Archive for January, 2009

While there’s been a lot of talk about leveraging social media for marketing, I find it surprising there has been so little discussion about using it as a source for consumer research.

One important aspect of social media, online consumer reviews, is growing by leaps and bounds; and this product feedback is available right in front of us on an ongoing basis from thousands of public sources. There are now effective solutions to aggregate and measure product opinions and deliver insightful market research and analysis with competitive and actionable findings.

As a case in point, Las Vegas Sands Corporation is an example of an innovative company that is putting this new form of customer research to test. With the entire Las Vegas market challenged by a tightened economy and increased competition for travelers’ dollars, LVSC enlisted Biz360 to gather insights from online traveler reviews to better understand guest expectations and be more responsive to them. Biz360’s new Opinion Insights solution uses advanced data aggregation and analytics technology to mine online reviews from travel sites like Expedia, Fodors, and Forbes Traveler — and many more.

Based on the results delivered, Las Vegas Sands Corp. has already undertaken several follow-up initiatives to improve customer experience. Biz360 was able to deliver an amazingly granular level of detail about LVSC’s properties as well as their competitors. Among the findings from the initial report, it was clear that customers loved the pool at the new Palazzo, however some customers specifically brought up the lack of shade as an area of concern. Another finding indicated that guests wanted to avoid long lines at check-in. In response, the property is installing removable satellite check-in desks during busy days, and ensuring that guests are better informed about which pool offers the most shade.

Aside from opportunities for improvement, they also learned specific areas where they outranked their competitors and/or where they can hone their marketing messages to gain more market share. For example, upon launching the new Palazzo property (next door to their Venetian property) their dining advocacy scores increased 24%. This was largely due to the broad range of options on the adjacent properties and resulted in outpacing their top competitors. Meanwhile several of their competitors received negative comments about high-priced restaurants with low quality food.

Las Vegas Sands Corporation can confidently promote a message about the Venetian and Palazzo properties offering the broadest range of top quality restaurants — and deliver on that expectation. Additionally, since dining was the #3 feature driving guest advocacy for all of the properties combined, at 14% of all opinions, they learned that this is a good feature to invest in promoting.

This new form of social media research methodology not only provides quantitative results for brands and product models (or properties), but it also provides quantitative insight at the product attribute and feature level along with access to the real verbatim opinions that color the data like these complaints, for example, for the Mirage and Paris properties:
• “It was one of the most expensive Chinese meals I’ve ever had (about $120.00) for two adults and two kids, but it was adequate”.
• “Had a miserable expensive pizza: soggy and greasy.”

The baseline study analyzed over 28,000 opinions for 10 competing properties, and the followup benchmark study included another additional 19,000 opinions. How many other research methodologies can deliver this census based approach and this level of competitive insight?  I believe it is a incredibly efficient method of research.

To find out how Biz360 can power your insights, visit us here, or get started here. Thanks for visiting!