Marketing Research Blogs 2020 - 2022

Putting The Wind Back In Your Sails

4 Important Consumer Goods Research Initiatives For 2023

As a consumer goods manufacturer feeling the forces of slower consumer spending, the higher cost of goods, and pressures from retailers, you may be struggling with what you can do to sustain the health of your business. One critically important need is to understand the shopper’s and/or consumer’s perspective and what will keep her engaged with your brand. As we face the headwinds that 2023 will likely bring, here are 4 types of research to help manufacturers address critical business questions.

I ♥ Product Testing

Product tests are, at their most basic, some of the simplest types of marketing research that can be done. Which cola do you most prefer the taste of? The one on the left or the one on the right? Take it no further than that and you have something that is arguably insightful. Take it even one step further and the tests can be very revealing. Why do you prefer the one on the left? Just adding that one simple question (and the probes that should normally follow it) takes the implications to the next level.

Does Your Segmentation Need A Refresh?

Segmentation initiatives are expensive and exhausting. Done properly, by including stakeholder interviews, qualitative exploration, quantitative segmentation, qualitative persona development, and an activation workshop, segmentations can take months and require the ongoing attention of internal business partners. When the research and the initial activation process is finished, there remains the big job of socializing the segments throughout the organization.

Let Imaginators® Enhance Your Next Research Initiative

Hearing directly from consumers can be invaluable, but what if your research initiatives are a bit more creative in nature? By including creative people, such as the Imaginators, as part of a hybrid (or multi-method) approach to your research often provides a more comprehensive perspective which translates into strategic action.

6 Steps (Or Hops) To Successful Shopper Research

Research can be a little bit like the game of hopscotch. You take the first hop, then the second (maybe the third at the same time), then the next, then the next, and so on. All the while, you’re gaining momentum and working hard to stay focused on the outcome: THE FINISH LINE! Here are the steps for successful shopper research.

Virtual Ideation Workshops: 5 Tips For Success

Ideation workshops are a great way to generate innovative ideas for new products, services, or experiences—or enhancements to any of these. Most companies have grown very comfortable with in-depth interviews and focus groups conducted via webcam, an option that provides flexibility and has been relied on heavily since the pandemic began. But what about ideation workshops? When does it make sense to take these virtual? And how can you do so successfully?

Assessing Willingness To Pay In An Economic Downturn

Times like these undoubtedly lead to changes in consumer spending. Facing this downturn, businesses are struggling with tough decisions on whether to increase prices, and by how much. When making these decisions, it’s important to know how much a consumer values your products. What are the pricing parameters for your offerings that ensure continued customer demand, and at what point do you start pushing your customers out of your brand? Understanding Willingness To Pay (WTP) can help businesses answer these questions.

Your Employees are The Key to Your Success!

Employees are the lifeblood of any business. Fostering employee relationships is much like planting and caring for a garden. We want to create, maintain, and nurture each relationship between the company and its managers and its employees. Investing in employees’ growth and training as they take on new tasks and challenges is a crucial element of cultivating a successful company.

Researching In The Metaverse: For Better Or For Worse?

Admittedly, I’m no expert on the metaverse. Yet, here I am, raising questions and starting the conversation. I think this is a conversation that needs to start now because we are already here. "Here where?", you ask. Here, conducting research in the metaverse. For better or for worse, it has begun.

Make Me Comfortable, Please!

What makes a home comfortable? You’re likely to find a wide variety of answers to this question, ranging from soft goods to structural improvements. Based on our recent research, things like home entertainment systems, furniture, and a good heating and cooling system top the list.

The Eye Of The Beholder

Throughout my career in marketing research, I’m constantly reminded of the importance of stepping back and seeing the world through the eyes of the consumer. To better understand the consumer perspective, and make sure that we do understand the world from the “eye of the beholder” (i.e. consumer), we at Decision Analyst have found an overall approach of going in-depth and in-the-moment in our qualitative research endeavors often provides richer insights and a better understanding of the consumer.

An Overview Of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) For Marketing Researchers

Structural Equation Modeling is a flexible multi-use tool in the marketing researcher’s pocket. Researchers benefit from using SEM due to its multi-functional capabilities. SEM’s benefits are many, such as managing many independent and dependent variables, examining different types of models, accounting for measurement error, and analyzing all relationships simultaneously.

How To Interview Physicians When You Aren’t An M.D. Yourself

Let’s face it—talking to doctors can be intimidating. The weight of physicians’ work responsibilities and their collective intelligence can be quite intimidating, even for a seasoned researcher. If you lack experience with interviewing physicians, this article includes six questions to ask yourself in preparation for an interview with physicians.

