Elbuco taps Hammer’s ongoing market intelligence to shape its consumer strategy
Elbuco, a Dutch provider of lease solutions, is working closely with market intelligence consultancy Hammer to inform its commercial planning and decision-making.
Founded in 1973, Elbuco provides high-service lease concepts for consumers and businesses in the Netherlands. The company partners with major A-brands to offer a wide range of products – from e-bikes and televisions to washing machines and laptops. Its lease proposition is end-to-end, covering financing, delivery and installation through to maintenance, repairs and replacements.
For Elbuco’s commercial leadership team, understanding consumer preferences and behaviour is essential to the strategic planning process, helping guide investments, proposition development and pricing decisions. In this area, Elbuco partners with Hammer, which provides continuous market intelligence on these and other topics through its ‘Market Monitor’.
Within this subscription-based model, Hammer conducts recurring research on jointly defined intelligence topics, providing Elbuco with a steady flow of insights that support informed decision-making.
“We have been working with Hammer for many years, and the collaboration has always been very positive,” said Anne Bouk Swildens, Operations Director at Elbuco, about the partnership. “Thanks to the stability of the team and their long-standing familiarity with our business, the quality of the insights is consistently high.”
Example: the power of proposition communication
To better understand how the Market Monitor’s insights support Elbuco’s strategic planning, we delved into a recent practical example.
In the leasing market, success depends heavily on how propositions are communicated – what exactly is included, what the financial trade-offs are, and why leasing may be more attractive than purchasing outright. This makes it essential for Elbuco to understand how its lease propositions are perceived by potential customers.
“Operational leasing is still a relatively niche market, so clear communication is essential,” Anne explained. “Because customers enter into a long-term agreement, they need to quickly understand what they are paying for and what value they receive in return. We therefore wanted to learn how to present our lease propositions in the most effective and appealing way.”
Working together, a joint project team from Hammer and Elbuco designed and executed a so-called choice experiment. In this type of study, respondents are presented with multiple decision scenarios and asked to choose between leasing options that vary across several key attributes.
Hammer and Elbuco jointly defined the content of the decision scenarios and the respondent profile to ensure participants closely resembled potential Elbuco customers. The scenarios varied in price, proposition composition and the way the options were presented. By analysing the choices made by a large number of respondents, the researchers were able to uncover insights into consumer preferences, trade-offs and willingness to pay for different product offerings.
The research helped clarify how consumers perceive leasing and how different ways of presenting lease options influence interest and uptake. These insights proved valuable for Elbuco, helping shape its ongoing marketing communication and proposition development.
“We used the results to improve our advertising, both in terms of clarity and commercial effectiveness. The research helped us better understand which propositions resonate with different customer segments,” said Anne.
An evolving partnership
Since that engagement, Hammer has added the choice experiment to its Market Monitor, meaning the approach is now integrated into the continuous tracking provided to Elbuco.
A spokesperson from Hammer said: “Our work with Elbuco is a great example of how market intelligence can not only generate valuable insights, but also support strategic decision-making. Designed as a long-term partnership that deepens and evolves over time, the Market Monitor enables accurate and relevant intelligence, while also creating additional value by helping identify new information needs as they emerge.”
