FSCS425 Strategic Market Research Services

1.0Background and examples of market research conducted: FSCS currently conducts a range of market research across different parts of the business. We are now seeking to create a company-wide market research framework, where we can call upon a small group of trusted research partners to fulfil our strategic market research needs. Overall, we anticipate having no more than 6 strategic research partners that we can call upon. While we don’t have set research briefs defined at this stage, FSCS is entering into an important period of strategic change where we will be refreshing our future corporate strategy, brand strategy, undertaking a full CX transformation and developing a whole new policy and stakeholder strategy. We therefore anticipate significant ad-hoc market research work across all these key areas. To date we’ve undertaken a significant number of research projects in recent years and have leveraged various methodologies: 1.1Qual and Quant Research We’ve historically run focus groups and quant research on an ad-hoc and continuous basis. This has been largely to get feedback on certain aspects of our service or to help us define our current brand platform or communication strategy. 1.2User Feedback and CX Research Surveys We invite visitors to our website and online claims service to comment on the website and its usability and to suggest any improvements 1.3Mystery Shopping & Stakeholder Research We’ve regularly undertaken research to understand financial services firms’ understanding of FSCS and how they talk to their customers about us as well as ad-hoc research among MPs to shape our approaches to policy and stakeholder management. 2.0Future service requirements Moving forward we are keen to evolve our requirements and focus on strategic market research providers that can provide specific areas of expertise. We recognize that traditional methodologies have evolved and there are newer more innovative, agile research methods that have come on to the market post Covid (such as online co-creation panels and more agile research platforms). We are looking for innovative methods and ‘method neutral’ partners who can provide added value and thought leadership to our chosen areas of strategic development as outlined in paragraphs 1.1 to 1.3 above. 2.1 We are specifically interested in market research partners who have experience in Financial Services Market Research & Insight, and in addition have significant experience across one or more of the following areas of expertise, leveraging the latest techniques in both qualitative and quantitative market research. (i) Strategic Brand and Communications (ii) Customer Experience Research & Design; and (iii) Policy and Stakeholder Research

FSCS is focused on becoming an insight and data driven organization, currently entering into an important period of strategic change where we will be refreshing our future corporate and brand strategy, undertaking a full CX transformation and developing a whole new policy and stakeholder strategy.

Increasingly, FSCS requires to undertake quick, agile, cost-effective research across different topics and business areas. We are therefore interested in market research technology providers who can provide us with capability to carry our own internal market research activity as and when required, at a low cost. This would include capability such as:

•Building and deploying our own surveys with our own audience (e.g. customer/stakeholder) or an external panel

•Conducting our own polls

•Building our own internal panel

We’re looking for one trusted research partner to provide us with an agile, online solution that can allow us to deploy our own surveys and collect the data, but that offers flexibility in terms of the level of support needed for each individual project. We are looking for a tiered approach to service and pricing, whereby some projects will be mostly DIY while other may need higher levels of support, for example in terms of questionnaire design, scripting and/or data reporting and analysis.

Ideally, the solution should offer:

•Customisable target audience, offering both nationally representative (UK only) but also with option to create bespoke samples or source our own respondents

•Survey and question templates (English only)

•Option to create surveys with different levels of complexity (e.g. question types, skip logic, quotas/selection, validation, loops/rotation, formatting, image/video/audio)

•Survey testing (e.g. via link sharing)

•Automated dashboard (customisable charts, results filtering tools, editable labels)

•Cross tabulation tool

•Topline results available to download in Excel, PPT, PDF, SPSS

•Respondent level data in Excel/SPSS