What’s New, Pussycat?

Yes, I like the music of Tom Jones and other crooners. However, I bring up this tongue-in-cheek, somewhat old-fashioned song for another reason: “What’s new?” is a question that product-oriented companies face all the time. For service-oriented companies, that question is often “What’s different or unique about the services your company offers?”

Knocking Off The Rust Getting Ready For The Post-COVID Business World

Life feels like it may be returning to normal. How do we dust off our rusty social skills? ‘Social rust’ is to be expected after dealing with the uncertainty of the pandemic. Activities that we never thought twice about may now feel awkward or anxiety-inducing. Even those who are willing to step back into live social situations may still want to adhere to some social boundaries.

The Science Of Influence: Making Customer Decisions Easier By Using Behavioral Engineering

Decisions are among the key elements of our lives. Regardless of who you are or where you’re from, you make thousands of decisions every day. Any time you design a space where a human must make a choice, whether it be a product website or a retail store, you are creating what behavioral scientists call the “choice architecture.” And no matter how you design your choice architecture, you will be influencing people’s decision making—intentionally or not.

Brand Equity Tracking Models

All other factors being equal, Brand Equity is the very best predictor of a corporation’s probability of long-term success. In well-managed corporations, senior management stays focused on building and maintaining Brand Equity for all of their brands among the most important target audiences (customers and prospective customers). Once a sound brand strategy is in place, it’s important to track the cumulative effects through repeated surveys of target consumers, employees, and other target audiences.

Not Wasting Words:

Identifying the Right Sustainability Message

Your company has done the hard work of defining sustainability in your arena, researched the topic, and set goals and created initiatives that have the full support of the board. How do you best communicate your plan to your customers? Does the word "sustainability" mean the same thing to your customers as it does to your organization? How can you assure that your initiatives are seen as more than merely lofty ideals?

Strategy’s Starring Role:

Don’t Let The Supporting Actors Steal The Show

It seems so simple but brilliant at the same time. Messaging strategy, like any other strategy, should have a singular focus. If the recipient takes away just one key idea from your message, what should it be? High quality? Sustainably produced? World’s most comfortable pants? Guaranteed fun? When we think about brand-building campaigns, whatever your brand’s core promise is, that’s where the messaging strategy should be focused.

What Do French Press Coffee And Great Consumer Insights Have In Common?

Recently I was thinking about the similarities between coffee made with a French press and great consumer insights. To manage a successful business, you will need customer insights in order to inform the decisions that are being made on a daily basis regarding products, advertising, messaging, pricing, packaging, distribution, shelf displays, promotions, etc.

Multicollinearity – A Marketing Researcher’s Curse Word

What is Multicollinearity? Multicollinearity (also known as collinearity) occurs when two or more variables are very highly correlated. Singularity, a more serious form of multicollinearity, occurs when two or more variables are redundant, where one variable is a linear combination of the others.

Getting Comfortable:

An Unexpected Theme During The Pandemic

It’s no secret that when COVID-19 hit the U.S., life changed dramatically. Most people began spending so much time in their homes that desires to spruce things up emerged almost immediately. Here’s a summary of activities from our ongoing Consumer Reactions to COVID-19 research.

Reliability and Validity from a Scientific Perspective

Both “reliable” and “valid,” are used to mean “robust” or “accurate” in everyday speech. The concepts of reliability and validity are not interchangeable from a scientific perspective. These two words are not identical, and understanding the difference is important when interpreting research outcomes.

How to Succeed in a World Gone Supply Chain and Logistics Crazy!

How can your organization manage the craziness in this world, given all the supply chain and logistics challenges? Given all of these outside “unusual demands and supply chain constraints” on business, over-delivering on the customer experience can really pay off.

The 411 About Deriving Marketing Claims From Market Research

Marketers have just a few seconds to capture a person’s interest. Including impactful claims, using words and phrases that resonate with consumers, is an easy way to increase your product’s stopping power and ultimately increase sales.

5 Reasons To Think Like A Squirrel

The inspiration of thinking like a squirrel came from witnessing their behavior, oddly enough. How should you think like a squirrel? Don’t take the shortest path to your destination. Look for new ways to accomplish your personal or business goals that might lead you to new experiences, relationships, sights, or locations.

What’s Really Going On Behind The Virtual Glass?

