September 2005 GMI Newsletter

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GMI Makes Multiple Acquisitions On Three Continents

Long-range vision of linking research buyers, research suppliers and respondents with one unified platform, globally, is becoming reality.

GMI's tremendous growth and market investment continues with the acquisitions of three companies: Seattle-based NetReflector, Insight in Shanghai, and MI Pro AS in Drøbak, Norway. All three will operate as wholly owned subsidiaries of GMI. GMI has also formed a new strategic alliance with ARO Sistemas in São Paolo, Brazil. The new acquisitions and partnership bring GMI another step closer to its long-term vision of delivering a consolidated operating system that links research suppliers, research buyers and respondents in real time, on a global scale.

With these strategic investments, GMI will:

• Add advanced technology solutions to its existing portfolio, giving GMI clients access to advanced online research software, increased global online panels and 24x7x365 service bureaus to facilitate global market research.
• Expand its global presence, establishing a direct foothold in the rapidly developing Chinese market.
• Enhance production and service centers in China, Europe, and Latin America, to complement GMI's current offerings in Bulgaria and India.

Rob Monster, Founder and CEO of GMI, comments on GMI's acquisition strategy: "GMI has grown tremendously over the past six years. We are already a world player operating in 50 countries and in 35 languages. Our recent purchases and partnership underline our promise to offer customers a truly integrated technology platform for market research, regardless of geography or language."

NetReflector delivers advanced customer satisfaction in real time. Powered by GMI, clients can now seamlessly feed survey results into a GMI-hosted solution and store for future use. Read more about NetReflector products and technology.

Villette T. Nolon, President of NetReflector, comments: "GMI and NetReflector make an excellent match because of their complementary proprietary technology, services, and expertise. The gold-standard end-to-end solutions they create help Global 2000 companies quickly gain solid business intelligence to optimize investments, drive revenue and enhance profits."

Need an Enterprise Feedback Solution?

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Click here for a capabilities demo or a quote.

MI Pro's high-performance desktop analytics software is GMI's integrated alternative to SPSS software. A direct response to requests from market researchers, MI Pro's products speak the language of market research and do not require an Internet connection. Per Jacobsen, President of MI Pro, commented on joining forces with GMI, saying "From the first time GMI and MI Pro were introduced to each other four years ago, the great potential of combining the respective technologies was envisioned. The realization of this idea is a seismic event for the market research profession."
Read more about MI Pro

Insight in China and ARO Sistemas in Brazil expand GMI's global footprint. The strong local presence these companies provide, through service bureaus and consumer panels, is a prerequisite to effectively doing business in two important emerging markets. Insight, Mainland China's leading software distributor and provider of services to the market research industry has market familiarity and was formerly the exclusive distributor of SPSS market research software products in China. Read more about Insight or ARO Sistemas.

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Richard Scionti appointed Vice President of Enterprise Solutions

Founder of Timbre Consulting, a strategic business and technology consulting group, and former Vice President of Solution Architecture for SPSS, Richard brings an extensive array of consumer insight, change management and market research management experience to GMI. During his five-year tenure at SPSS, he held P&L responsibility for SPSS Hosting Services with revenues of nearly $6 million and introduced the Dimensions product line. Previously, he was Worldwide Chief Information Officer for Research International Group in London, and Information Technology and Operations Director for Cambridge Reports from 1988 to 1992. He has published numerous articles and papers including "The Confluence of Data Mining and Market Research for Smarter CRM." "I'm extremely excited to be part of the GMI team," comments Richard. "Marketing professionals are drowning in information but thirsting for actionable insight. GMI has transformed the landscape of market research through its groundbreaking solutions for web-based research, panel management and portals. It is their spirit and track record of innovation that is improving both the quality and velocity of marketing insight."

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Introducing the GMI Training Center

How do you learn best? By interacting with a simulation, or by reading training guides? Whether you're a beginner who needs simple, basic information or an expert who wants a refresher course, the new GMI Training Center is your one-stop resource to help you exploit the full potential of the Net-MR suite of integrated online market research tools.

