Archant

The Research Project

The Archant newspaper group are a news and publishing organisation that own over 140 multi platform brands across the UK. With a particular focus on regional and local news and lifestyle, the Archant newspaper group sell advertising space to companies across the region. The Archant group approached Mackman Research to conduct a number of customer perception and satisfaction surveys on their behalf. The purpose of the research would be to establish satisfaction levels when placing advertising in specific publishing platforms, as well as perception relating to other competitor news publications.

The Research Design & Methodology

Working in collaboration with Archant's Managing Director, Jonny Hustler, we designed a telephone survey that would include various areas of inquiry, ranging from sales to customer service. The questionnaire would aim to gather opinion from lifestyle magazine and local newspaper advertising customers. It was designed to be suitable for both types of media platform whilst providing comparative results. The telephone survey would last 20 minutes with time for free flow conversation in order to gather detailed insight into customer perception.

Research Outcomes

During the data gathering process we interviewed 362 Archant customers, representing a broad range of customer types (size and sector). The findings of each survey were presented to Archant and later combined to form a comprehensive comparative report. The results produced clear local differences in customer service levels and triggered further 'drill-down' research where we later asked additional questions to a specific customer cohort in order to direct Archant's future customer experience strategy.