Four Tips For Backroom Observers

Like its in-person counterpart, an online focus group allows businesses to use a moderator to talk directly to consumers to ask key questions, to capture group interaction, and more. But, in conducting online qualitative, don’t forget the role of, and the importance of being a backroom observer.

The New Kid In Town: Gen Z

Social, economic, political, and technological advancements made a mark on Gen Z. Understanding their generational mindset is vital to helping marketers better understand how to reach and communicate with consumers. Currently, Gen Z represents $44 billion in direct buying power in the U.S.

Advertising Claims Substantiation

Is it a good idea to make a head-to-head comparative claim against a competitor? Before you rush off to create that great head-to-head commercial, a recommended best practice is to test a number of different advertising claims or messages, to see which resonate with your target audience.

Political Divide Deepens Around the Pandemic

Republicans, Democrats, and Independents seem to be drifting further apart and these differences are noticeable. Decision Analyst’s monthly “Consumer Reactions to COVID-19” tracker finds that these divisions exist within beliefs about COVID-19 and the vaccine, feelings surrounding the pandemic, concern about the pandemic, and even comfort levels with gathering in different situations.

Insights, Not Oversights!

(A Market Research Checklist)

As market researchers, our goals and responsibilities are to deliver thoughtful, accurate, data-driven insights to our partners. To do this successfully, we should always ask ourselves these questions: Is this methodology right for the audience, topic, and objectives?

The Bridging Model:

Connecting A Segmentation To Customer Databases

Segmentation is a very powerful tool. Leverage that power by applying the segmentation to your company’s customer database(s). Organizations that successfully classify their customers into segments increase the likelihood that their brand communications and new products will meet the needs of those customers.

Who’s More Likely to Receive the COVID-19 Vaccine?

Personal characteristics and situational circumstances are potential explanations for why some people receive the vaccine while others do not. Therefore, we wanted to understand differences in ethnicity, age, political affiliation, income, gender, area lived in, and occupation with regards to vaccination.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, Come Sit Next to Me:

How Even the Worst Consumer Feedback Can Be Your Company’s Best Friend

Consumer feedback. There’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. A well-designed survey can help you answer the “whys” behind negative feedback and even help you understand which low-rated areas to prioritize. Here are three simple but effective ways to get the most out of survey feedback of all kinds.

Motivators for and Barriers to Getting Vaccinated Against COVID-19

As of May 20th 2021, 48% of the population has had at least one dose, that leaves a little over 50% of the population unvaccinated. Using the data collected in Decision Analyst’s monthly “Consumer Reactions to COVID-19” tracker, we did examine what impact, if any, beliefs about COVID-19 and its vaccine have on the decision to get vaccinated.

“I’m sorry, but your new idea stinks!”
—Six Quick Tips to (Tactfully) Relay Unfavorable Research Results

Delivering bad news is an unpleasant task, but learning to do it effectively (and tactfully) can prevent a costly disaster in the marketplace. It can also provide you an opportunity to boost your credibility and improve your professional relationship with the client. So, how do you tactfully relay bad news?

Navigating Business-to-Business-to-Consumer Relationships

What if you are one of the many companies whose product or service goes through an intermediary? And, what if that intermediary has a strong influence on your brand’s relationship with the end customers? Operating in a business-to-business-to-consumer environment creates extra complexity to consider.

“Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded”

Forecasting Demand in a Post-COVID World

Like many of you, I spend a good part of my day thinking about all the ways the near future will (hopefully) be different from the past year. But what will the future look like? I’m no futurist, but I see a short-term demand boom coming for many industries. This list is not all-inclusive but just a few examples.

Sins of the Fathers

The Fathers of Marketing Research invented a number of extremely powerful and valuable tools, methods, questions, and concepts that we all use and benefit from every single day. But no one is perfect, and our industry Fathers committed sins that blight our industry to this day.

5 Steps To Optimizing The Lifetime Value Of Customers

Customer loyalty directly improves the bottom line by increasing the lifetime value of each customer. This is true in any industry, but particularly in those where the customer will interact with the brand (and its agents) over and over, such as in healthcare, insurance, financial services, travel, etc.

In Search of the Holy Grail Customer Experience

Understanding the experience consumers have with brands is more important than ever, especially when attempting to get them to return to an abandoned brand and stick with it. Traditionally, brands that win have always placed customer experience before everything else, but now understanding the changing, lasting expectations of post-pandemic consumers is more important than ever.

