About Us

Answers to such direct questions as "Are you happy with this product?", "Would you recommend it?", "Would you buy it again?" and "On a scale of 1 to 5, how 'friendly' is it?" formed the foundation of Twentieth-Century marketing insights.

We feel there are three good reasons why the time has come to abandon this antique approach.

First, people aren't always truthful when answering direct questions. Ask a 55-year-old man why he bought a Porsche and he's not likely to utter the words "midlife crisis."

Second, the objectives of market research have dramatically changed. Forty or 50 years ago, customer and economic values moved and morphed at a considerably slower pace than they do today. Research was a static measure in a relatively stable world. The old measures may have been adequate back then, but they don't come close to capturing today's fast-moving values.

Third, and perhaps most important, while studies conducted with last century's techniques provide a fine rear-view-mirror portrait of what people have already done, they don't even pretend to tell you what's down the road tomorrow. In other words, they have virtually no predictive value or actionable content. They certainly do not correlate to sales or form the basis for calculating return on investment.

Conventional studies, therefore, are of little practical use to the companies that commission them. The value of standard satisfaction tracking studies, for example, is trivial except as a jumping-off point for advertising copy ("Highest satisfaction ratings in the industry!") for companies that have no other differentiating insight or brand equity with which to tempt customers. But they don't help those companies figure out, for example, how to turn satisfied customers into loyal customers. And they are all but worthless to the companies that are ranked number two (or worse) in satisfaction, who can neither tout their rank in ad copy nor study the results to learn precisely why their customers aren't satisfied.

What is the danger of doing yesterday's research in today's environment? What happens when your research fails to identify the real consumer values in your category? Just ask IBM, which mistook satisfaction for loyalty and lost a fortune, and a sizable chunk of market share, when satisfied owners of IBM personal computers and laptops drifted to other suppliers when it came time to repurchase. Or McDonalds, who projected that double-digit increases would flow from their Arch Deluxe, only to learn that people didn't really mean it when they said they'd gladly eat "adult" burgers chez Ronald. Or the failed and failing dot-coms who thought that burning millions on "awareness" advertising was the magic key to fame and fortune.

But if traditional research is of so little value, why is it still so prevalent? Simply because no market research firm in the world has a true alternative methodology to offer.

With one exception: Brand Keys.

Since the early 1980s, Brand Keys' founder, Dr. Robert Passikoff, has been developing and refining a proprietary customer-listening system that goes far beyond any traditional methodology, providing clients with measures that show:

• Exactly where their brand equity lies.
• What their customers will be thinking about — and buying — 18 to 24 months down the line.
• Precisely what needs to be fixed when brand equity begins to slip, and which buttons need to be pushed in order to improve brand profitability.

Where traditional measures are retroactive, ours are powerfully predictive. Our measures are highly accurate, with close to 100% test-retest reliability. And they are versatile. Clients have successfully applied them to many applications that do not strictly fall under the rubric of customer loyalty, including creative direction and execution, branding, packaging, and strategic planning.

Longtime Brand Keys clients swear by our data. Many clients no longer commission traditional research. Others who, for various reasons, are unwilling or unable to pull the plug on their traditional research use Brand Keys studies to augment it with brand-based, leading-indicator assessments, thus increasing the strategic usefulness and authority of standard research offerings.

Why we're passionate about customer loyalty.

Two reasons: It's a leading indicator of profitability. And it's the only thing left to talk about. (We'll explain presently.)

What is customer loyalty? Loyal customers:

• Purchase your products and services again and again over time.
• Increase the volume of their purchases.
• Buy beyond traditional purchases, across available product lines.
• Refer your company's products and services to others.
• Become immune to the pull of the competition.
• Give your company the benefit of the doubt.

By understanding what keeps your customers loyal you can:

• Plan within a leading indicator of profitability.
• Know how to most efficiently sequence initiatives.
• Fight commoditization.
• Leverage competitive strategies to your advantage.
• Enhance your brand's equity.
• Focus on growth in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Most importantly, it boosts profits and future revenue streams. For instance:

• It costs 7 to 10 times more to recruit a new customer than to keep an existing one.
• An increase in customer loyalty of only 5% can lift lifetime profits per customer by as much as 95%.
• An increase in loyalty of just 2% is, in some sectors, equivalent to a 10% cost reduction.

Leveraging Loyalty: the last frontier.

Why do we say customer loyalty is the only thing left to talk about? Because after right-sizing, best-practicing, and reengineering — that is, after the changes of the '80s and '90s — many companies today are doing a great job…and are in danger of seeing their brands become excellent, undifferentiated commodities.

For the foreseeable future, leveraging customer loyalty will be the primary means by which the most competitive companies will break away from the pack.

So how do you measure customer loyalty? See Products & Solutions.