Brand Research

 

Introducing our online brand research course. This comprehensive introductory course focuses on how to use marketing research to build, manage and grow successful brands and it highlights the most important marketing research issues and considerations. Further, you will learn about more than 40 different qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and techniques and when it is appropriate to use each. Topics include brand positioning research, brand equity research, brand extension research and customer segmentation research.

To learn more or to take the course, click here. 

Values Survey

We have created a survey to explore the personal values of people who reside in the USA and its territories. It is a simple 5-minute survey and all responses are anonymous. We hope you will take this survey and then share its link with your friends, family members and business associates so that they can take it too. Thanks in advance for taking our survey. We will present the results here in an upcoming blog post.

Here is the survey link: Values Survey

Types of Research for Brands

I have spent the past 35 years conducting research on behalf of brands. Over that period of time, I have conducted hundreds of studies. In this blog post, I thought I would outline the types of research that you can conduct and the things you can learn from that research. One of a researcher's most important roles is to select the right research methodology given the business and marketing objectives and the action standards.

• Though qualitative research - focus groups, mini-groups, depth interviews, online groups, etc. - you can better understand customer attitudes, beliefs, values, hopes, fears, concerns, needs, desires and perceptions of the category and your brand and competitive brands. 
• Qualitative research may be conducted using asynchronous online bulletin boards.
• Through conjoint analysis you can create the optimal combination of product/service attributes/features that deliver the greatest perceived value.
• Price sensitivity research (projective) and price elasticity research (based on historical sales) can help you develop the optimal pricing strategy.
• Brand equity studies will help you measure brand awareness, preference, associations, personality, relevance, differentiation, accessibility, perceived value, emotional connection and loyalty.
• Brand positioning studies can help you identify the most powerful unique value proposition.
• Brand asset mapping can help you understand what a brand's associations and most important assets are. 
• Brand extension research can help you understand into what new categories a brand could be most successfully extended.
• Brand emotional heat mapping research indicates the degree to which a large variety of emotions are associated with your brand.
• Attitude and usage studies will help you size and dimensionalize the market for your products.
• Customer segmentation studies can help you segment the market on a wide variety of demographic, geographic, psychographic, cohort, attitudinal, values, purchase behavior and usage behavior dimensions.
• Consumer purchase and use diaries can be used to monitor thoughts, behaviors and purchases over time to discern patterns. Diaries on smartphones are an emerging version of this research.
• In-store traffic pattern mapping including in-store heat mapping can help the the design of store layout and retail merchandising. It can also indicate with which categories, products and brands consumers spend the most time.
• Customer journey mapping is a process that helps you understand the entire customer decision making and purchasing process. 
• Anthropological research takes many forms but basically approaches customer research using anthropological methodologies. 
• This can include selfie photos and videos taken by the consumer herself. 
• Retail shop-along interviews are another form of anthropological research.
• Environmental scanning and text mining scrape and analyze text from websites, collateral, ads, white papers and articles to identify patterns and content trends.
• Customer service testing helps you understand all of the dimensions of your customer service delivery and how it was perceived by the customer.
• Mystery shoppers help you experience the customer shopping experience first hand.
• Logo research can help you develop the most powerful logo with the greatest recognition and recall. 
• Concept testing can help you understand how unique and compelling a concept is, whether it be a business, product, service or brand concept. 
• Advertising can be tested in a variety of ways. You can conduct a pre and post test to measure differences in brand awareness and associations. You can compare the results of two different creative approaches in an A/B test. 
• In online marketing, you can measure click through rates, cost per click and cost per thousand. 
• With CRM systems, you can measure the ROI of different lead generation sources and different sales approaches. 
• Perception Analyzer research allows you to view the results of quasi-quantitative research in real time while also being able to stop and ask qualitative questions of the respondents. 
• Eye tracking research can help you design better ads.
• Using CT scanning and other medical technologies to measure human response to ads can make likes and dislikes very clear. 
• Combining data mines with attitudinal research is very powerful. 
• Social polling, one or two questions at a time, is a quick, easy and affordable way to get consumer feedback.

For more information on brand-related research, refer to the Brand Research chapter in Brand Aid, second edition, available here.

The Ten Most Important Things to Know About Your Customers

Most marketers agree that market research and customer insights are very important to brand management and marketing strategy. This begs the question, "What are the most important things a marketer needs to know about his or her brand's customers?"

