| Custom Research and Consulting Mercator Advisory Group delivers highly customized proprietary research and expert opinion and advice to payments and banking industry participants who have specialized research needs. Our consulting professionals have extensive industry knowledge and project management experience within all segments of the banking and payments industries. Project teams are comprised of lead research analysts, specialized consultants and project managers, who together bring insight and experience to each engagement. We help our clients develop business strategies, fine-tune product development and pricing, define and implement marketing campaigns, and evaluate market entry strategies. Mercator provides clients with custom-designed quantitative and qualitative research that deliver the combination of data, analysis, and opinion needed to support strategic and tactical decisions. Representative Project Types Mercator routinely completes custom research and consulting engagements for both issuers, merchants, processors, banks, and solution vendors. Since each client brings a unique set of business challenges we develop a specialized project plan for each engagement.
Typical projects include: Market Strategy Development – We provide independent, expert council on decisions related to entering new geographies, developing new product sets, assessing local competitors, understanding local market product requirements, and creating market-entry messages. Market Sizing and Forecasting – Global companies weighing market opportunities use Mercator to understand and compare regional and country-level geographic IT spending characteristics, trends, and direction. We also help evaluate competitive market shares. Our clients use this information to help make marketing and resource decisions. Go-to-Market Strategies – We develop customer-facing marketing collateral to educate and demonstrate our clients’ value propositions. These outreach efforts also include vendor sales force training, sales team educational knowledge briefs, webcast presentations, as well as reviews and commentary on internally developed brochures and presentations. White Papers - An objective and authoritative publication developed in collaboration with a client, white papers are often part of an integrated marketing campaign. White papers are designed to meet a client’s specific needs and typically are used to introduce products or technologies to the market; define or validate an emerging market, educate potential buyers on a value proposition, or showcase successful customer implementations.
Representative Services:
Market Opportunity Assessments
| Go-to-Market Services | - Market Sizing Projections: market segmentation and associated revenues
| - Marketing Collateral: white papers, executive briefs, podcasts
| - User Demand Forecasts: expected uptake by customer segments
| - Event Participation: client conferences, sales events, webcasts
| - Product Launch Analysis: SWOT, win/loss reviews
| - Sales Team Education: understand sales environment and audience
| - Competitive Intelligence & Benchmarking
| - Custom Content: articles, graphics, white label publications
| - Vendor/Partner RFP Development
| - Collateral Review: bullet-proofing message pre-client
| - Market Entry Strategies & Validation
| - Primary Research Design & Fielding: surveys, focus groups
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Benefits to Custom Research and Consulting Clients:
The extensive knowledge level of our analysts provides clients with specific advice on business-related strategies and subsequent application direction. In addition to custom research we offer an array of market intelligence and research products and services to further your market knowledge on a continual basis. Our research and advisory memberships track Credit, Debit, Prepaid, Emerging Technology, International Payments, and Customer-Centric Delivery Channels.
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