Marketing Research Blogs
Decision Analyst's experts have written the blogs below on different marketing research techniques, marketing strategy, and branding.
How Amazing Is My Concept?
Ask 10 different market insights professionals how they manage concept testing, and you’re liable to get 10 different answers. There likely isn’t a singular correct answer. Some options are going to be better than others, but any testing is better than just guessing.
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Elevate a Commodity to Premium Status
Elevating a commodity product to a premium brand is all about highlighting differentiation and creating perceived value beyond the basic functional promise of the product. This work requires a deep understanding of the target audience.
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New Product Concept Testing (And The “Uniqueness” Paradox)
A well-designed new product concept testing system, overseen by experienced and knowledgeable researchers, can vastly improve a company’s ability to develop successful new products or services. Here are some best practices to guide development of a new product concept testing system.
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Segmentation Selection Criteria
After developing many segmentation solutions, researchers are left with the conundrum of deciding which solution is optimal. While selecting a good segmentation solution can and should consider statistical outcomes, relying only on mathematical results can cause problems – namely, base size and differentiation issues.
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Building Trust with a Client is Similar to Building a Little League Baseball® Team
Even in Little League baseball® preparation ahead of games provides valuable insight into opponents’ strengths and weaknesses and ultimately helps to develop a winning game plan. Similarly, doing your homework and preparing beforehand reaps dividends on initial calls with potential first-time clients, too.
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5 Essentials For New Product Success
An organization’s ability to survive is often defined by its capacity to innovate and listen to consumers. Companies must continuously adapt. Successful new products don’t just happen. New products and new product ideas take a while to surface and require a team to nurture them.
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The Magic of Idea-Centric Creativity in New Product Development
Every change in technology, fashion, cultural trends, government regulations, and competitive forces creates opportunity for new services and new products. The magic of idea-centric creativity might offer a new way for corporations to identify and explore the knocking of these new opportunities.
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Some of Our Questions May Not Be Working Anymore — Six Shifts to Consider
Consumers are switching brands more often and reacting to things in the moment. And yet, we’re still asking questions as if consumers move through decisions slowly and logically. Here are six high-level shifts that have helped me get closer to what’s really driving today’s consumers.
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New Product Sales Forecasting: Durable Goods
Given the characteristics of durable goods, how can a manufacturer forecast sales of a durable good with some hope of reasonable success?
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Project Workflow: Avoiding Unhappy Little Accidents
Templates and other resources used to set up projects can be the foundation of our work and free up space in our minds to do the job we were hired to do: analyze data to provide insightful and actionable results for our clients. Stephanie Trevino shares some tips on workflows and templates.
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4 Ways To Rescue Your Segmentation
It’s an unfortunate fact that sometimes segmentation results are put away and forgotten. Don’t let your segmentation go to waste. Audrey Guinn has put together four options that can be used to rescue a failing segmentation.
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Market Segmentation
When the term "market segmentation" is used, most of us immediately think of psychographics, lifestyles, values, behaviors, and multivariate cluster analysis routines. Market segmentation is a much broader concept, however, and pervades the practice of business throughout the world.
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Targeting of Textual-Based Market Segments
In John Colias' previous blog, he investigated the viability of using AI to segment a market using textual data from survey open-end responses. In this follow-up analysis, he asks the question: If we were to market to the individuals in a text-based segment, would we be able to target them and find them geographically?
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Why are you like that? Incorporating Social Cognitive Theory into Segmentation Research
Why are you like that? For marketers and researchers, this is a critical question for deep understanding of consumers and what drives behavior. And it’s particularly important when conducting a market segmentation study. Here are some thoughts on incorporating Social Cognitive Theory into segmentation research
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Pricing Optimization
Prices are highly variable, as input costs vary and as market demand and competitive pressures tug and pull prices up and down in response. There is always the conflict between the short-term and the long-term in pricing strategy. So how does a company establish an optimal pricing strategy for one of its brands?
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The Winter of Our Discount Tent
Choice modeling research yields valuable insight into consumers’ future purchasing behavior when markets have changed or sales tactics have no prior history. Empowered with the intelligence this research provides, companies are in a better position to predict discounting/promotional performance.
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Your Employees are The Key to Your Success!
Unleash the power of your people. Strong employee relationships with colleagues, customers, and suppliers are essential for business growth. Discover these tips from Bonnie Janzen on the importance of, and how to, boost employee engagement.
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Choice Modeling to Screen New Product Concepts
Creating viable new product concepts is an expensive and failure-prone process. Choice modeling offers a powerful set of tools to systematically evaluate a much wider range of new product concepts at a much lower cost per concept.
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Market Segmentation Using Textual Data
As a part of Decision Analyst's ongoing research into analytic methods, a large experiment was conducted using cluster analysis of embeddings, which translates to clustering on meaning rather than on words or bundles of words.
