- What is Consumer Research?
The Main Goals of Consumer Research
Market research vs. Consumer research
Qualitative & Quantitative Research
Consumer Research – The Base of Brand Strategy
How Consumer Research Benefits Business Strategy
What Consumer Insights do for Digital Marketing Campaigns?
Understanding the consumer is essential to marketing campaign planning. How can we gain an accurate understanding of what the consumer wants? We have to know what is happening inside consumers’ minds. The mind of a consumer is filled with personal interests and needs, not your brand, product or cause.
We must understand how humans process information and make choices. In general, people feel before they act. This is especially true when people shop for B2C products – it can occur in the B2B process, but the behavior can be different in that market.
What is Consumer Research?
Consumer research is the act of gathering information to:
- Identify target customers, and then
- Focus on the target’s preferences, perceptions, attitudes and buying drivers for a product, service or brand
The Main Goals of Consumer Research
- Make ideal buyer personas a formality
- Improving brand positioning
- Find new or similar target audiences
- Gather feedback on current products and services
- Investigate the customer decision-making process
Market research vs. Consumer research
Here is the difference between market research and consumer research:
Market research is an organized and systematic effort to gather information about customers or markets. It is an essential element of any business strategy and offers information about market needs, market sizes, competitors and customers. Market research tends to be factual and statistic-based. It is the “WHAT” of customers and markets.
Consumer research is information that enables a company to determine why their customers behave how they do with regard to their brand. This information gives organizations insight to affect purchase behavior. It is the “WHY” of customers and brands.
How can marketers design consumer research that delivers not only information but also insight and inspiration? How can we design research that measures the impact of marketing and communications efforts?
Consumer Research is Important
An organization must consider several aspects when a brand has new offering. Consumer research helps because it plays a pivotal role in determining whether a brand is on the right track.
Understand Market Readiness: Developing a product requires investments, with the expectation of a return on investment via product or service purchases. If a market is developed enough to adopt this utility, tapping into market potential has a low chance of success. Organizations need consumer research to determine whether customers are willing to pay for the utility they supply.
Identify Target Consumers: Brands may identify their target market based on geographic segmentation and know who is interested in buying their products by performing consumer research. Research brands can even tailor their marketing and branding approach to better appeal to a specific consumer segment based on the data or feedback they obtain from customers.
Product/Service Updates Through Feedback: Consumer research gives valuable feedback from customers on the traits and features of products and services, allowing them to develop a more acceptable solution based on genuine market needs, allowing them to fine-tune their offering.
Qualitative & Quantitative Research
Consumer research includes both qualitative and quantitative research tools; most marketers use a hybrid of both. These research methods offer contrasting yet complimentary value.
What is the difference?
Quantitative research helps you to measure and quantify attitudes and behaviors.
Qualitative research can help you understand what’s underneath data – and understand on a deeper level what people think, feel, and do – especially with the effective use of projective and ethnographic techniques.
The Sweet Spot
Ultimately, marketers use consumer research to bring consumer and brand insight together. In marketing, the goal is to find this Sweet Spot, where consumer and brand insight come together and overlap, also known as “Brand Purpose.”
In sports, the Sweet Spot is that one special place on a baseball bat, golf club or tennis racket that drives the ball farther, faster, and with less effort than when it’s hit anywhere else. Hitting the sweet spot in marketing communications means engaging with and persuading consumers faster, deeper and with less effort (read: less investment). Finding the sweet spot is an essential part of acquiring and retaining loyal customers.
Consumer Research – The Base of Brand Strategy
Consumer research is a powerful tool for brands to connect with potential customers through social media, email, smartphones, websites and offline marketing.
The path generally goes as follows:
- Interest sparks
- Brand exposure develops
- Conversions and sales follow
A strategic approach to market research is guided by five key principles:
Defining Objectives & Strategic Questions: To do research and collect data, it is important to know what you want to learn from the research.
Using Hypotheses to Guide Research: Hypotheses are important because they suggest some of the current thinking available and provide a clear direction to the research. Ask yourself: What ideas can we test based on our current thinking?
Choosing the Right Method: Research design is both an art and a science, and must be by the ultimate objectives. For example, consider the methodology (e.g., qualitative or quantitative) and data collection tools (e.g., face to face interviews, telephonic interviews, focus group discussions etc.) based on the strategic questions that need answering.
Obtaining the depth required for insight: While in-depth exploration is generally associated with qualitative methods, the goal in all research design must be to unearth strategic insight. This requires digging deep underneath the surface of data to understand the dynamics involved, such as key drivers influencing what people think, feel and do.
Going Beyond the Data: With the ability to look inside something—a situation, an audience, a conversation—and find what others aren’t seeing, that is being insightful. The best researchers dig deep into the research results to identify what is said and what it means.
How Consumer Research Benefits Business Strategy
1. Focused Marketing
Consumer research included in all parts of a website signals that consumer research influences every component of the website. The study provides the information we need to understand what appeals to our customers.
2. Flexibility
Customer research benefits digital marketing efforts. For example, without insights there is a chance that efforts could be concentrated on inappropriate social channels. Audience behaviors grow more dynamic as technology progresses. Knowing what a brand requires helps it stay current and relevant.
3. Successful Campaign Planning
Knowing what to do with analytics and metrics data without substantial customer research is difficult. To contextualize the data and provide ways for implementing the findings, we undertake consumer research.
4. Digital Marketing Success Depends on Consumer Behavior
As the digital world evolves, we must keep up to date with customer research. Consumer research must be done well if a brand has to maintain its credibility. The best thing you can do for your business is to develop a brand through a growing client base.
Consumer Research and Digital Marketing
Consumer research is critical to marketing activities because the digital landscape continually evolves. Customer feedback keeps marketers focused on what will help the business grow and, ultimately, bring in more customers. Identifying consumer needs and preferences enables a company to adjust to new business and create a precise marketing plan.
What consumer insights do for digital marketing campaigns:
- Increases the customer base
- Set competitive pricing
- Refines marketing message
- Expands sales
- Minimizes expenses
- Improves the customer-service approach
Outcomes
1. Align Business Strategy with Consumers’ Needs
There is no better method to determine what consumers think about your company than to ask them. Consumer research might reveal flaws in your marketing plan or even chances you’re missing out on.
2. Digital Efforts Become Laser Focused
Consumer research affects everything from website design to content creation, the messaging created, and the color we design. It provides the insights required to determine what resonates with customers.
3. Brand Approach to Becomes Flexible
Consumer research grows more crucial as audiences’ habits change and technology advances. It helps brands stay ahead of the curve by determining where and what the brand needs to change to stay relevant.
4. Translate Data into Strategies
Data is valuable, yet sometimes it is challenging to know what to do with the numbers obtained from analytics and metrics without first conducting consumer research. Consumer research puts data into context and enables practical strategies to work.
5. Digital Marketing Relies on Insights
Consumer research is critical to marketing activities because digitalization continually evolves. keeps you focused on what will help your brand grow and attract new clients.
The Wrap: Consumer-centricity Leads to Marketing Success
One of the most important factors that determines the success of any integrated marketing communications effort is the extent to which an organization itself is “integrated.” This means the extent an organization designs itself around the consumer so brand communications are reinforceable across all of consumer touchpoints. Marketers can and should consider all the different dimensions of the brand-consumer relationship.
How Stefanini Can Help
Stefanini is at the nexus of technology and marketing. We bring creativity to every project and are flexible to scale with your needs. Our philosophies of co-creation and agile mindset make us the perfect partner for digital transformation. Reach out to a Stefanini expert today.
