Ofgem Consumer First Panel - Year 4 and new participants: Fourth workshops (held in August 2012). Consumer views on Tariff Comparison Rates
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The focus of this round of research was to understand consumer responses to Ofgem's proposals for the Tariff Comparison Rate (TCR), being developed as part of its Retail Market Review. The research tested the overall TCR concept and four distinct scenarios which illustrated different options for how the TCR might work in practice. Participants were asked to comment on each scenario separately and to identify individual elements from each they felt were particularly helpful or unhelpful. The research also aimed to explore what participants saw as the potential impact of the TCR on their switching behaviour and overall engagement in GB energy market.
Workshops with 109 participants were conducted in six locations across Great Britain between the 13th and 23rd August 2012. Approximately half of the participants in this research took part in previous workshops as part of the 2011-2012 Ofgem Consumer First Panel. The remaining participants were recruited afresh to ensure the research included less informed consumer perspectives as well as those of existing Panellists. Alongside these workshops, triad depth interviews were conducted with 16 electricity consumers currently on Economy 7 style tariffs.