Part detective / part anthropologist, Maria Larcher is especially fascinated with consumer behavior and marketing communications.

She enjoys identifying the "needles in the haystack" (otherwise known as actionable or strategic insights) to help businesses better understand their customers, what products and services they want or need, and what price these customers are willing to pay for the value they seek.

Her passion is analyzing, sifting, summarizing, and visually displaying data...

Any kind of data... survey research results, telephone interviews, online surveys, syndicated or panel data, data from experimental or clinical trials, medical records, census data, customer purchase records, monthly financials or sales figures, student test scores, website visitor traffic, information on competitors' websites, transcripts from qualitative focus groups or executive interviews... and even the log of in-bound calls at a customer support center.

Maria utilizes a variety to analytical tools and technology to help businesses identify the product and service innovations their customers will value most, along with monitoring and improving the effectiveness of their communications, including:

SPSS, PowerPoint, Excel, proprietary CRM toolsets, and website visitor analytic tools, such as HBX and Google Analytics.

These are topics Maria has addressed as input for clients' business decisions:

Marketing & Communications / Brand Advocacy

• Ad Concept Testing
• Advertising, Direct Marketing, or Public Affairs Campaign Effectiveness
• Fine-tuning Web-based Community Building and Brand Advocacy Programs
• Identifying Key Drivers for Brand Advocacy / Word-of-Mouth Campaigns
• Developing, Understanding, and Communicating Corporate/Brand Image

Quality of Service / Customer Value Management

• Tracking Brand/Product Awareness, Trial, Usage, and Customer Satisfaction
• Incorporating the Net Promoter Score® (NPS) into a Customer Value Management Program
• Profiling Key Customers or Consumer Segments and Identifying Their Unique Purchase Patterns
• CRM, Loyalty Program Evaluation, and Churn Management
• Website User Experience and Satisfaction
• Utilizing Online Technologies to Enable Collaboration Among Research Respondents

Product Design and Next-Generation Updates

• Package / Product / TV Show Testing
• Price Elasticity: Determining the Optimum Price/Feature Set for a Product/Service
• Tapping a Web-based Community of Experts to Suggest, Evaluate, and Test Next-Generation Product Features
• Prioritizing Features for Future Consumer Product Releases, Remodeling Stores, Creating New Restaurant Menus, or Updating a Website

Employee Support and Development

• Developing Productivity Tools for Sales and Field Staff
• Employee Opinion Surveys
• Evaluation of Training Programs
• Trade Show Effectiveness for Generating Sales Leads

Data Mining / Syndicated Data Sources

• Market Segmentation for Target Marketing Programs
• Improving Productivity of Phone-Based Customer Service Reps
• Designing Systems to Report on Marketing Metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
• Tracking the Impact of Sales Promotions or Direct Marketing Campaigns
• "What If" Scenario Building in Excel with Complex Financial Algorithms and Calculations
• Integrating and Reporting Results from Multi-phased, Longitudinal Research Programs
• Predictive Analytics: Estimating New Product Sales Prior to National Roll-Out

Website Design and UI Evaluation and Improvement

• Experimental Design: Testing Alternative Webpage Formats in Terms of Generating Sales Lead or Minimizing Customer Support Telephone Calls
• Predicting How Selective Changes to a Website for an Annual Conference Will Impact Revenue or "Shopping Cart" Abandonment
• Search Engine Optimization for Micro-Business Sites, including Keyword Suggestions, Meta Tags, and Google AdWords
• Using Visitor Path Analysis to Increase Website Traffic and Improve Usability