Indiana's market researchers.

• Author: Johnson, J. Douglas
• Position: Includes related article on focus groups and a directory of Indiana's market research companies - Marketing

Every business is loaded with a nightmare agenda. Will the product or service sell? What should we charge? How do we package it? Where should we sell it? What should we say about it?

A raft of research firms around Indiana can help Sominex those nightmares. They can help businesses make informed decisions instead of relying on intuition. Their information collectors are better trained, better organized, better equipped to crunch data than ever before because there is a growing demand for their services.

Who are these people and what do they do? Here's an example: Bonsib Inc., of Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, uses Joseph D. Brown, professor of marketing at Ball State University, as its director of research.

Gemeinhardt Company, Inc., the leading manufacturer of flutes and piccolos in the United States and the world, came to Bonsib with a problem. The company's big customers march in public-school bands. The problem? Fewer children were enrolling, and music education budgets were shrinking. The client's business was pianissimo.

Brown designed a study to find out why kids don't begin to tweet-tweet-tweet like Pete. He talked to teachers, students, parents, even school-board presidents. Out of this came a 140-page book titled "Marketing Strategy for Music Educators," seminars around the country and advertisements. The message was, "There are ways to build a strong community image for music programs, and Gemeinhardt knows them."

Sales are allegro and market share is decidedly crescendo.

That's an example where marked research made life easier for the sales department. It can also help find a niche for an entire company.

Take, for example, James Ittenbach of Strategic Marketing & Research, Inc., in Indianapolis. He talks about finding the position for a client in the trucking industry, a highly deregulated environment with service that is almost a commodity. All the competitors offer the same basic cost, delivery time and bulk-shipping capacity. The client found himself in a brutally competitive situation.

"We looked at this through the eyes of the shipping manager," Ittenbach says. "What is his job responsibility? It is to get shipments off his warehouse dock and delivered on time, damage-free. We found that these objectives mattered more than speed and that the manager is actually willing to pay extra for the confidence that his job responsibilities are insured. We adopted a service orientation, and the client's profits proved that 'lowest price' is not always the direction to go."

Basically, market research grew from chief executives who were tired of hearing from the sales department that "nobody" wants to buy what the production department is making. In the late '30s, CEOs began to say, "Let's go out and talk to the 'nobodies' first."

With market research, sales can say to production. "Our customer wants this gismo. Can you make it?" If the factory can, then odds are better that sales could sell it.

Indiana market research companies vary in size from one person with an answering machine to an operation occupying a four-floor red-brick building near Keystone at the Crossing in Indianapolis. By rough estimate, the industry grosses $50 million in Indiana annually. Revenues nationally were up 16.8 percent in 1987 over 1986, and the financial community is bullish on marketing information as a...