As part of our continuing goal to increase transparency and accountability of the performance on the business retail water market we have produced the following interactive stats for customers to explore.
These stats have directly fed into our first analysis of the first year of the business retail water market – our Open for Business report.
Market Operator (MOSL) data
At market opening, data from wholesalers was transferred to the central market operating system (CMOS) to underpin market operation between what has now become retailers and wholesalers.
The MOSL data in this interactive graphic is for the first year of the business retail water market (April 2017 – March 2018) and contains information on the following:
- market share
- gains and losses
- consumption.
Customer research (ORS)
In the report we refer to our customer insight survey, which was conducted by Opinion Research Services.
1,750 eligible customers were interviewed between 30 October and 6 December 2017, and 1,399 switchers were interviewed between 8 February and 9 April 2018. The full results have been published alongside this report.
Wave 1
The aim of the first wave of the quantitative survey was to gather views from a representative overview of all types and sizes of businesses, charities and public-sector organisations in England (and eligible high water users in Wales) and to investigate their experiences interacting with the newly opened market.
The sample design aimed to achieve a roughly equal number of interviews in each region so that comparisons could be made between experiences in each water regions. Any differences between the achieved sample and the overall population were corrected by statistical weighting. For further details of how this was done please refer to the full ORS report here.
Wave 2 (switchers only)
Once respondents had confirmed that they had switched retailers at the beginning of the survey, they were asked a series of questions about the following topics:
- Their satisfaction with their current retailer;
- Their experience searching for and comparing retailers;
- The interactions they’d had with intermediaries;
- The experience of, and benefits from, switching retailer;
- Any problems they had experienced.
Once a population of switchers had been determined, the sample was stratified in order to achieve a more equal number of interviews in each water region. For further details of how this was done please refer to the full ORS report here.