Fourt-Woodlock equation

The Fourt-Woodlock equation (sometimes misspelled Fort-Woodlock equation) is a market

research tool to describe the total volume of consumer product purchases per year based
on households which initially make trial purchases of the product and those households which make a
repeat purchase within the first year. Since it includes the effects of initial trial and repeat rates, the
equation is useful in new product development.

The Fourt-Woodlock equation itself is

The left-hand-side of the equation is the volume of purchases per unit time (usually taken to be
one year). On the right-hand-side, the first parentheses describes trial volume, and the second
describes repeat volume.

HH is the total number of households in the geographic area of projection, and TR ("trial rate") is
the percentage of those households which will purchase the product for the first time in a given
time period. TU ("trial units") is the number of units purchased on this first purchase occasion.
MR is "measured repeat," or the percentage of those who tried the product who will purchase it
at least one more time within the first year of the product's launch. RR is the repeats per
repeater: the number of repeat purchases within that same year. RU is the number of repeat
units purchased on each repeat event.

The applied science of product forecasting is used to estimate each term on the right-hand-side
of this equation. Estimating the trial rate is complex and typically requires sophisticated models
to predict, while the number of households is usually well known (except in some unusually
complicated markets such as China).
Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique
Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) is a patented market research tool. Patent
#5436830 was issued on July 25, 1995. ZMET is a technique that elicits both conscious and
especially unconscious thoughts by exploring people's non-literal or metaphoric expressions. It was
developed by Dr. Gerald Zaltman at the Harvard Business School in the early 1990s. The technique
has been used by academic researchers[1][2][3][4][5] and for marketing purposes to study a variety of
topics related to both marketing and the social sciences.

Research study participants are usually asked to collect a set of pictures that represent their thoughts
and feelings about the topic of interest. Zaltman cites prominent researchers likeSteven
Pinker and Antonio Damasio to support his claim that humans think in images - often in the form of
visual images – rather than in words.[6] The pictures that partcipants collect are important non-literal
devices for uncovering deeply held, often unconscious, thoughts and feelings.

The goal of the ZMET interviews and analysis is to uncover the relevant fundamental structures that
guide people’s thinking about a topic. These deep structures are unconscious, basic orienting frames
of human thought that affect how people process and react to information or a stimulus. They
manifest themselves in surface metaphors used in everyday language and conversation; when
grouped they point to the deeper frames or structures a person is using to understand a topic
(see framing). These frames can be used in a marketing context to help marketers communicate more
effectively to consumers about a brand, product, or topic.[8]
Buzz monitoring
Buzz monitoring is the keeping track of consumer responses to commercial services and products,
to establish the marketing buzz surrounding a new or existing offer. Similar to media monitoring it is
becoming increasingly popular as a base for strategic insight development alongside other forms
of market research.[citation needed]

Buzz monitoring involves the checking and analysis of myriad online sources such as internet
forums, blogs, and social networks. Data can be provided in real time, which means that critical
issues can be picked up instantly. It is also comparatively inexpensive compared to other market
research tools and can actually guide further product and service developments.[citation needed] Influence is
a key question in buzz monitoring – does this particular person and/or this particular piece of content
matter and is it influencing others? Hence, the influence of a source is an important buzz
monitoring metric that should be benchmarked.[citation needed]

Buzz monitoring is implemented by businesses for a variety of reasons, namely to improve efficiency,
reaction times and identify future opportunities. Insights gained can help guide marketing and
communications, identify positive and negative customer experiences, assess product and service
demand, tackle crisis management, round off competitor analysis, establish brand equity and
predict market share.[citation needed]
Mystery shopping
Mystery shopping or a mystery consumer is a tool used by Mystery Shopping Providers
and market research companies to measure quality of retail service or gather specific information
about products and services[citation needed]. Mystery shoppers posing as normal customers perform
specific tasks—such as purchasing a product, asking questions, registering complaints or behaving in
a certain way—and then provide detailed reports or feedback about their experiences.

Mystery shopping was standard practice by the early 1940s as a way to measure employee integrity.
Tools used for mystery shopping assessments range from simple questionnaires to
complete audio and video recordings. Mystery shopping can be used in any industry, with the most
common venues being retail stores, hotels, movie theaters, restaurants, fast food chains, banks, gas
stations, car dealerships, apartments, health clubs and health care facilities. In the UK mystery
shopping is increasingly used to provide feedback on customer services provided by local authorities,
and other non-profit organizations such as housing associations and churches.[1]

Cluster analysis
Cluster analysis or clustering is the assignment of a set of observations into subsets
(called clusters) so that observations in the same cluster are similar in some sense. Clustering is a
method of unsupervised learning, and a common technique for statistical data analysis used in many
fields, including machine learning, data mining, pattern recognition, image
analysis and bioinformatics.

Besides the term clustering, there are a number of terms with similar meanings, including automatic
classification, numerical taxonomy,botryology and typological analysis.
Worm (marketing)
The "worm" is a market research analysis tool developed by Roy Morgan Research (who called it The
Reactor), with the purpose of gauging an audience's reaction to some visual stimuli over some time
period. The name "worm" describes its visual appearance - as a line graph snaking up or down.

Each member of the audience firstly fills out a questionnaire, used to describe the composition of the
audience. Then, each member is given a control device (such as a dial or keypad) with which they
select their feelings towards the vision or stimuli (for example, whether they regard the comments
currently being made by a speaker favourably or unfavourably). This dial is checked centrally three
times per second, and as the audience reacts differently over time, the collective feelings of the
audience are gathered.

The "worm" has been used in televised debates for Australian federal elections, including those
between then Australian prime minister John Howard and then-leader of the oppositionKevin Rudd in
2007[1] and between prime minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott in 2010.

In the first British UK election debate on April 15th between Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown,
Tories leader David Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, "the worm" was used in
certain segments.[2]