B2Bmarketresearch

An important target group

Survey business customers

For many industries and companies, business-to-business (B2B) is an important field of activity alongside consumer business, often even the main field of business. Just as in the consumer market, it is also of great importance in the B2B market to know the perspective of your own customers.

In order to find out how your company is seen by its corporate customers, business customer surveys are a good way to do this. Within the framework of such a B2B survey, you can find out how satisfied your corporate customers are with your products and services and what expectations they have of your company. You can find out how your customers rate your company’s image, how loyal they are to your company or how great the need for new products is.

The insights gained from this provide you with valuable insights that you can use to improve your products and services and optimise your marketing strategy. And by taking an interest in your customers’ views, you also show them appreciation at the same time. All in all, business customer surveys help you to improve your customer orientation, and this is nowadays also an important differentiating competitive factor in B2B business.

B2B projects

Studies with special challenges

B2B and B2C surveys are similar in some respects, this can concern for example topic areas, type of study design or survey method. But there are also differences, and these can be challenging in the B2B sector. There are very different aspects that should be taken into account:

Expertise

In the B2B sector, experts are often interviewed for a topic whose knowledge of the subject matter of the survey goes far beyond that of “normal” private customers. This also requires expertise in the topic on the part of the project-leading institute – only then can the questionnaire meet the knowledge of the respondents and subsequently the report meet the requirements of the client.

Willingness to participate

In order to create the willingness to participate in a study nevertheless, incentives must be selected with tact. In some cases, the intrinsic motivation is high, so that even small monetary incentives are sufficient; in other cases, participants want to be adequately compensated for their time. This is very situation-dependent and requires experience with B2B studies.

Accessibility

The accessibility of B2B customers is often worse, and this in several respects: On the one hand, they are often simply “rarer” – a finance manager in a medium-sized company, for example, is more difficult to find than a buyer of washing powder. Secondly, B2B customers are often actually more difficult to reach – as working people, often in management positions, the willingness to take time for a survey is not always given. This is all the more true for “over-researched” target groups such as medical specialists.

Data basis

Another important question is whether customers are better reached via customer data from the client or a B2B panel. Surveys via customer data have the advantage that they can be selected very precisely and there is often a certain bond between the target group and the client, which increases the willingness to participate. The disadvantages are obvious – only the client’s own customers can be surveyed, a survey of benchmarks is not possible. In addition, depending on the topic, there is a risk of collecting distorted data, either because only loyal customers participate or because the response behaviour is influenced by knowledge of the client. A remedy for this is a B2B panel such as the one from intervista, which can be used to survey both the company’s own customers and those of competitors in a neutral design.

B2B market research

Our expertise

intervista supports you in all aspects of setting up your B2B study. We listen to you carefully and get to know the details of your business, your customers and, if applicable, the product in question. Then, together with you, we conceive the study design, collect the data using the right method and the right questions, and report the results in a form that really adds value for you and your internal clients.

If it is appropriate to survey via an online panel, you can rely on our largest and highest quality B2B panel in Switzerland. With 35,000 active participants in management functions or with specific specialist responsibilities, we can also realise difficult b2b samples.

B2B surveys with intervista

5 Questions for Dr. Julia Urbahn

What are the special challenges for B2B surveys?

Julia Urbahn: There are many. On one hand, the target group has to be clearly defined. Who should be questioned in the company, who is the right contact person? Sometimes that’s obvious. As a rule, a survey about a new accounting software will concern the people responsible for finance. However, if, for example, the pricing of a new cyber insurance needs to be assessed, it is more difficult. This could be the IT or the insurance manager.

On the other hand, depending on the size and industry, a company weights a survey subject slightly differently. The aforementioned cyber insurance can be very important for a company operating in the digital field – the hairdresser next door might not care so much about it. Overall, selecting the right person, industry, and company size is considerably meaningful for the resulting survey findings.

Learn more

Julia Urbahn

Do you have a question?

Get in touch with me. Feel free to call me or send me an e-mail message. I look forward to the dialogue with you!

+41 31 511 39 02
julia.urbahn@intervista.ch
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