on a “self-search” journey to figure out what their true dreams and ambitions are to be able to live a happy fulfilling life, so the same questions can be asked by an organisation of itself. A brand exists in a consumer’s mind and the two questions a brand ought to ask itself is “Why do we exist?” and “Are we executing that purpose with integrity?” The reward of entering the discovery process of exploring and finding your brand’s true identity, resulting in your unique corporate culture is immeasurable and is impossible to compete with. Understanding employees can go a long way in maintaining and improving a business’ financial objectives and keeping customers satisfied. The role they play in framing the customer’s perception, the image of your brand is undeniable. At Vision Africa we can help you engage your employees and understand the underlying motivators that drive employee behaviour and satisfaction though our employee engagement surveys. Along with this we help our clients to identify the issues and actions that build corporate reputation. Through our insights we steer companies around the intangible mystery that transforms indifferent and sometimes even disillusioned consumers into raving fans. By Anéle Molzahn

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