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Will A Scarcity Marketing Strategy Drive Strong Results?
Planned scarcity can be a strategic decision especially for high-demand brands. A brand considering some form of strategic scarcity should research its plans among potential buyers to help ensure success.
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Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze? Become a Research Superhero With An Activation Workshop
Activation Workshops are extremely effective in both consumer and B2B environments. The results are internally generated and increase buy-in for both the strategy and the steps needed to execute it. Activation Workshops provide a strategic “jump-start” for an organization.
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Consumer Trends in Mental Health
As part of our regular consumer tracking research, we recently asked almost 1,300 U.S. adults about their mental health. We found that after a dip in the most positive rating a year ago, most Americans feel very confident about their own mental health.
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How Many Segments Are Optimal?
When deciding upon a segmentation solution, companies often wonder how many market segments they should have. Perhaps 3, 5, or 8, or maybe even 10, 15, or 20? Here are some guidelines on how to decide on the number of segments needed.
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Consumer Trends in Sports Betting
As part of our regular consumer tracking research, we recently asked almost 1,300 U.S. adults about sports betting. We found that using online betting platforms is common for sports, with 23% of American adults having done so at some point in time.
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Making Spirits Bright: Why Concept Screening Matters for Holiday Confectionery Success
Standing out in a crowded marketplace takes more than great a great product. It requires a deep understanding of what resonates with shoppers. While ideation is where the journey often begins, concept screening plays a crucial role in ensuring those initial ideas are refined and ready to connect with consumers.
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Are You Listening To Gen Alpha? Hint: Young People Are Calling The Shots And Have Plenty To Say
Gen Alpha is unlike previous generations in that these young consumers are influencing the market right now. Brands need to pay close attention to what’s trending among this generation to understand them better, engage with them authentically, and respect their values.
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The Art of Pivoting
When thinking of pivoting, from a business perspective, it’s a foundational change in strategy or business tactics that leads in a new direction. Being strategic with a pivot and utilizing insights and data to purposefully pick a direction to pivot to, will help to ensure a successful change in direction.
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What’s in a Name? The Importance of Brand Research in Sales Efforts
As researchers, we’re often tasked with gathering brand metrics in tracking, AA&U, packaging optimization, and various other types of studies. But true brand health, value, personality, and associations are often left unexplored beyond surface level metrics.
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Don’t Sleep on Gen X
As we welcome our benevolent new overlords—Generation Z, who are soon to be, if not already, the dominant force in the minds of marketers and employers, don’t you forget about Gen X. We may not be the largest, but don’t underestimate our experience and spending power.
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(Full) Service With A Smile: The Anatomy of a Full-Service Consumer Insights Firm
Here is a quick look at the types of teams that support custom research and consulting efforts, and how their unique skill sets might benefit you and your company.
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Sniffing Out The Best Option: Paw-sitively Overwhelming
The growing number of choices these days for everything from dog food to TV shows to wellness can cause anxiety and decision paralysis. What can brands do to help make purchasing decisions less stressful?
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The Windy Road of Travel and Market Segmentation
This blog's author was struck by the similarities and differences between conducting Segmentation research and the process, and impact, of voting. While segmenting respondents based on commonalities to “divide” a defined population into addressable markets for our client to target, the election was highlighting and reinforcing the differences between two increasingly antagonistic groups.
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Maximize Your Home-Usage-Testing Success: 4 Expert Tips
Product testing is critical to the launch of new products. Here are 4 tips that will help ensure a successful quantitative home-use test.
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Key Elements to Drive Effective Advertising
Based on years of advertising testing and consulting with brands throughout many industries, Bonnie Janzen has put together a list of key elements for successful and effective advertising in the sports world and beyond.
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Qualitative Package Design Research
While many quantitative methods are utilized in package design research, sometimes we overlook the importance of the softer side of research—the qualitative techniques. Here is some advice on utilizing qualitative research when redesigning packaging.
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Stated vs Derived Importance: What’s the Difference?
When derived importance is reported alongside stated importance, clients often find the results contradictory and confusing. Knowing the difference between the two, and understanding the end goals, can help marketing researchers decide when to report stated or derived importance. So, What's the Difference?
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Maximize Your Acquisition Success By Utilizing Strategic Marketing Research
Mergers and acquisitions can add fuel to grow a business and positively change its trajectory for many years. But sometimes there are major dangers to consider when thinking about mergers and acquisitions.
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5 Steps To Creating A New Lease On Life For A Struggling Brand
Sometimes a brand need a new lease on life, a new purpose, a new positioning, a new formulation, and/or a new look. There are brands that make mistakes along the way and lose market share due to their missteps. Sadly, these examples can be found at every turn. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
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My (Mis)Adventures In AI
You don’t have to look very hard these days to witness the transformation that artificial intelligence (AI) is having on society. The topic is all the rage at marketing research conferences, too. So, Decision Analyst's Tom Allen set out on a path to see how well AI can analyze unstructured data. Read about his journey as he has Gemini and ChatGPT analyze a large dataset of unstructured data.
