Win/Loss Research Pros & Cons

Earlier we wrote an article exploring the idea of win/loss research and how it can affect your company's bottom line. In essence, this type of research tries to explore the how's, why's, and when's of customers that choose or don't choose to use your company and its products, and instead go to a competitor. It's an important style of research that has several benefits and weaknesses.

Problem Solving – Win/Loss is, at its heart, one of the best methods of trying to attract more customers in a way that isn't necessarily advertising related. It looks to see exactly what's driving customers to make a different decision, with the hopes that it can alter those results and attract more customers down the line. Feature Information – In other ways, win/loss research can help companies discover new features or avenues that their company can take in order to secure more buyers.

Companies are always looking to understand buyer feature needs better, and this type of research provides this information in a way that only highlights the features that are necessary. Future Changes – Win/loss research can also be a driver for other aspects of how you run your business, like how you choose to market it and how to leverage yourself against competitors. It has a variety of different uses, despite its central theme of simply trying to discover why customers are or are not choosing your company.

Feasibility – For you to perform win/loss research you need to be able to find customers that have chosen your company, and customers that have considered your company but chosen a separate company. The latter customers need to also be willing to share that thought process with you, and remember it in its entirety enough to provide useful information. It can be hard to recruit those individuals.

Cost – Win/Loss research is generally not survey-only. You usually need to interview a panel individually with a trained interviewer, send out qualitative research before you can take quantitative research, find the sample, and so on. Win/loss research is believed to have a fairly strong ROI, but the initial investment may be fairly large.

Win/Loss research is a style of market research that may be underutilized in today's market. It has a number of different benefits that make it valuable to the medium to large business, and while it's difficult to do and does have a fairly substantial cost compared to other types of research, the information you receive can be invaluable.