FMG is New Zealand’s leading rural insurance provider and has been an important part of the rural and provincial sector in this country for over 100 years. FMG is committed to using customer insight to inform product development, marketing and communications and the mutual’s strategic direction.

Research First has a long-established relationship with FMG to survey the core rural and provincial market of both clients and non-clients. This work delivers:

• A real time understanding of the rural market and its changing needs;
• A measure of FMG’s market share;
• A monitor of trends in this market;
• An ongoing evaluation of how FMG’s brand is perceived among farmers and other agribusinesses.

The project is one of the largest ongoing research programmes in the New Zealand rural sector and one of the longest standing longitudinal surveys of farmers and growers. Over 6,000 phone interviews are completed each year, with rural respondents from our own database of farmers, growers, lifestyle blocks, businesses and rural residents. Quarterly survey points providing a regular stream of up-to-date information to inform strategy.

Surveys are conducted by phone, which is still the most robust method for this sector. Our call centre’s approach to rural research is different from that we use with other audiences. We have a specialised rural team that understand the needs of the participants. The timing of their calls is tailored to be sensitive to seasonal and daily demands for each sector (so calls to dairy farmers may be timed for different parts of the day to calls to avocado growers), and a pre-recruitment design for completion means non-response rates are lower.