Aim for overall optimization by visualizing the effects of each promotion such as TV commercials and catalogues, and optimizing investment allocation.

Difficulties in marketing and market-specific challenges due to No. 1 share in the domestic industry

Q. Please tell me your responsibilities.

While I belong to the Corporate Planning Office, I am also in charge of marketing for the nursery, which has recently introduced MAGELLAN. Since the Corporate Planning Office also plays the role of supporting each department, it also handles marketing operations in the sense of providing logistical support.

Corporate Planning Office Counselor Ryo Kameyama

Q. Please tell us about the difficulties in marketing specific to your company and market.

I think there are two main reasons. The first is the difficulty of increasing acquisition efficiency while maintaining and even expanding acquisition volume. Thanks to you, Nurse Stage has a domestic industry share of approximately 2% and is patronized by many people.This is why we must not only simply ensure quantity, but also emphasize quality. I feel it is difficult.

The second problem is the difficulty in setting segments when publishing a catalog. We issue not only to individuals, but also to hospitals and medical facilities, so the key is how many targets we can reach with one catalog. You might think that targeting nurses and medical workers is a sufficient segment in itself, but even within these groups, age groups and preferences vary widely, so it is important to consider market-specific marketing strategies. I feel it is difficult.

In addition, due to our high level of industry expertise, we used to be a brand known only to those in the know, but as a result of a series of reports of masks being out of stock due to the impact of the coronavirus, we are now receiving more orders from the general public. Up until now, we have been issuing catalogs regularly to those who have a purchase history, but since this may be a temporary demand for the general public, it is difficult to judge whether or not to issue catalogs based on purchase history alone. These changes also make it difficult to set segments.

I want to visualize the effects of TV commercials and optimize investment in catalogs.

Q. Please tell us why you introduced MAGELLAN.

There are two reasons. The first is to visualize the effects of TV commercials. Up until now, we have been able to understand the effectiveness of TV commercials by comparing the growth in sales in areas where TV commercials are running and areas where TV commercials are not running, and checking the difference between the periods before and after running TV commercials. Ta. However, a video with the same content as the TV commercial is also released on the website and YouTube at the same time. Additionally, since TV commercials often become a hot topic on social media, this method does not reveal the pure effects of TV commercials, and there were some doubts about the accuracy of the analysis. In response to the analysis results, some within the company said, ``TV commercials may have effects that are not reflected in the analysis results.''

We also use TV commercials to gain recognition and build trust, and we believe that the effects on sales may not be immediate. I felt that I wanted to evaluate TV commercials correctly, taking into account their medium- to long-term effects.

Second, to optimize your catalog investment. With the spread of e-commerce combined with the impact of the coronavirus, I felt that it was becoming increasingly difficult to optimize issues such as publication frequency, number of copies, and the segments I mentioned earlier. Additionally, since we are a mail-order company with catalog origins, we have had past success stories, making it difficult to make a major shift to e-commerce. Therefore, there was a need for objective and convincing optimization based on numerical values. In addition, we decided to introduce MAGELLAN with the aim of performing overall optimization by verifying the effects of crossing both catalog and EC channels and verifying the linkage with other measures such as TV commercials.

Additionally, due to the special demand due to the coronavirus, it was difficult to determine how much of the results were due to promotions. Nowadays, it has become difficult to understand the effects of comparisons with the previous year or the previous season, so we were looking for a way to visualize the results of pure promotions that are free of external factors.

Establish future analysis and results and aim for horizontal expansion of MAGELLAN

Q. Please tell us your impressions about the analysis results of MAGELLAN.

We received a report from a perspective that we had not had before, and we made many new discoveries. In particular, I feel like we were able to take a step forward by being able to visualize the ripple effects of TV commercials across various promotions and sales by route, which we had not previously been able to understand in detail. It was also refreshing to be able to visualize the connection from the catalog to EC.

In the future, we will gradually optimize investment in catalogs and web promotions based on the analysis results. Before the analysis, we were considering reducing the number of catalogs published and using surplus budget for web/EC promotion, but the results of MAGELLAN's analysis gave us a boost and led us to take action.

Q. Please tell us about your future plans for using MAGELLAN.

First of all, we would like to improve the analysis accuracy of MMM by continuously using it and obtain better suggestions. We are currently introducing it only in our Nursery business, but eventually we would like to expand it to other businesses as well. I would like to establish analyzes and results that will continue in the future.

Communicate at the right time to those who need a nurse.

Q. Lastly, please tell us about your goal in marketing.

We are confident in our products and services, so we are confident that once we are recognized, we will be able to meet your expectations. Therefore, we would like to approach people who need a nurse but do not know about it yet, in a timely manner. I would like to aim for marketing that provides the most efficient contact point for both customers and companies.