Name: Alison Whiteley
Position: Marketing Manager
Length of time in role: 5 years
Company: Tesco

Tell us about your role: I work in the market research team in Tesco and my job is to look after all the customer research that we do on the shopping trip. This includes what customers like / dislike about shopping in our stores, how this compares to shopping in our competitors, and understanding what we can do to make the shopping trip better for customers. I spend a fair amount of my time writing a regular report about the shopping trip and answering queries from our stakeholders who want to understand the information in the report. I also run ad hoc projects where we will look at a particular aspect of the shopping trip in more detail (for example, accompanied shops with people using our Scan As You Shop facility to understand how it can be improved)

How did you get into this job: I used to be a research scientist but having experiments fail on a weekly basis was very demoralising and I decided to have a change in career. I got a job as an analyst in Tesco through a recruitment agency, which I did for 3 years before moving to a role in market research

What do you most enjoy about your job: Learning new and interesting things about our customers that I didn’t expect

What 3 things could you/your department not do without: A good team spirit, a sense of humour and support from our senior managers

If you weren’t a Market Researcher/working in MR, what would you be: I’d run a tea shop and bake nice cakes!

What do you like most about working with Marketing Sciences: I love working with Marketing Sciences because they are a great team, who are all really friendly and eager to help in any way they can

What separates us from the rest: The team are so responsive to queries, which is absolutely essential when I have a difficult stakeholder wanting to understand why their particular area is not doing as well as usual

Name: Victoria Tse

Position: Category Insights Analyst

Company: Iglo (Also known as Birds Eye in the UK!)

Length of time in role: 7 months

Brief description about your role: I manage ad hoc market research projects on kids’ fish and poultry categories

What you enjoy most about your role: Developing new concepts and seeing them through until they get to supermarkets’ shelves

Three things your dept couldn’t do without: Spreadsheets, debriefs and good coffee!

What you like best about working with Marketing Sciences: The people. I am a big people person and Marketing Sciences are my favourite agency to work with! Always ever so helpful and go the extra mile to help and to deliver

What separates us from the rest: Extremely reliable, I am confident that you will always do a good job – as the people are great to work with!

Name: Sally Macdonald

Position: Marketing Manager

Length of time in role: 3 years

Company: Chaucer Direct

Tell us about your role: I am responsible for the online presence of Chaucer Direct and hence direct online sales.  This includes our website, social media, brand, paid search and SEO work.  It is a hands on marketing role that covers every aspect of the marketing mix.  A typical day involves reviewing our paid search and deciding on our bids for the day, communicating with the general public via our social media feed, making sure the information on our website is updated and relevant to our customers, working with the management team on our business strategy and product development.

How did you get into this job: I studied radio journalism at college and started working for an advertising agency in the client services team.  Fairly quickly I moved onto the client side and started to specialise in financial services marketing.  I have now worked as a financial services marketer for over 25 years and although the routes to market have changed the principles remain the same

What do you most enjoy about your job: The variety and flexibility of scope within my job role

What 3 things could you/your department not do without: Google AdWords, our content management system and a sense of humour

If you weren’t a Market Researcher/working in MR, what would you be: Two career paths I would have liked to explore – psychologist or pub landlady!

Tell us something nobody knows about you: I am not sure there is anything that people don’t know about me but you might be surprised to know that I have sung for the Queen.

What do you like most about working with Marketing Sciences: The people, your professionalism and expert knowledge in your chosen field

What separates us from the rest: Your team of people!!

Name: Gillian Duncan
Position: Customer Insight Manager
Length of time in role: 1½ years
Company: Tesco Bank

Tell us about your role: I work in the Customer Insight team at Tesco Bank and am the main insight contact for my colleagues in the Credit Card and Current Account Teams. My role is to generate research and information to ensure these business areas within the Bank understand what matters to customers and that they have a clear idea on what they need to take action on to make things better for customers. This means that I run research projects on a wide variety of topics ranging from the development of new products to how effective marketing messages are and what Point of Sale material works best for Tesco Bank in-store. I also spend a lot of my time pulling together the key customer themes emerging across the wide range of research projects we run across the team and feeding these into our annual customer review.

How did you get into this job: I’ve worked in research and insight roles all of my career with experience in FMCG, Retail and Finance. When the role at Tesco Bank came up the idea of understanding what Tesco means in finance from a customer perspective really appealed to me.  I was working in a Shopper Insight role for a major drinks company and was intrigued to explore how the world of shopper research could perhaps bring something fresh to finance.

