Millard's Research Division Increasing Focus on BTB

Millard Group Inc. is expanding its Decision Direct Research to include more in-depth business-to-business research for multichannel marketers, the Peterborough, NH, company said yesterday.

"We have been doing some BTB research all along but started thinking about developing it to match what we do on the consumer side late last year," Lilliane LeBel, vice president of Decision Direct Research said.

While Millard already has contacts on the BTB market, its primary focus has been consumer marketing.

However, the November acquisition of Millard by infoUSA gives Decision Direct access to more BTB mailers, including clients of sister list companies Walter Karl and Edith Roman.

Millard has done some custom research for the BTB market but Ms. LeBel said the company is looking at a BTB version of the quarterly online co-op survey that polls customers for feedback.

"As far as I know there isn't anything out there like that," she said. "Our consumer study is the largest in industry, and we'd like to develop the BTB study to be the same."

Some of the areas the survey would focus on include advertising effectiveness, competitive analysis, corporate image research, customer satisfaction, market assessment and new product development and testing.