Growth through insights: Target group and market analysis for an international association of public transport

Business Challenge

The international association of public transport serves very heterogeneous target groups in a highly competitive environment. In order to bring together the diverse motives and interests of about 1,800 member organisations such as transport companies, public transport authorities, manufacturers and suppliers as well as national and regional associations, both a broad and a deep range of topics must be translated into convincing offers – a challenging mission. In addition to publications and training programs, events are a key driver of our client’s value proposition. However, not all the formats offered are convincing in terms of awareness and acceptance. The constantly changing needs of target groups represent a major challenge for portfolio management. New players on the market give a further edge to the situation. To ensure the association’s profitable growth in the future, the service and events portfolio should be reorganized – consistently oriented to the needs of the association’s members and customers.

Solution

If you want to understand customers and their needs, you must listen and ask the right questions. Therefore, together in a workshop with relevant stakeholders of the association, insidery developed a customised and targeted survey design to conduct a survey with all global association members and customers.

The content of the survey particularly focused on understanding customer behaviour, the underlying structure of needs and the resulting opportunities: What drives the community? Which services deliver which benefits? What are the pro and contra drivers in the decision-making process considering offers from the association? Where are the strengths and weaknesses compared to the competition? And where can the optimisation potential of individual services or development areas be found in the entire portfolio?

insidery conducted a standardised online survey in over 85 countries and 7 languages with a very high response rate, so that the data included feedback from more than 1,100 organisations. During the analyses insidery consistently focused on the challenges of the association. The decision-makers received differentiated findings and clear recommendations for action in a concise report, this was followed up by an implementation-oriented workshop where the results were discussed in detail and decisions for action were made. An overall presentation of the project to the management successfully completed the assignment.

Impact

Detailed insights both globally and per region, segment and customer type are the basis for the changes initiated by the public transport association. The results show that some previous offers and formats are outdated and new strategies are needed. The association is therefore focusing on pluralization and individualization of the offer: segment-specific, newly structured benefit packages serve customer groups according to their needs. With the knowledge of the core drivers among the services and a corresponding offer configuration now price premiums are skimmed off in a differentiated way and a “bread and butter business” is developed, which can more than compete – despite or even because of the heterogeneous target groups, needs and interests.