Founded in Milwaukee, USA, in 1976 by T R Rao, Market Probe Inc is a full service market research company specialising in customer satisfaction studies and qualitative research. It already has subsidiaries in Toronto, London, Hong Kong and Latin America.

The company views India as an operating base for its expansion plans for South-East Asia. Says Rao, president & CEO Market Probe Inc: ``India has abundant talent and manpower both in terms of quality and quantity. We intend to exploit this to expand into countries like Thailand, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong. Indian experts will be used to train and supervise the setting up of operations there.''

Headquartered in Bangalore, Market Probe India has two branch offices in Delhi and Mumbai. The India operations are headed by R Muralidhar.Though it views Indian companies as also coming of age with regard to research needs and technology, the company will be mainly targeting MNCs in India, ``who understand and are ready to pay for value-added research.'' One of the reasons why Market Probe decided to enter the Indian market was the fact that many of its clients have global operations and research supplier decisions are becoming increasingly centralised and global in scope.

Another reason was the fact that customer satisfaction, which forms a major chunk of Market Probe's business, is an emerging discipline in India and companies are beginning to shift from product orientation to customer orientation. ``With a growing number of brands in the marketplace, customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention and brand management are emerging as important areas and Indian businesses require specialised services that we can offer,'' says Rao.

He adds, ``In the West, specially USA, customer satisfaction is recognised as an important area. The budget for customer satisfaction in the US is separate from marketing budget and is, in fact, the only recession-proof budget.''

Team leaders for the Indian operations have already undergone three-week training in the US on Market Probe's proprietary techniques. Some of its proprietary products include Satnav (satisfaction navigator) customer tracking and simulation software that allows `what if' analysis permitting testing across countries and customer retention forecasting system (CRFS), a sophisticated tracking tool to predict customer attrition and allow timely intervention programmes. In qualitative research it has special techniques like life maps, auto drive, interactive workshop method.

With an initial investment of around Rs 2 crore for the first year, Market Probe India has already roped in clients like HLL, New Holland, Mastercard and Reckitt & Colman. It has also done some small projects for Maruti, besides product testing, advertising research, customer & product research. For MasterCard it is doing a pilot test for the global launch of a new product.

Targeting the service industries, durables, auto industry and equipment manufacturers, it is targeting 10 per cent profits after tax, against 20 per cent in the US. The product line on offer in India includes: Customer satisfaction research, employee satisfaction research, new product development, brand health management, custom research tailored to individual companies, loyalty modelling and tracking systems.

Spelling out the advantages of its value-added offerings to Indian companies, S Muralidhar says, ``Companies can benefit from the reliable, timely information we offer by using it for its customer-focussed initiatives, identify areas of improvement in operational, marketing and strategic decisions and integrate the results into its customer database.