Here is my list of the ten most important questions a marketer needs to answer about his or her customers through research:

1. What needs (functional, emotional, experiential and self-expressive) are fulfilled by products or services in your brand's product or service category?
2. Which of those needs are met by all brands and which are met by only a few or no brands?
3. Which product/service functions or features are critical and which are optional?
4. Who shops the category?
5. How can the category's customers be segmented? Which segments promise the greatest potential for  your brand?
6. What are the customer's unmet needs within your brand's product or service category?
7. What are his or her frustrations within the category?
8. Who or what does your customer listen to (website, expert, friend, periodical, trade show, etc.) to make decisions in your brand's product or service category?
9. Where is he or she most likely to go (distribution channels and specific stores) to find products or services like yours?
10. How sensitive is he or she to prices within the category? What are his or her expected prices and what are the maximum prices he or she would be willing to pay?

Conjoint Analysis

Traditionally used for pricing research, conjoint analysis is very applicable for brand research as well. Respondents rate their buying intent for products comprised of various combinations of attributes (including product, service, sales terms, price, and brand attributes). Brand name is one of the attributes. Not only is this an excellent approach to measure the overall equity of your brand name vis-à-vis competitors, but it also allows you to measure the interactions/relationships of your brand name with other attributes. Simulation exercises also allow you to project the impact on share of preference for various attribute combinations (what-if exercises).

For additional information on conjoint analysis, go here.

© 2015 Brad VanAuken. Reprinted from Brand Aid, second edition, available here. Brand Aid devotes a chapter to brand research highlighting dozens of different brand research approaches.

Market Research

Generally, market research should be left to marketing research professionals. The role of a brand manager is to clearly articulate the questions that the research needs to answer. Ideally, the answers to those questions will impact key decisions and actions. If deep insight is sought, usually some sort of qualitative research is required, such as depth interviews, focus groups and mini-groups. There are now a variety of online qualitative research approaches. Top moderators are skilled with a large array of techniques for probing including guided imagery, laddering and many different projective techniques. If something needs to be quantified, usually quantitative research is the answer.

Asking the right target markets and market segments to participate in the research is critical. Understanding the impact of sample size on confidence levels is also critical. If designed the proper way, quantitative research can be used to understand differences between market segments including those based on demographics, psychographics, product purchase behaviors and product usage behaviors. Question ordering is important so as not to bias subsequent responses. How a question is worded will alter the responses. If a rating scale is used, the number of points on the rating scale and its symmetry or asymmetry will make a difference in the range of responses.

Brand managers need to know what the research can provide and what it cannot provide before it is fielded. Sometimes clients ask for research outputs that the research was never intended to deliver. 

How one invites a person to participate in the research will affect the response rate but also any biasing or the lack thereof.

Today, there are countless marketing research methodologies. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. One of the roles of a competent marketing research professional is to determine the most appropriate technique for the questions to be answered. 

Brand Aid, second edition has one chapter dedicated to brand research and another dedicated to brand equity measurement. It also has a chapter dedicated to understanding the consumer and another to understanding the competition. You can order a copy of the book here.

Qualitative Research Leads to Emotionally Compelling Brands

Some brand managers with whom I talk are still are thinking in terms of product functions and features as the brand’s primary point of difference. Don’t get me wrong, it is important to have unique or superior product features. It is also important to offer exceptional customer service. But functionality, even unique functionality, only goes so far when creating highly compelling brands. In making decisions, people are primarily driven by their emotions. This has been demonstrated repeatedly in psychology, social science and marketing studies.  Emotions are usually driven by factors much more invisible than product functions and features. This is where qualitative research comes into play. 

Qualitative research can uncover deep emotional drivers. It can uncover self-esteem issues, paths to self-esteem, self-image, beliefs, values, attitudes, hopes, anxieties and fears.  Now this is the stuff that underlies emotions. So, how does qualitative research uncover these?

Whether one is conducting focus groups, mini-groups or individual depth interviews, one can go deep by using some or all of these techniques:

• A wide variety of projective techniques
• Collages
• Sorting
• Laddering
• Guided imagery
• Storytelling
• And more…

When we are asked to help reposition a brand so that it creates a much stronger emotional connection with its customers and potential customers, this is where we start. And when we do, the results can be quite impressive. We usually discover something that no one would have thought of without the help of the qualitative research. Sometimes, after the fact, people will say “Of course. That makes perfect sense.” But, prior to the research, no one had thought of it. To create emotionally compelling brands, start with qualitative research to gain deep customer insight.