Market measurement, not only that of cigarettes, but also tobacco in the unorganised sector.The issues of non-admission of usage and under admission of depth of usage have been successfully tackled. An innovative method of market estimation based on sampling of transactions has been developed.

Brand health evaluation: tracking brand behaviour continuously using innovative and cost effective sampling; tracking brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand potential, brand image periodically. Reporting is done in a manner such that the reasons behind a trend is identified, and the findings are actionable. Input-output analysis is also conducted. Brand health measures have been modelled with brand share to understand the impact of the different brand health measures among own brand users and users of other brands.

Periodic evaluation of blends among own and competition brand smokers to identify directions for improvement of blends. Innovative method to weed out inconsistent evaluations by consumers, has been incorporated so that differences between blends can be attributed to the product and not due to consumer inconsistency in ratings. Experimental work on the amount of in-use quantity has also been done as well as understanding driver attributes.

Identifying how to strengthen trade marketing and distribution among trade vs. competing manufacturers and competing product categories. This customer satisfaction study involves identifying key drivers of satisfaction among trade and mapping company's position in a competitive context - to identify action areas.

The complete set of research to successfully launch new brands or relaunch existing ones
-identifying opportunities through existing databases
-qualitative concept development - taking the idea forward
-determining whether the blend developed is good enough or not
-name or descriptor research using pseudo product testing
-developing packaging through qualitative research; testing the new packs to evaluate whether they are good enough to be launched; if not, to provide actionable areas for improvement - and eventually identifying a winner pack that is good enough to be launched; pseudo product testing to check the impact of packaging on product perceptions
-decide on pricing based on market shares at alternative pricing options
-Simulated Test Marketing (STM) of the final offer to estimate the share of the new offer; understand what is driving the share -and, if low, to recommend what mix elements need to be changed. STMs have also been conducted to identify the relative impact of alternative mix elements
-post launch evaluation. which, in the case of relaunches is conducted using a short term pre vs. post panel. Innovative scales have been developed to clearly measure change in brand perception, as a result of the relaunch.

The category being price sensitive - considerable expertise in pricing research for cigarettes. Techniques include BrandPriceTradeOff (BPTO), Price Sensitivity Measurement (PSM); and adaptations of BPTO to tackle situations like change in volume; price wars; purchasing more than one brand at a time. There is experience in handling different situations eg stick and pack price; different pack sizes; variants; differential pricing. Validation of share estimates have been done and learning's have been used to calibrate shares.

IMRB International has also successfully developed statistical models eg a demand model by types using price and macro economic variables; brand heath modeling.

Merchandising is another relatively unchartered territory where IMRB International has introduced consumer research based evaluation. Developmental work has also been done in the area of logos, not just within the category but across categories.

Segmentation work using lifestyle and psychographics variables - including studies among lower social classes.

Measuring the impact of marketing inputs including rural activity.

Economic impact studies.

In house software development: user friendly BPTO software which can be used for pricing simulations at the client end; CAPI based pack testing software; software to help reporting from large tracking databases.

Research training and research manuals for client companies.