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Inclusivity, Innovation, and AI at the 2024 SIR Annual Conference
Recently Decision Analyst's Julie Trujillo attended the Society of Insurance Research’s Annual Conference. Julie thought that the SIR Annual Conference was a great event and it covered a lot of information. There were 3 themes that stood out during the event: Inclusivity, Innovation, and AI. Read Julie's summary of the conference.
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To Boost Your Creativity, Take A More Direct Approach
Creativity is not about “thinking outside the box”, nor is it limited to only a select few that were born into it. Anyone can learn to become more creative in meaningful, useful ways. Creativity is a complex process with lots of facets and lots of possibilities. It’s a set of thinking skills that can be learned and practiced, that can boost your career and help make your life better.
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5 Tips For Planning Your Research Reporting Adventure
Writing a research report requires planning and attention to detail to ensure that the reporting experience goes smoothly and that it results in a deliverable with actionable insights. Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” So, decide where you are going with your research.
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Qualitative Researchers Are Facing More Anxiety, Fatigue, Stress, And Burnout,
And The U.S. Mental Health Crisis Isn’t Helping
The mental health crisis affects those involved in qualitative research. Stressed and depressed respondents, stressful client demands, and lack of management support can trigger anxiety, depression, and burnout in researchers. Fortunately, there are things we can do individually, and as managers, to promote well-being and improved mental health.
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Way Out In Left Field:
How To Manage Extreme Data Values
You’ve cleaned the data of cheaters, bots, and other ne’er-do-wells. The data set is ready. But hold the analysis! You need to examine the data for outliers. These are extreme data points found in continuous, numerical entries, such as taxable income, age, and so on. Outliers can play havoc with the data.
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Trends In Qualitative Recruiting: Complexity Takes Its Toll
Qualitative recruiting is increasingly looking for needles in haystacks while quality participants are becoming harder to find. Researchers are creating more complex screeners for longer, more complex projects with shorter, less-flexible timelines.
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ChatGPT-4 Versus Decision Analyst’s Deep Learning Model
With all the hype and hoopla over generative AI, we decided to do some experimental work to see how well ChatGPT-4 performed versus Decision Analyst’s Deep Learning Model, a multi-layer neural network classification model. The task we chose was to assign codes to the responses from an open-ended question. We learned that we have some work to do.
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Curious, Compassionate Listening:
3 Tips From My Yoga Practice That Make Me A Better Moderator
It’s one thing to be a good listener and yet another entirely to listen with rigor and unrelenting focus, all while maintaining genuine curiosity and an open heart, and suspending judgement, biases, and assumptions about what’s being said or about to be said. This type of curious, compassionate listening is critical for developing high-quality insights.
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Four Keys For Conducting Successful Shop-Along Interviews
A store is the only place where the brand, product, packaging, messaging, pricing, and competitors are all present in one physical location. Observing the shopper in the store environment is a powerful way to measure the quality of the shopping experience and to gather an understanding of the shopper’s behaviors, preferences, needs.
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Breaking Down Barriers:
A Call For Inclusivity In Consumer Research
Inclusive consumer research paints a rich picture of human behavior by capturing diverse perspectives. It goes beyond the checkboxes and incorporates screening criteria that engage a broader range of respondents, providing a more authentic representation of your audience. Here are 10 actionable tips to build bridges, not barriers, in your next research project.
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Inspiration Abounds!
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Offers A Beacon of Innovation Illuminating 2024
Decision Analyst's Heather Kluter recently attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This annual event is a celebration of groundbreaking advancements in technology. From smart home innovations, and wearables to emerging tech like virtual and augmented reality, CES highlighted the technological tapestry that defines our modern world. Heather has put together a list of innovations and new products she finds inspiring.
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Super Bowl…
Are You Ready For Some Football? Are You Ready For Some Ads?
Are You Ready For Some Football? Are You Ready For Some Ads? According to Ad Age, a 30-second spot for the Super Bowl is going for approximately $7 million. Given all that money, it is critical that the ads have a purpose and a driving strategy, and fits within the overall campaign.
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Megatrends:
Not Just For Scholars & Economists 6 Global Shifts That Will Impact Your Business
The world around us is constantly changing.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the global population is aging at a much faster pace than in the past. Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world’s population aged 60 and over will nearly double. Here are 6 megatrends being observed now that will have an impact on your business.
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If you would like more information on Marketing Research, please contact Jerry W. Thomas by emailing jthomas@decisionanalyst.com or calling 1-817-640-6166.