Browse through a selection of step-by-step training guides. For each guide, you can select from two modes of learning to best suit your style:

• Interact with a simulation
• Read and/or print a PDF document

At the new GMI Training Center, you can also find out about on-site, group, or telephone training options for mastering online market research strategies, methods, and processes. All GMI courses are developed in-house and focus on what professional market researchers need to know to be effective in their jobs. Learn how to use GMI's research tools successfully and how to lead a comprehensive study of advanced online survey design, analysis and reporting techniques.

If you have questions about training for your organization, email us at training@gmi-mr.com.

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Stormy outlook for financial brands

Consumers don't recognize 7 of the top 20 global financial service brands, according to new Stewart-Allen Brand Barometer report.

Measuring international perceptions of the world's most influential banks and financial institution brands, the first Stewart-Allen Brand Barometer report suggests a less-than-sunny outlook. Many consumers are not able to recognize the logos of their own country's leading banks.

The Stewart-Allen Brand Barometer surveyed 15,500 consumers in 17 countries about financial services that are marketed internationally. Participants were asked to put names to brand logos and offer their perceptions of brand values, country of origin and service quality among other factors.

Regardless of how well they are marketed, logo confusion abounds. The poll found that over one in four UK consumers identified the Deutsche Bank logo as belonging to HSBC. The Royal Bank of Scotland logo had a higher recognition amongst consumers in Spain, Japan, France, Germany and Italy than in its UK home market. Only 4 in 10 British consumers were able to correctly identify the HBOS logo and 36% identified it as belonging to the Royal Bank of Scotland.

In all countries, the most recognized brands were MasterCard and Visa (both 93%) and the least recognized brand overall was HBOS, with only 7% of respondents able to recognize it.

Fresh insights for international brand owners

Allyson Stewart-Allen – one of the world's leading authorities on international marketing – recognized the need for international brands to better align their global and local marketing practices. Working with GMI, which provides global panelrespondents and hosts international data collection on its Net-MR platform, she devised the Brand Barometer. Once per quarter, the Brand Barometer surveys 15,500 consumers, age 18 to 64, across 17 countries, measuring their perceptions and direct experiences of the world's most recognized brands in four key industry sectors. These include financial services, consumer products, professional services, and manufactured goods.

"Finally, companies can quantifiably measure the effectiveness of their branding investments as judged by their consumers, globally," comments Ms. Stewart-Allen.

This insightful, analytical tool provides brand intelligence in key, manageable areas:

• Brand recognition (Consumers indicate whether they recognize the brand logo and, if so, are asked to write its name.)
• Identification of core brand values (Ethical, immoral, environmentally friendly, environmentally destructive, alert, unresponsive, empathetic, etc.)
• Qualitative perceptions of the brands (American, European, international, local, exclusive, cheap, powerful, weak, individualistic, common, intrusive, etc.)
• Heritage and impact of country of origin (Respondents identify each brand's country of origin and indicate whether it makes them think more or less favorably about the brand.)
• Delivering the benefits (Measures how reliably the brand produces the benefits the consumer anticipates.)
• Brand experience (Qualities describe the actual experience such as convenient, frustrating, rigid or helpful.)
• Local marketing (Reveals how indigenous the brand appears versus being an import from another part of the world.)

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GMI panelists highly satisfied

The satisfaction of our GMI panel is fundamental to our viability as a market research resource. To maintain the high integrity of our panel, GMI must know its members, understand how they feel, and respond to their concerns. We work hard to ensure their experiences are as positive and productive as possible.

Twice each year, GMI performs a Satisfaction Study. We ask members to rate their approval of the GlobalTestMarket website (for GMI's consumer panel), Customer Support, incentives received, and surveys received. They also evaluate how highly they would recommend GlobalTestMarket to friends and family.

