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Knowing your Customers - Final Task

Getting information about customers is part of the work of the market research that a business will carry out. The business can ask people directly - the Clubcard would be an example of how this could be done and would be classed as 'primary research'.

Surveys would also be a popular way in which a business might get customer information.

Many businesses also use 'secondary research' to get information. This is information that has been collected by other people or groups. It may be a dedicated market research company, government data, research carried out by magazines and so on.

One example of such secondary data is that provided by ACORN. This is a service to businesses where population information is analysed and categorised to help businesses know their customers better. A business can register with this site and get highly detailed information on its customers.

Visit the ACORN site(http://www.caci.co.uk/acorn/). You will be able to get an idea of what ACORN does from the site but the detailed information requires you to register. This is free. You do not need to register but when you do the amount of information available about different customer types is very interesting.

Putting in the postcode where Biz/ed is located allowed me to find out that people in this area are essentially 'students and cosmopolitan sharers'! They have a higher than average credit card limit, don't own tumble dryers or dishwashers on average but have cable TV! Looking at the existing pages will help you to get a picture of what they do. The list of classifications(http://www.caci.co.uk/acorn/acornmap.asp) is interesting!

Another example where such data is available is on the Up My Street site(http://www.upmystreet.com/). This provides information for people looking to move house and find out about the area that they are interested in moving to. However, it contains lots of useful information that a business might use to target its customers.

Image: What sort of area do you live in and how might this information be useful to a business? Copyright: Julie Elliott

For example, many car owners get mail regarding car insurance. The price paid for car insurance depends mostly on:

1. having a car (obviously),
2. what type of car you have,
3. where you live, and
4. your age.

For some firms, it is no good sending out this mail to households where owners do not own cars, are the wrong age or is an area where car crime is very high. By using a service like Up My Street, they can get a profile of what neighbourhoods are like and thus target their adverts to the right people - the people most likely to want to use their service.

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