Archive: Business & Technology

WB&A Market Research announced today that it is expanding its Ithaca, NY operation by fifty percent, with the addition of 15 new telephone interviewing stations. The expansion increases the total number of stations in the facility to 45. WB&A will celebrate the expansion with a ribbon cutting ceremony at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 25, 2009, at the Ithaca facility, which is located in Center Ithaca on the Ithaca Commons.

The expansion will allow the company to increase the amount of work it does at its Ithaca location and also creates the potential for additional jobs in downtown Ithaca. Despite the downturn in the national economy, WB&A has been continuously hiring additional employees since February and plans to continue doing so until the additional positions created by the expansion have been filled. The company currently employs approximately 50 people at its Ithaca facility. Employees are offered flexible hours, earn monthly bonuses, and the company also has an awards program to recognize outstanding accomplishments by its workers. WB&A also makes a donation to a Tompkins County-based charity of its employees’ choice, once a month. 

WB&A is a full-service market research firm serving clients in the healthcare, transportation, and travel and tourism industries, as well as higher education. Some of its clients include Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, the Museum of the Earth, Amtrak, AAA, BlueCross BlueShield, and the National Sleep Foundation.  The company is among a select group of firms that have been certified by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) to administer its Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Study (CAHPS®), which it has done recently for the states of Maryland, Vermont, Arizona, and California.

The company uses telephone, web, mail/self-administered, focus group and intercept methodologies to measure customer satisfaction, assess brand awareness and image, determine message effectiveness, gauge public opinion, determine consumer/customer behavior patterns, and gather other information about the marketplace.

Established in 1987, WB&A Market Research is a Crofton, MD, based company. It provides a full range of market research services from questionnaire design to data collection, through analysis and reporting.  There is a 30-seat interviewing facility at that location as well. It expanded into Ithaca in 2006, when it originally opened with 30 interviewing stations.

"One of the reasons we located a second telephone interviewing facility in the Ithaca area is because of the access we would have to a broad selection of high caliber employees, and we have not been disappointed," says owner Steve Markenson.  We pride ourselves on our quality standards as a company, and we recognize that our employees are the foundation for maintaining those standards."

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