Optimization of the Allocation of Marketing & Sales Efforts
by Gijs van Veen
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Some years ago my professional interest as a database marketer at ING Retail NL / RVS
was triggered by the Unigis programme. For distributive aspects of the marketing mix the geographical perspective
promised to offer concepts and techniques leading to better designs. And better designs may lead to better policies,
tools, and applications. ING is a worldwide operating concern acting in the fields of banking, insurances and asset
management. In the Netherlands ING is represented amongst others by Nationale Nederlanden, Postbank, ING Bank and RVS.
The insurance company RVS is known for its sales force of over 800 tied agents, who visit their 1.2 million consumers
at home. This personal contact distinguishes RVS from other providers.
The Introduction chapter of the dissertation describes the context and formulates the main question and challenges.
The main question is:
How can the allocation of Marketing and Sales efforts in the Dutch insurance market be optimized using resources
from geographical information science (GIS) and other scientific disciplines?
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This question encompasses four challenges. The first two challenges cover the theoretical part of the dissertation,
the other two form the case study:
- Describe the segmentation of the Dutch insurance market from a geographical point of view.
This section spotlights some distributive aspects of the RVS market approach: the organization of sales
forces, territory alignment, agent recruitment, market and concern penetration. The current market position
is visualized by means of maps.
- Explore scientific sources for the allocation of Marketing and Sales efforts, and provide concepts
for problem solving, market management, agent recruitment, and sales organization.
This challenge is fulfilled by exploring contemporary approaches to problem-solving in science and business.
For much spatial analysis GIS often has to make a detour to other disciplines, but finally GIS returns to
exploit its strength in geographical representations. Interview and survey techniques open the door to expert
knowledge. Statistics and Operations Research offer scientific approaches to catch reality into models.
The marketing concept of the client life cycle proposes to approach the market in three dimensions:
acquisition, cross sell and retention. The sales funnel concept helps to organize the marketing and sales
process, showing the successive responsibility domains of participants and subsequent performance
indicators.
- Evaluate GIS packages that deal with allocation optimization of Marketing and Sales efforts.
This section copes with the question whether there is external expertise or an off-the-shelf solution to
respond to the main question of this dissertation. Firstly the requirements are specified. Then exploratory
talks led to the conclusion that production of models and geographical representation could best be realized
in house. GIS packages and solutions are evaluated.
- Model factors that are crucial to optimizing the company’s presence and display model results
using geographical representation means.
The second part of the case study uses theoretical concepts in order to model acquisition, cross sell
and retention. Factors for acquisition appeared to be family phase, house ownership and affluence.
Cross sell is determined by potential client value; Retention by current client value. Classification
and clustering techniques helped to compress the huge amount of data as a preparation for geographical
presentation. Atlases are designed, and produced for each organizational level in order to display model
results.
In practice map users appeared to esteem acquisition maps much higher than Cross sell and Retention maps.
This is caused by a knowledge gap. Information on current clients is offered by the customer base, and on a local
level by the agent’s laptop and personal experience. Current consumers are the explored islands in an sea of
potential consumers. Acquisition maps show the unexplored areas.
The text of the dissertation is classified due to competitive reasons, so it cannot be downloaded.
Gijsbertus Pieter van Veen (2005), Optimization of the Allocation of Marketing and Sales Efforts, Unigis MSc thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. |
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