What We Do
Identify Opportunity or Problem
At the outset of an engagement, Frank N. Magid Associates works closely with clients to clearly identify and delineate the specific opportunity to be seized or the problem to be solved. This critical step in defining the scope of the engagement ensures that our goals for the project are aligned and focused on creating maximum ROI for the client.
- What are the client’s goals and objectives and why are they important?
- What are the challenges and opportunities? What are the core drivers of these challenges and opportunities?
Establish Strategic Frameworks
To better understand the situation of the client, Magid and our clients will undergo a process by which a “snapshot” is taken of both the industry and direct and indirect competitors. This snapshot will inform the rest of the engagement by helping the client to more fully understand its unique value proposition, how that value proposition compares to competing offerings, and how changes in the client’s offering and competing offerings are likely to impact the industry landscape.
- What is the current and future status of the industry landscape?
- What are the current and potential “competing” services in this landscape?
- How does the company add value and what are its unique value propositions?
- Who are the target markets? What are the attitudes and behaviors of these market segments relative to the situation being examined?
- What technologies exist that impact target audiences?
Apply Market Knowledge
Magid’s unique ability to identify problems and opportunities through the lens of the consumer, along with our history of learning and applying “best practices” across various industries, serves to strongly complement the client’s direct subject matter expertise. By combining these powerful perspectives, Magid and the client surround an opportunity or problem with the appropriate context and make quick progress in identifying knowledge gaps, disposing of superfluous data, and avoiding distractions and dead ends.
- What are the knowns and unknowns? What do we need to know to mitigate the unknowns?
- What non-proprietary research or past work can Magid provide that contributes to an understanding of the market?
Conduct Consumer Research
The key to seizing an opportunity or effectively solving a problem is to fully understand the range of opinions, reactions, perspectives, and attitudes that are likely to result in addressing the opportunity or problem. Our ability to ask the right questions of the right groups ensures that both Magid and our clients completely understand the root causes, independent and dependent variables, and unarticulated issues that may lead to either favorable or unfavorable results. Most importantly, Magid’s research is designed to be prescriptive and informs a course of action, rather than descriptive, which merely describes the static market landscape.
- What lessons can we learn from consumers and businesses "the easy way" now thus avoiding "the hard way" later?
- How receptive are consumers, businesses, advertisers, and any other stakeholders to contemplated strategies, brands, products, etc.?
- Why are they receptive or unreceptive?
- How do these new insights impact existing market knowledge and/or existing strategic frameworks?
Develop New Strategies
Collecting, analyzing and synthesizing both market and consumer information can result in vast quantities of data. Magid applies rigorous thought processes and innovative thinking to filter and distill our findings in a way that clearly defines the client’s present position and, more importantly, outlines strategies for a clear path forward. Magid’s clients not only benefit from a strategy and implementation plan custom-designed to seize their opportunity or to solve their problem, but also a thorough understanding of the factors and decisions that resulted in that strategy.
- How do the market knowledge, strategic frameworks (competitive analysis, industry landscape, technology review), and research findings all inform the development of new strategies?
- How do these strategies align with key client organizational goals?
- What steps need to be taken to actually implement this new strategy?
- What are possible barriers to implementation of these strategies (operational issues, internal buy-in, resources, capital, etc.)?
- How do we measure the success of the new strategy? What are the appropriate metrics to use?