User-Centric Innovation:

3 Important Tactics To Help Ensure New Product Success

Focusing on the consumer is a critical step to ensure new products meet the needs and expectations of end-users. From a research perspective, there are several ways to engage with potential customers to help guide the innovation process. We’ll address three broad research tactics that many companies use to accomplish their goals: Qualitative Research, Concept Testing, and Choice Modeling.

It’s Time to Put Those Negatively Worded Items Behind Us

In an effort to catch survey cheaters, researchers use negatively worded attributes placed in groupings of positively worded attributes. This context switching causes respondent confusion, which creates error. It may be time for researchers to relinquish negatively worded attributes. So, how can researchers catch cheaters, speeders, and straight-liners if negatively worded attributes are no longer included in the survey?

Good Riddance To 2020 But Wait...

Eight Positive Trends Worth Keeping For The Future

2020 and its challenges have been extremely difficult to navigate! Despite the long list of negatives from 2020, there are several positive trends from the year, including: Strengthening relationships, Connecting with loved ones, Improving communication between teachers and students, Focusing on self-care and mental health, Continuing work-from-home/work remotely, etc.

Newton’s Law of Inertia Has Struck:

Time to Conduct a Consumer Checkup

Newton’s law of inertia: this law basically states that an object at rest will stay that way and that an object in motion will continue with the same speed and in the same direction unless that object is acted upon by an unbalanced force. The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unbalanced force that has acted on two objects: consumers and organizations.

“I Know You’re Out There”

Engaging Hard-To-Reach Tradespeople And Heavy Industry Pros

So, what can we do to best reach hard-to-find but vital segments? While there’s sometimes a magic panel (where caution is advised) or other freely available list to turn to, there are some best practices and techniques available to increase our odds in the event that’s not the case.

Optimizing Parts Of A Whole

Commentary on choice modeling is confined mostly to discussions of optimizing an entire product or service, its pricing, and perhaps even its inclusion in the broader portfolio. So what do we do with those products that are not wholes, but rather some individual component or ingredient? Often manufacturers want to optimize the features and the pricing for their product parts.

We’re Not Just A Vendor, But A True Partner (Blah, Blah, Blah)

As the business world moves faster and faster and demands grow by the day, trusted advisors are needed more than ever. From my vantage point I see researchers and strategists in corporate positions who are genuinely seeking support and advice from their peers and, more importantly, from those of us in agency-side roles. So, specifically, what should this “partnership” look like?

Fraud in Online Surveys

The incidence of fraud in online surveys is a growing problem. The research industry must minimize respondent fraud to protect the integrity of its survey results and safeguard the public’s trust in survey research findings. This blog explores some common types of fraud and outlines some approaches to minimizing fraud.

Brand-Loyalty Roadmap: It Works for Business and Nonprofits Alike

Both companies and nonprofits derive loyalty by providing benefits beyond just a product or social program. These benefits can be the way a product or organization makes consumers feel, the solution to a problem it champions, the attributes associated with it, or even the cachet of the brand or social cause itself.

The Joy of Innovation

Remember the joy of discovery? You are the ‘voice of the customer’ in the organization, you are the starting point for innovation. You will be able to discover the consumer pain points, barriers to trial and usage and purchase journey, which will allow you to help your team and organization move customers beyond those pain points and barriers.

Three Secrets to Product Success

There are many factors that go into a successful product: efficacy, price, value, brand, distribution, advertising, competitive forces, etc. But when push comes to shove at the retail shelf, packaging can make or break a product. Brands need to ensure they are getting the most impact out of their packaging that they possibly can. How do they do that? With consumer research, of course!

Become An Innovation Strategist

From Marketing Researcher to Innovation Strategist: Marketing researchers are starting to think more like innovators than they are like researchers. Anyone can be innovative―it’s not just for the creative geniuses in the company. Anyone can be ready to break down walls, and can have a major impact on the growth and innovation in a company’s culture.

Let’s Outlaw Marketing Research

For almost 100 years, some large corporations have used marketing research to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors. This is not fair, and does not lead to a fair marketplace. These “marketing research savvy” companies benefit from an “intelligence” or “informational” advantage over their competitors.

Enhancing the Customer Experience With Usability Research

Usability testing plays an important role in creating a positive customer experience, and the principles applied in this type of research can also be a key part of the development process for many things beyond websites and apps. The importance of using these principles and testing will only increase for marketers and innovators as our fast-paced world accelerates.

Consumer Driven Innovation

Heather Kluter, Senior Vice President, discusses how setting up a Consumer Driven Innovation process can fuel a new product development pipeline. She discusses using Innovative consumers, trend tracking, exploring channels of influence and looking outside your industry for ideas can help feed your new product pipeline with consumer-centric ideas and concepts.

