Understanding what influences the buying decisions of Cisco’s small business customers

The challenge

Cisco wanted to understand how their small business customers research communications products and how their buying decisions are influenced online. We decided to focus specifically on how SMBs use the internet to research and reach purchasing decisions about the communication technologies they need. Our research also sought to identify where SMBs currently go online when using the internet for business purposes.

We conducted an online survey alongside a series of telephone interviews to gain both quantative and qualitative insights into our audience’s current attitudes towards different online spaces and also the types of content they finds most useful in reaching business-related purchasing decisions. We were also able to identify specific websites and social spaces that SMBs in the UK and Ireland visit regularly for future outreach and engagement activity.

The results

The output of the research was:

• A report of the analysis of qualitative and quantitive survey results
• A list of prioritized highly trafficked and relevant sites for Cisco to engage with.
• Actionable insights, particularly around the process taken by customers when researching communications technologies, including the types of sites and social spaces they trust at which stage of the research and buying cycle
• Recommendations around how to engage, where and with what content to allow Cisco to offer usefulness and relevancy to customers at each stage of the research cycle.

This project was delivered in July 2009 by Anna Carlson and Max St John.