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WestTrack Then and Now:
Reflections on Arizona's First Market Research Company and First Omnibus Study

Ted Apostol, President

WestTrack is our omnibus telephone study. It is conducted every month providing syndicated and proprietary studies for a fraction of the cost of custom studies. We recommend it to clients who want to track progress over time, or who have only one or two questions.

The inventor of WestTrack was the original M.R. West, Ray West (1929–1981). Ray had a vision to monitor everything about Arizona residents — purchase behavior, media, attitudes, opinions, politics, advertising, and on and on. In 1971, Ray, with his analysts (Fred Corbus, Carl Cole, and Mike Armstrong, to name a few) wrote the first questionnaire, conducted a study, and then showed it around. Somehow it caught on.

WestTrack originally used the name Centel. Centel was a euphemism for “central telephone.” In the early 70’s central telephone facilities were just beginning to replace the industry standard — phone interviewing done from interviewers’ homes. Interviewers had to get used to touch-tone dialing.

In these years before the era of the personal computer and before copiers were generally accepted for very little other than making legal backups of original documents, everything
was done using paper and pencil. High tech meant using red pencils for edits, and snopaque to correct typing errors. Fast typists were in high demand as reports had to be typed and re-typed for every draft. Cut and paste were very real tasks actually involving real scissors and rubber cement. Data processing meant keypunching IBM cards and running them through a counter-sorter multiple times for cross-tabs.

The original mainstay clients were Arizona’s banks and savings and loans. Financial institutions who are only memories now — The Arizona Bank, First National Bank, Great Western Bank, Valley National Bank, First Federal Savings, and Western Savings — subscribed to the monthly monitor of awareness, perceptions, and customer relationships for the years before they were swallowed up by multiple mergers.

In 1974 I left First Federal Savings and joined M.R. West as Marketing Director. I soon became enamored with the trackability of awareness and behavior, and how progress or the lack of it could help marketers make better decisions. I switched to Centel Director and have managed it ever since.

In the years before bank mergers, the majority of WestGroup’s revenue came from the financial sector. Banks were early adapters in the use of research for marketing and were
the mainstay clients for Centel. Recognizing that such high dependence on a single sector was not good in the long run, Ray and I set about to diversify the company’s client base.
In the late 70’s, M.R. West expanded relationships and gained clients in many sectors: housing, healthcare, insurance, retail, utilities, and media. Centel also expanded
geographically to Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Reno and Seattle.

When Ray West died suddenly in 1981, the company survived by emphasizing and expanding Centel and working to earn the trust of the many clients who had primarily dealt with Ray. It took ten years to rebuild. Now more than 20 years later WestGroup has expanded to three times the size it was under Ray West. This success came through the development of WestGroup's team of Project Directors, including Ed Bergo, Glenn Iwata, Kathy DeBoer, and Beth Aguirre Smith.

In 1986, the company officially changed its name from M.R. West Marketing Research to WestGroup Research — keeping the name “West” in honor of Ray. Centel became WestTrack and entered a new phase. Smaller banks merged and disappeared, and larger banks no longer wanted to share information with competitors, opting instead for their own
customized tracking studies. While as many as 10 banks had subscribed to Centel’s tracking study data, customized tracking meant only a single bank client could use WestTrack. Hospitals and healthcare organizations and
local ad agencies began to use WestTrack to monitor ad effectiveness, market preferences, and perceptions. Where WestTrack had been primarily supported through syndication, it became a blend of proprietary studies.

Today WestTrack conducts studies in the Phoenix metropolitan area, Tucson, and statewide. The Phoenix and statewide studies each use a monthly random sample of 400
telephone interviews. The Tucson study is conducted quarterly with 240 interviews.

Twenty-first century WestTrack is conducted using modern technologies. The WestGroup Interviewing Center has 50 call
stations driven by networked sampling and interviewing systems from Sawtooth Software. Random numbers are automatically dialed by proactive and auto dialers, under the full control of each interviewer. WestGroup has rejected the use of predictive dialing technology that results in those calls with an annoying pause before a live person talks to you. (We hate that, too.) Live data can be available any time during the interviewing process. Reports are delivered in traditional form, electronically, or through secure Websites.

For $1.25 per interview ($500 per question per month) clients can add one proprietary question to either the Phoenix or the statewide study. The Tucson study costs $400 per question per quarter. With custom studies averaging between $10,000 and $20,000,WestTrack provides high quality data for a
fraction of the cost.

To add one or more questions to WestTrack, call me at 602-707-0050 or email to answers@westgroupresearch.com. Final question phrasing is needed by the first of each month.
Interviewing is conducted throughout the month. Results are available by the fifth of the following month, with a narrative report about the fifteenth. Send us your questions or objectives. We’ll take it from there.

Fall 2002 Answers:
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