Market Research Services

Post Office Limited requires the provision of market research services for the following 4 areas, each covered as a separate Lot, which are listed below. It is intended that the services will relate to the Post Office branches across the UK (circa 12 000) as well as Post Office Limited's numerous online channels/products. The precise requirements will vary depending on the level of the Post Office business concerned — i.e. whether it is national, regional, local or branch level. Agencies must (i) be Association of Qualitative Research (AQR) members or equivalent, and also (ii) hold Market Research Society (MRS) Company partner/full member status, ESOMAR or equivalent.

Suppliers are invited to bid for all Lots or any one or more complete Lots.

The 4 lots are as follows:

Lot 1: Strategic customer experience research and quantitative brand and/or advertising research;

Lot 2: Ad-hoc quantitative and qualitative research;

Lot 3: Mystery shopping services; and

Lot 4: Continuous website feedback programme, panel and communities and digital user testing services — i.e. AB testing, website user experience testing — For the avoidance of doubt there will not be a requirement to build websites for Post Office Ltd

Post Office Limited seeks to enter into a Framework Agreement with multiple suppliers for the provision of market research and customer insights services to include all aspects of the end-to-end research process including recruitment, fieldwork, data processing, analysis, reporting, presentations etc.

It is intended that there will be 4 Lots under the Framework Agreement. It is estimated that the total annual value of the services across all 4 Lots will be circa £2,500,000. The estimated annual value per lot is as follows:

• Lot 1: 800 000 GBP;
• Lot 2: 600 000 GBP;
• Lot 3: 300 000 GBP; and
• Lot 4: 400 000 GBP

Post Office Limited cannot guarantee any level of work or spend throughout the life of this Framework Agreement. E-auctions may be used as part of any mini-competition process when awarding contracts under the Framework Agreement.

It is envisaged that the final Framework will consist of 10-12 suppliers across the entire agreement.

Additional information: Additional Lot Details:

Lot No: 1

Lot title: Strategic customer experience research and/or quantitative brand and advertising research:

Continuous strategic relationship tracking,

Post Office brand and advertising tracking,

Product and category level customer feedback and satisfaction tracking.

Ad hoc advertising and communications testing pre and post and evaluation.

Lot No: 2

Lot title: Ad-hoc quantitative and qualitative research

Post Office will require successful agencies to give evidence of knowledge and expertise in Qualitative and Quantitative research. Agencies must be able to demonstrate capabilities in both and should be able to demonstrate experience in delivering strategic insight for multi-channel retailers/financial services providers or a similarly structured business to Post Office Limited.

Lot No: 3

Lot title: Mystery shopping services

Post Office will require agencies to give evidence of knowledge and expertise in mystery shopping techniques

Agencies should be able to demonstrate experience in delivering mystery shopping programmes for multi-channel retailers/financial services providers or similarly structured businesses to Post Office Limited.

Lot No: 4

Lot title: Continuous website feedback programme, panel and communities and digital user testing services

Post Office will require agencies to give evidence of knowledge and expertise in online/website customer feedback measurement. Agencies should be able to demonstrate experience in delivering strategic insight on website experience for multi-channel retailers/financial services providers or similarly structured businesses to Post Office Limited. Post Office Limited have a large scale Customer panel for research purposes however Post Office Limited may expand this and develop additional community research requirements.

Digital user testing of existing and new large scale Digital propositions as part of the Post Office strategic development of the digital channel. Post Office will require proven experience of user testing digital prototypes and a broad spectrum of testing options relative to the nature of the test requirements.

For the avoidance of doubt there will not be a requirement to build websites for Post Office Ltd.

The Contracting Authority intends to use an eTendering system in this procurement exercise and reserves the right to use a reverse auction.