Case study shows how a restaurant chain rediscovered its purpose. By engaging in "voice-of-the customer" analytics, this restaurant was able to identify why their volume was declining and what they needed to do to rectify some shortcomings in their product offering. VOC Analytics uses a proprietary approach for converting textual brand reviews on social media into predictive metrics.

1. 1
Putting Voice-of-the-Customer
Analytics at the Center of
Your Marketing Strategy
Alpha Restaurant Case Study

2. The Destination
• This is a case study of how a restaurant chain re-discovered its
purpose. This discovery came through applying “Voice-of-
the-Customer (VOC)” analytics which connected consumer
feedback on this chain to brand performance. Doing this
enabled them to identify some elements of the company’s
service which were seriously falling short. VOC analytics was
achieved by incorporating a unique tool, which translates
customer feedback on social media into a powerful predictive
metric, which in turn, is linked to their retail sales
• By identifying some specific deficiencies, this chain succeeded
in focusing marketing and operations to resolve the issues
and once again place this chain on the path to growth once
again.
2

3. The Situation
• This is a case study about a Mexican restaurant chain called Alpha. Actual names and
some data have been altered to mask the real identity.
• Alpha is in a rather precarious situation. Its retail sales are down -5.2% for the year.
The chain’s strategy has been focused on efficiency through its drive-up and online
ordering system. It’s product line and menu, however, have remained basically the
same for the last 10 years.
• Management has a sense that the company is losing its relevance with its customers,
but are not clear on the specifics of why this is the case. Alpha also competes in a
category with a large array of national, regional and local units. The company is seeking
answers to understand what its strengths are and what particular areas they need to
improve. The work done needs to be specific and show a link between these content
areas and revenue performance.
• BLA was charged with implementing a unique approach. Employing advanced analytics,
the company implemented a unique marketing mix model that not only quantified the
effectiveness of marketing and media drivers, but also measured specific brand
comments by consumers in order to measure how customers valued the Alpha brand
and which elements of that value equation were in most need of repair.
• To answer these questions, BLA used its proprietary approach for measuring and
defining the specific value drivers for Alpha. This was accomplished by identifying the
critical brand-values content expressed in social media and deriving special metrics
which converted the textual brand comments to effective sales-driving metrics.
3

4. Modeling Architecture
We develop a marketing mix model for Alpha linking Digital/Traditional media, pricing
and store penetration to weekly retail sales. We also include 6 SEItm based content
drivers as an indicator of customer experience within this predictive model.
Digital Display
SEI Content Drivers
Paid Search
Digital Email
Competitive Media
Direct Mail & Consumer Prmotion
TV Media Network & Cable
Radio & Magazines
Economy, Store Expansion & Pricing
Seasonality
Weekly
Restaurant
Sales
4

5. We collect hundred of thousands of brand-experiential comments across
social media channels. These are parsed into distinct content themes.
These content themes define what brands mean to customers.
United Airlines is
never on-time, and
their service sucks.
Your brand is what people say
about you when you’re not in the room.
~ Jeff Bezos

6. The SEItm stands out relative to other social media metrics
because it shows a strong predictive power with high statistical
correlations to brand sales
6
Note: Lead-lag analysis has confirmed that causation is only one way. The SEI™ to a large degree is capable of driving hard commercial metrics.
86%
Telecom
Brand
81%
Soft Drink
Brand
84%
Food & Bev
Brand
83%
Hospitality
Brand

7. Alpha Total Retail Sales and SEItm
-
0.50
1.00
1.50
2.00
2.50
3.00
3.50
4.00
-
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
09.17.11
10.17.11
11.17.11
12.17.11
01.17.12
02.17.12
03.17.12
04.17.12
05.17.12
06.17.12
07.17.12
08.17.12
09.17.12
10.17.12
11.17.12
12.17.12
01.17.13
TotalSEI
Sales
Weeks
Retail Sales 000 SEI Ratio
Alpha’s overall SEI demonstrated strong predictive capability with a correlation to sales
of 80 percent.
7

8. SEItm content volume-drivers for Alpha over Time
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
40,000
09.17.11
10.01.11
10.15.11
10.29.11
11.12.11
11.26.11
12.10.11
12.24.11
01.07.12
01.21.12
02.04.12
02.18.12
03.03.12
03.17.12
03.31.12
04.14.12
04.28.12
05.12.12
05.26.12
06.09.12
06.23.12
07.07.12
07.21.12
08.04.12
08.18.12
09.01.12
09.15.12
09.29.12
10.13.12
10.27.12
11.10.12
11.24.12
12.08.12
12.22.12
01.05.13
01.19.13
02.02.13
SEI content drivers and sales impact
Service Delivery Value Food Quality Convenience The Menu
8
• For Alpha, Convenience and Value are the largest content drivers and also the two values
driving sales growth over time. However, all the other content drivers are showing an even
larger net negative effect on sales over time. This is the source of Alpha’s challenge.

