Customer visits
Subtitle: building a better market focus
By: Edward F. McQuarrie.
Edition: 3rd ed.
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Armonk, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 213
ISBN-13: 9780765622242
Subjects: Industrial marketing -- Research; Communication in marketing; Consumers -- Attitudes; Customer relations
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-207) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Focus of this book; title: Background; title: Developments since the first and second editions; title: Who should read this book; title: Acknowledgments; title: Rationale; title: Why visit customers?; title: Customer visits and market focus; title: Promise and peril of customer visits; title: Additional information; title: Customer visits as a distinctive approach to market research; title: Why do market research at all?; title: Why do market research via personal visits?; title: Why visits by cross-functional teams?; title: Additional benefits of team visits; title: Additional information; title: Limits, boundary cases, and the sweet spot for customer visits; title: When customer visits are not the technique of choice; title: The sweet spot for customer visits; title: Boundary cases; title: From conceptual rationale to practical advice; title: Additional information; title: Procedures; title: Programmatic, ad hoc, and hybrid approaches to visiting customers; title: Ad hoc visits; title: Hybrid and emerging visit types; title: How to harvest data from ad hoc visits; title: Planning a program of visits; title: Why a program of visits?; title: Appropriate and inappropriate applications for visit programs; title: A seven-step procedure for planning customer visit programs; title: Additional information; title: Budgets, recruitment, coordination, team preparation, and time line; title: Cost factors; title: Recruit customers; title: Coordination with the salesforce; title: Select team members; title: Time frame; title: Additional information; title: Selecting customers to visit; title: Devising a sample frame; title: Special cases in sample selection; title: Additional information; title: Preparing a discussion guide; title: The goal: information capture; title: Discussion guide; title: A process for team preparation of a discussion guide; title: Additional information; title: Constructing good questions; title: Preparation but also spontaneity; title: Importance of open-ended questions; title: Workhorse questions; title: Specialized question strategies; title: Criteria for effective and ineffective questions; title: Two specific questions to avoid; title: How to ask questions about pricing; title: The importance of follow-up questions; title: Additional information; title: Conducting the visits; title: Interview format: time boundaries; title: Interview format: spatial considerations; title: Group versus individual interviews; title: Interview roles; title: Interview skills; title: Five difficult interview situations; title: Additional information; title: Completing the visit program; title: Debriefing; title: Analysis and reporting; title: Dissemination of results; title: Storage of results; title: Closure for customers and the field; title: Additional information; title: Analysis; title: Generalizability of visit data; title: Procedures for the analysis of visit data; title: Process of analysis: baseline approach; title: Analysis of visit data: a closer look; title: Visual representation of visit data; title: Tips for improving the analysis of visit data; title: Additional information; title: The place of customer visits within the market research toolbox; title: Compartments in the market research toolbox; title: Research planning; title: Customer visits compared to kindred techniques; title: Combination strategies involving customer visits; title: Two mistakes to avoid; title: Summary; title: Additional information; title: Appendix: checklist for conducting a program of customer visits; title: Bibliography; title: Index; title: About the author.