SPSS case study: top gear

Yamaha Motor Europe NV (YME), based in Schphol Rijk in Amsterdam, is the European headquarters of Yamaha Motor Corporation. YME markets and sells Yamaha motorcycles, ATVs, snowmobiles, golf carts and a wide range of other land vehicles and watercraft.

YME has manufacturing facilities in France, Spain, Italy and Turkey, and also services customers in all European countries – including Austria, Belgium, Denmark,
Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as developing markets in Eastern Europe.

To make sure its latest motorbike designs were on target, YME’s new product development team conducted focus groups with potential customers across Europe. While highly informative, these trips were costly and time consuming, while the alternative – interviewing three or four thousand respondents by telephone – proved too expensive to be a feasible option.

In 2001, YME turned to the internet for a more economical and efficient means of collecting comparable consumer insight. The result was the Yamaha Design Café
(www.yamaha-motor-europe.com/designcafe). The site, which can be reached from YME’s home page, delivers interesting stories on Yamaha Motors’ latest sports bikes based on interviews with Yamaha’s engineers, product planners and designers. Accompanying the stories are links directing readers to surveys. In the surveys, YME asks technical questions that only a well-informed bike rider would know, such as the differences between two-stroke and four-stroke engines. This approach ensures that YME is truly hearing from its target audience – genuine motorbike enthusiasts.

Hennes Fischer, YME’s product planning consultant, used mrInterview from SPSS – a product within the company’s Dimensions survey research technology platform – to develop and field the Design Café surveys. Familiarity with SPSS products was just one reason Fischer chose the SPSS survey application. “SPSS’ mrInterview was the only software that gave me the flexibility to design a questionnaire offline; other versions forced you to compose questionnaires on the server,” said Fischer. “Likewise, mrTranslate (another Dimensions offering) offered the best translation abilities and was the easiest to use – a necessity since the majority of our research is multilingual. Finally, the people at SPSS were true professionals. They listened to my needs and met all requests.”

YME saves time and reduces costs since the new product development team can now conduct focus groups with more specific information gathered by mrInterview beforehand; web results also make some travel unnecessary. Beyond product planning, YME uses mrInterview to conduct internal research, asking dealers questions on a range of issues, from logistics to product evaluation. These results are then shared with logistics personnel, who can help dealers address bike delivery and other issues.

Improved the new product evaluation process

The Yamaha Design Café has already paid dividends as a new product evaluation tool. Recently, Yamaha Motor Corporation created an electric two-wheeler for the Japanese market. YME wanted to determine the product’s potential in Europe, since the conventional European motorcycle customer doesn’t tend to buy electric scooters.

In only two weeks, the survey, which featured pictures of the bike, generated 2000 responses from scooter lovers in France, Germany, and Italy. The feedback helped YME’s new product development team learn how Europeans would use the scooter and how much they were willing to pay for it. After some technical modifications, YME plans on importing the bike from Japan and introducing the motorbike in limited quantities in France, Germany, and Italy.

Enhanced the competitiveness of existing products

Fischer uses mrInterview for fast and focused research that gives the new product development team timely data upon which to act. He can also combine the results of his
Dimensions-based research with qualitative and quantitative data generated by third-party research firms to identify new opportunities in product evolution.

By leveraging the domain expertise of his staff and the sophistication of traditional research agencies, Fischer now has access to richer data and is able to cultivate and validate development recommendations faster. For example, YME has modified present motorcycle models based on the survey replies that have been gathered through the Design Café, which has helped keep the vehicles competitive.

“It’s extremely important to stay in touch with how our customers feel,” said Fischer. “Thanks to mrInterview, we never feel out of the loop, which gives us confidence that we’re always delivering a product that truly meets their expectations.”

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A force to be reckoned with
Greater Manchester Police uses SPSS to establish a community-based policing programme.

Formed in 1974, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has a workforce of over 7000 police officers and 3500 support staff. Serving some two and a half million people covering an area of 500 square miles and 10 metropolitan boroughs, GMP is one of the largest police forces in the UK.

Consultation is a statutory function of GMP and is ongoing throughout the year. The Police Authority’s Consultative Team (PACT) is responsible for drawing up consultation plans for each local area, and reporting on community concerns, safety and crime and disorder. The police authority also organises youth forums in a number of schools throughout Greater Manchester, bringing together young people and local police officers with the aim of improving communication, liaison and relations.

As part of the National Reassurance Project working in the St Mary’s and Failsworth West Wards of Oldham Metropolitan Borough, a survey to 9000 households was undertaken in order to establish a community-based policing programme. The concept centred on identification of ‘signal crime’.

Prior to implementing an SPSS analytical solution, all that existed was a low-level paper system with poor analysis – the use of Microsoft Excel for the analytical requirements proved unfruitful due to its limited analysis capability. Keith Bentley, Superintendent of Operations at Oldham Division, explains. “The non-automated data input procedure proved too resource-hungry. We wanted a solution that would not only find answers to questions that basic database and spreadsheet packages would miss, but also to make the data entry faster and more reliable.”

Already aware that SPSS had over 35 years of experience in implementing and analysing surveys and had completed similar projects for other police forces up and down the country, GMP decided to adopt the SPSS analytical solution. By using sophisticated SPSS software like MrPaper, QuanQuest, MrScan, the flagship desktop analysis package SPSS Base and SPSS Regression Models, it was hoped that a wide range of public views on policing in the area would be gathered and incorporated into the National Reassurance Project. The questionnaires were seamlessly created within the SPSS system and the responses were all scanned in electronically to eliminate the need for manual data entry.

Successful completion of the survey project brought forward 400 persons who were willing to work with the GMP to deliver problem-solving initiatives in the relevant two wards, particularly relating to actions to stop youth offending and anti-social behaviour.
But the main positive outcome was in terms of cost and time and how it has turned GMP into a model organisation for other forces to follow. “Not only did we benefit from a massive reduction in person-time for this project, saving approximately UK£13,000 in two weeks, but these results are now being referenced by other GMP Divisions as contributions to ‘efficiency savings’ required by government,” said Bentley. “The SPSS scanning process and capability to drill down into our public consultation survey data has become a bedrock on which the project can move forward during the next 12 months. Our increased survey and analysis capability has also impressed several partners who have now fully bought into the National Reassurance Project in Oldham,” concluded Keith Bentley on a successful project.