9. Alpha’s Content Driver Importance
0.00
0.50
1.00
1.50
2.00
2.50
3.00
3.50
SEI Components
Service Delivery Value Food Quality Convenience The Menu
• By scoring the content drivers for Alpha, we see the relative importance of key
brand attributes according to what consumers say. Here, we find Value,
Convenience and the Menu being the 3 most important features. These then
should be the key focus for marketing content or messaging
9
Net SEI

10. -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8
Menu
Service
Food Quality
Value
Convenience
Delivery
Negative SEI Net SEI Positive SEI 10
SEItm Ratings of Content Attributes for Alpha
• SEItm also has a positive and negative component. Net is the difference. While
convenience & value show Alpa’s strengths, service, food quality and the menu
have the highest relative negative ratings and clearly signal an area in which Alpha
needs to improve.
Net SEI

11. Mexican Restaurants Competitive Positioning & Image
Great tasting
Food
Personable Friendly employees
Treats you like a valued customer
Authentic Mexican Food
High Quality Ingredients
Food from scratch
Chain 4
Chain 3
Clean/comfortable atmosphere
Food prepared how you
want it
Modern up to date
Has large portions
Healthy nutritious items
Gets order right
Chain 5
Chain 6
Chain 7
Chain 12
Chain 2
Simple Menu
Good value for money
Low
prices
Open late night/24
hours
Chain 10
Chain 11
Alpha
Crave menu
items
Food
timely/fast
Convenient nearby
location
Variety of menu
items
Chain 9
Has drive-thru
Chain 8
Food Quality
Service &
Delivery
The
Menu
Convenience
Value
• We can map detailed SEI content into a competitive map to see where Alpha
compares to key competitors. We see that, in the words of customers, Alpha’s
advantage is in convenience but not so much on food-quality, service and delivery.
11

12. Sales Contributions
52.6%
4.5%
1.3%
2.2%
0.8% 5.6% 3.1% 2.2%1.1%
0.8%
7.8%
1.0%
1.7%
5.7%
1.3%
6.3%
1.9%
18.0%
Contribution
Baseline Competitive.Media Digital.Display.Media
Digital.Search.Media Digital.Email Direct.Mail
Media.Cable.TV Media.Network.TV Media.Radio
Media.Magazines Consumer.Promotion SEI.Service
SEI.Delivery SEI.Value SEI.Food Quality
SEI.Convenience SEI.The Menu
• To the right, we see the
contributions of each driver to
total restaurant sales over the
past year.
• Overall, digital and traditional
media drive 16% of total sales,
consumer promotions add
7.8% and direct marketing
accounts for 5.6% of sales.
• The six SEI drivers account for
18 percent of total sales, the
largest contributor among the
groups.
• The sales attribution and
monetization of content-drivers
places a monetary measure of
the values consumers instill on
the Alpha brand. The key and
revolutionary aspect of this is
that it places a monetary value
on those content factors that
represent the essence of the
brand-customer relationship. 12

13. Marketing Variance Business Drivers versus Last Year
-3.0%
-2.2%
-2.0%
-1.3%
-1.1%
-1.0%
-0.2%
-0.2%
-0.1%
0.0%
0.0%
0.1%
0.1%
0.1%
0.1%
0.3%
0.4%
0.4%
0.7%
3.7%
-4.0% -2.0% 0.0% 2.0% 4.0% 6.0%
SEI.The Menu
Retail Pricing
SEI.Food Quality
SEI.Service
SEI.Delivery
Baseline
Direct.Mail
Media.Network.TV
Media.Magazines
Digital.Email
Media.Radio
Digital.Search.Media
Media.Cable.TV
Consumer.Promotion
Digital.Display.Media
Economy**
Competitive.Media
SEI.Value
SEI.Convenience
Store.Penetration
Alpha Marketing Variance v. YA• Alpha’s overall retail sales declined -
5.2% versus last year
• The chart to the right show the
specific drivers of this trend.
• As you can see the six content drivers
combined account for -6.3% of total
growth. All other drivers combined,
while having a positive impact, were
insufficient to drive positive sales
gains for Alpha.
• While Alpha’s strong values of
Convenience and Value showed
positive year-over-year gains, the
remaining were substantially
negative.
• The particular weakness in the Menu
and Food Quality clearly needs to be
the highest priority and Alpha needs
to realign its operations and content
marketing to reverse these trends.
13Total % Volume Variance v. YA

14. SEI Content and Media Marketing Synergy
0
10,000
20,000
30,000
40,000
50,000
60,000
70,000
Separate Activation Simultaneous Activation
Measured Marketing Synergy between SEI and Total Media For Alpha
Media SEI Content Total Synergy
14
• As shown below, the total impact of Media & SEI Content, when running in
tandem, is significantly greater than the sum of its parts. We call this marketing
synergy. This underscores the important role of linking media to the relevant
content.
Avg.WeeklySalesContribution

15. Strategic Implications
• For the case study restaurant brand, analysis underscored that traditional
strategies of focusing only on improving efficiencies in their drive-through and
online ordering was not sufficient to drive growth. By ignoring menu diversity
and improving food quality, they were driving customers to competition and
generating a serious decline in sales.
• The task ahead for Alpha is clear, if not daunting. The company has to focus
on improving its menu and the quality of its product and let the world know
about it. This will require broadening the content of its marketing messages to
communicate to consumers the journey and destination that Alpha is persuing
to this end.
• Going forward, Alpha needs to embark on a journey and, in process, direct the
content of its marketing message to telling the world about this journey. In so
doing, Alpha will tell its customers that they are on a program for improving
their menu and product quality. This will make the company appear
vulnerable but customers will understand if Alpha comes across as both
serious & sincere, and most of all, delivers on its promises. As shown, Content
Marketing is all about marrying the right content with the media message.
15

16. Model Validation
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
Model Retail Sales
16
The model of Alpha’s retail sales demonstrated very high accuracy and predictability
with an R2 fit of 97.1 percent