Win-Loss Analysis:

Understanding Customer Needs

In B2B research, one of the biggest concerns is maintaining and growing business. Win-Loss research is an excellent way to learn about how well your company does in developing and winning over new customers as well as assessing why customers choose to make a change and go to one of your competitors.

Jumper Cables For Your Brand?

Yes, They Do Exist. 5 Things You Should Be Doing Now To Restart Your Business

The big question, as we all begin moving forward again, seems to be, “How do we jump-start our business?” What questions should we be asking? What can we really expect from our customers, shoppers, or consumers? The truth is no one really knows what the future will look like. But the good news is there are steps we can all take toward answering these big questions.

Your Brand Here!

Strategically Assessing Community Engagement for post-COVID-19

As stressful as this environment is, it could be an opportunity to evaluate where your company or nonprofit has been and where it wants to go.Has what you’ve been doing up until now served you well? Is it time to adjust plans, change directions entirely, or double down on your current strategy? Do you have data that can help you answer strategic questions?

7 Steps Out of the Unknown:

Product & Branding Strategy

There was so much promise and excitement at the start of the year and the decade, but now COVID-19 and its economic fallout has had tragic consequences for many companies and industries. Now we must pick ourselves up and find our way through this challenge. These 7 steps will help you focus on your product roadmap and reviewing your brand positioning.

The Business World Post-COVID-19

In this tumultuous time many businesses are seeing their teams connecting in ways they never have before. This sense of being “all in this together” is allowing employees to be more of their authentic selves at work. They are now free to admit and share that they are juggling a lot. With newfound empathy for each other, companies are reporting a heightened level of team collaboration.

Where’s My Herd?

Connecting with Consumers in a Post-COVID World

Regardless of the “when,” watercooler (or more correctly, Zoom) conversations are turning to what the normal will be like in the future. A key part of our life that may be changed in the future is what a consumer group is, and their associations with “groups.” People by nature seek to belong to groups, and a general sense of community is important and needed.

Who’s taking my survey?

Panel and sample quality is something all market researchers should be concerned about. So, with that in mind, I thought perhaps it was time to take a step back and consider what we are doing to make sure we can answer the question, “Who’s taking my survey?”

The New World After COVID-19

Consumer attitudes and perceptions will be changed forever. Industries, companies, and brands will be forced back to the drawing board to re-learn and re-understand their markets and their customers. Companies will have to reinvent, re-position, and rejuvenate their products, services, marketing, and advertising.

Is That New Product a Cannibal?

Companies that expect to survive must introduce new or improved products regularly. The reasons for this are numerous. With these pressures from purchasers, competition, and distribution channels, companies are faced with the task of rapidly introducing new products, sometimes at the expense of current ones.

Tail Up, Paws diggin’:

Escaping the Silo Work Style

At the start of my career, I worked with the a top home builder. When I had been there for about a year, an executive from a CPG manufacturer joined the company and brought much needed knowledge. He commented on our work style – like dogs, we were butts up, diggin’. Cross-functional collaboration is critical to success. Here’s why traditional, hierarchical org structures don’t work.

3 Avoidable Statistical Mistakes

Adhering to the rules of the scientific method is important to ensure that results are valid and unbiased. Sometimes marketing researchers are tempted to use undesirable methods, like performing statistical tests without hypotheses, and rerunning statistical tests until desired results are discovered. Unfortunately, engaging in these methods has unintended, detrimental consequences: namely, an increase in Type I Error.

Cars, Computers, Pizza Delivery, And Tote Bags:

What Do They Have In Common?

No matter the product or service type, the most successful innovations are grounded in a consumer need or white space. Innovation is a process of trial and error that can take years to conceptualize, prototype, test, and refine. Many innovations require rigorous scientific experimentation. Often engineering and industrial-design functions are also involved.

Eight Ways to Kick-Start the Decade!

As you start the New Year, you are not only saying hello to the beginning of a new year, but to a whole new decade! As you think about your career and your business, how can you have more of a positive impact on your business or career? Much as you approached your personal goals and resolutions for 2020, consider starting a list of your business goals and resolutions.

Developing Innovative Ideas: What a Pain!

Companies must continuously innovate in order to stay relevant and fresh. We frequently look to unmet needs for inspiration, but an often-overlooked source for innovative ideas can come from addressing pain points. Pain points typically impact an entire category, not just one brand. They are a ‘cost of doing business’ with this type of company.