What do you most enjoy about your job: Unearthing the essence of what drives the needs, motivations and behaviours of our customers and using this as a springboard for idea generation.

What 3 things could you/your department not do without: A positive outlook, a sense of fun and limitless curiosity.

If you weren’t a Market Researcher/working in MR, what would you be: I’d be a Mountain Guide and teaching meditation!

What do you like most about working with Marketing Sciences: I love working with Marketing Sciences because the team are so helpful and proactive. Nothing is too much trouble and they always go the extra mile to support me.

What separates us from the rest: Working on a project just feels effortless as the team understand our needs so well. I have complete trust that they will deliver insightful results that challenge our thinking.

Tell us about your role: what you do, what’s your typical day: I run the Consumer Research team within the wider Research team at O2, which is about 20 people strong; we’re very lucky to have such a great resource for insights but the appetite for our output is also very great across the business, so we’re all very busy!  I have four fantastic people in my team and we share the same passion for research – albeit not any research. We like research that can really make a difference and have an impact. Our focus is two-fold: (1) Get deep under the skin of the customer to get to the real drivers of behaviour and (2) Inform the development of successful and differentiated propositions for O2 across its P&Ls. This means we use a wide variety of research methodologies and are always on the look-out for new techniques and approaches that can take us beyond the obvious, post-rationalised view.

Our days are very full with meetings and calls with our stakeholders and partner agencies. We also like to have fun and ensure we stay in touch with the customer and the tech ourselves! We recently organised a team trip to the O2 Store of the Future in Westfield where we all tried some VR goggles.

How did you get into this job: I started in research many years ago (too many!) as a telephone interviewer, then learnt the ropes in an agency environment for five years before I joined the global insights team at Nokia where I spent seven years working on NPD research primarily. I also spent a couple of years as Head of Insights at the Rank Group researching bingo players and casino goers. O2 contacted me directly on LinkedIn for this job and I just couldn’t turn them down!

What do you most enjoy about your job: O2 are a truly customer-centric brand which means that the insights that we deliver have a genuine impact on the decisions made.

What 3 things could you/your department not do without: 1. A great leader (for the whole team, not talking about me!) who helps steer the insights function and reminds those who see us as a support function that we’re thought leaders. 2. The ability to work under pressure. 3. A great sense of humour (and ability to not take ourselves too seriously!).

If you weren’t a market researcher, what would you be: My childhood dream was to become a horse-riding instructor!

Tell us something nobody knows about you: I climbed the second summit of the Pyrenees – Pico Posets in Spain – when I was 15. I now suffer from terrible vertigo so good thing I did it back then!

What do you like most about working with Marketing Sciences: You have a great team of research experts in place and a well-rounded portfolio of services in all areas of research. I also happen to know two senior members of your team very well, having worked with one at RS Consulting and the other at Nokia, and they are incredibly talented researchers!

What separates us from the rest: Your neuro credentials are very strong; we’re using implicit reaction time testing in one of our concept tests soon for the first time and I cannot wait to see the results! Whilst I don’t see neuro by itself answering my research briefs in the future, I am a true believer in its ability to add another critical layer to our comprehension of customer behaviour.

Tell us about your role: what you do, what’s your typical day: I look after the Marketing for our UK business, specifically focusing on our Off Premise business (our estate of c. 650 cabinets at Tesco, Service Stations, Centre Parks and Costco). The role involves understanding the customer needs within each channel and tailoring our offer, range, communications and promotions to be as relevant as possible to our customers. I also help to brief and introduce new doughnut flavours, getting feedback and of course doing a few taste tests along the way!

How did you get into this job: I started on the graduate scheme at Tesco in Corporate Marketing and worked there for 4 years before joining Krispy Kreme.

What do you most enjoy about your job: I love the variety I get with such a broad role. Every day is extremely different and working on a huge range of things means I never get bored! I also work in a team of incredibly lovely people and this makes every day even better.

What 3 things could you/your department not do without: Creativity, fun and a love for doughnuts!

If you weren’t a Market Researcher/working in MR, what would you be: I’d love to be a hotel critic and stay in lots of amazing hotels all around the world…but back to reality.

What do you like most about working with Marketing Sciences Unlimited: They are so willing to help and offer advice.

What separates us from the rest: The team I have worked with are always so approachable, happy to offer suggestions and improvements and extremely pro-active and quick to respond.