Valutus.

Customer stream · Customer Science and Demand Realization

NRS had the commitment. The question was what it was worth.

Full employee ownership, a supply chain rebuilt rather than audited, and almost no noise about either. We measured the choices of 23,000 of their customers and put a revenue figure on the answer.

Read the NRS case study → Start a conversation
01The case

NRS is the leading supplier of equipment and apparel for water recreation, safety, and rescue. It converted to full employee ownership and rebuilt its supply chain, then competed almost entirely on product performance and said very little about the rest.

The question was not whether customers approved. It was whether saying it out loud would move revenue, and whether it would survive a price increase.

Asking people directly settles nothing. They will say they care, because that is what people say. The answer only counts if it comes from what they actually choose.

We have always believed in the importance of doing business the right way, but it was still powerful to see that benefit quantified in sales and dollar terms.

Mark Deming, NRS

A price increase normally costs preference; that is the second column. Adding the attributes did not just recover it, it lifted preference above where it started, at the higher price. Identifying the manufacturer as an environmental and social leader lifted it further again, by double digits. Ending up ahead on both price and preference is achievable. Shrinking what a price rise costs you is the reliable part, and it runs in reverse: a laggard raising its price loses more. Relative preference; the scale is not disclosed.
02What we measure

Nice story. What is it worth?

That is the question a CFO asks, and it is the one most brand research cannot answer. Customer Science answers it in currency, by splitting demand into three parts.

Each factor is measurable from evidence the business already has. Run net of competitor performance, customer change, and market movement, the equation returns three figures: demand earned, demand headroom, and demand at risk.

03Not one company

The effect is not a quirk of one brand.

NRS is the cleanest measurement of it. It is not the only one.

24k
Willingness to switch
In separate research across 24,000 customers, willingness to switch rose 10 to 15 percent once people learned a company was a leader on sustainability.1 Preference is one thing. Leaving a provider you already have is a much higher bar, and it moved.
500
A crowded category
There are more than 500 vodka distilleries in the United States, and breaking in on taste alone is close to impossible. OVO Vodka built its position around keeping plastic out of the ocean, in production, in packaging, and in a cleanup event every month. It won awards for taste too, and landed placement in renowned bars.

Ordered by how hard the ask is, not by measured size. The 24,000 customer study moved the bottom one, which is the one that costs a competitor a customer.

For retailers, this provides a narrative, a story they can share with customers when introducing a new brand. It is not just about the price point or flavor profile, but a different approach to the industry, one that allows us to carve out some attention and mental real estate in the consumer's mind.

OVO Vodka, on why buyers stock it

In a crowded category, taste and service are table stakes. Plastic-free oceans is not. That is the same mechanism NRS was measuring, arriving from a different direction.

04What we do

Scenarios, not sentiment.

We quantify what happens to revenue when buyers understand what a company actually does, then separate the part already banked from the part still available.

The NRS case study →

Notes on figures

  1. Willingness to switch, measured across 24,000 customers. 10 to 15 percent is a deliberately conservative statement of the effect; the measured increase was larger. ↩
  2. NRS preference figures are from choice-based experiments with 23,000 customers, measuring revealed preference rather than stated intent. The preference charts show relative movement; the underlying scale is not disclosed.

What is your position already earning you? And what is at risk?

Start a conversation → What we do