EQ Up Close: Case Study Series - New Brunswick

Introduction Tourism New Brunswick (TNB), a Division of the Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture has been a licensee working with the Explorer Quotient since 2010. In 2009, the Department launched a 2010-2013 Tourism Strategy with a focus on customer-centricity. Their brand positioning - "The Unexpected is in our Nature" - references not only the awe-inspiring natural wonders of the province, such as the Highest Tides in the World, but also its culture and intimate experiential tourism offerings. The challenge, at the time, was that prior segmentation efforts were largely based on the geo- demographics of potential visitors rather than travel values and motivations. This case study explores the business decisions to invest in EQ, the department's vision of building a research platform for better insights, the progress it has achieved in the past three years, and its view for the future. Reasons for investing in EQ Harmonizing research activities In 2009 - 2010 Tourism New Brunswick was considering making a significant investment in consumer research in order to move away from ad hoc analyses of reports from various sources with varying levels of comparability. David Rioux, Senior Research Analyst explains that: "The Canadian Tourism Commission's Explorer Quotient provided the opportunity to leverage a nationally supported, travel-specific segmentation model that could be augmented and implemented through more mainstream segmentation products such as Environics Analytics' PRIZM¹." Compared to other proprietary travel market segmentation studies, EQ could Hotel P runswick Department of Tourism and Parks ACE On AULE "With an increasingly competitive marketplace, and more demand being placed on marketing dollars, EQ has allowed the department to stay extremely focused. Not only with paid advertising, but also in aligning all of our marketing touchpoints in message, tone and product offering to speak to EQ segments. We still have much to do, but we feel we are on the right path." Kim Matthews, Director of Marketing, Tourism Division, Tourism New Brunswick provide a unifying research platform for a comprehensive analysis of TNB's travel markets and its potential and actual performance in those markets. 1 PRIZM is a segmentation system developed by Environics Analytics that classifies US and Canadian households into 66 consumer segments based on demographics and preferences for a broad range of behaviours. By cross-referencing EQ and PRIZM, EQ licensees can gain geo-demographic data on where their customers live as well as other behaviours such as media use. See: http://www.environicsanalytics.ca/data_consumer_segmentation.aspx © 2012 Canadian Tourism Commission 3

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