Here are a few highlights from our recently completed study:

• 95% are happy with the time it takes to complete surveys
• 95% are happy with the timeliness of Customer Support responses
• 90% of members are interested in signing up for a second specialty panel or sub-panel
• 95% of members are "likely" or "very likely" to continue to be active GTM members

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Put your ideas into action

Partner with GMI and let us power your competitive advantage.

Collaborating with GMI can provide a significant competitive advantage to both your company and your clients. Use GMI's extensive suite of tools for simple online survey software, powerful analytics, syndicated research and even customized enterprise feedback. Brand our tools as your own.

Here are some examples of some recent successful ventures. Check out these "Powered by GMI" sites:

Nationbrandindex.com
AskingMedia.com

Have an idea? Learn more about partnering with GMI.

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Who's new at GMI

Benny Huang joins GMI as Director of Marketing, China
Benny brings a decade of marketing experience in Asia to GMI. Since 1999, he has served as National Online Market Manager for 51net Inc. While there, he established a client data-mining system and real-time client information tracking, realizing phenomenal growth in online clients and web traffic. Prior to that he was Marketing Manager for shanghai-window.com where he was responsible for marketing management, strategy, and implementation of e-commerce solutions for the retail industry. He holds an MBA from Leicester University in the UK.

Muriel Guilbert named Director of Marketing
Over the last two years with NetReflector, Muriel has wielded her 15 years of experience in international technology marketing to significantly raise awareness of the NetReflector brand in the customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement marketplace. Prior to joining NetReflector, Muriel spent five years at the Seattle-based public relations and integrated branding firm, Parker LePla. There she served as Account Director, supervising accounts in CRM software, telecommunications, healthcare, e-commerce and outsourcing. Prior to Parker LePla, Muriel held various marketing positions in the United Kingdom for Central Research Laboratories Ltd. (CRL), an electronics licensing and technology transfer company, and Vitalograph Ltd., a manufacturer of lung-function testing equipment. A French national fluent in English and German, Muriel holds a Master's Degree in Business Studies from L'Université de la Sorbonne, Paris, France.

David Ji, Customer Service Director, China
David comes to GMI from Insight Information Technology in Shanghai (SPSS MR China) bringing his strong background in market research solutions including product demos, installations, research fieldwork, analysis and training. He spent three years as Marketing Research Officer for Syngenta Investment (formerly Zeneca) in Shanghai with a broad range of market research planning and project management responsibilities including database marketing, product launches, and brand tracking. He holds a degree in Economics from Shanghai International Studies University.

Susan Griffin, Sales Director, New York
A versatile professional, Susan's broad business background ranges from sales and marketing to managing strategic alliances and business development. Most recently she served as Director of Sales and Business Development for Material ConnecXion. Prior to that she was an Account Manager for the Aberdeen Group where she sold survey-based research and analysis services to the technology and service sectors. She has also held management positions with Thomas Publishing, SoftWatch, and the American Stock Exchange.

Other recent hires:

Rafa Sonnenfeld, Helpdesk Technician, Seattle
Roxan Toll, Office Manager, Sydney
Ameer Radwan, Product Manager, Seattle
Mark Miller, Software Trainer, Seattle
Chris Clarke, Associate Director, IT, Vancouver
Roseanney Liu, Project Manager, LA

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Net-MR tip of the month

Did you know?

This month we offer another Net-MR technique that can make your respondents' online survey experience more engaging and unique!

Do you ever need to limit user privileges within Net-MR? Would you like to control individual user's access to certain accounts? The USER & GROUP MANAGEMENT tool provides this option.

IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO: Your firm hires a programmer whose job focus is to program studies in the online Questionnaire Authoring tool. Upon signing in with a unique name and password, the only tabs available are: HOME, PROJECTS and RESOURCES. Other benefits of using the USERS & GROUPS module include security, group management, log monitoring and customized default views.

With the USERS & GROUPS tool, Net-MR account administrators can quickly create individual or group access to particular studies, panels, data collection methods, modules and more!

Ask your representative how this module can benefit your company!

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