Closer to Consumers
at 5:38 pm
As consumer’s lives have increasingly moved online so too has the world of market research as it seeks to use access consumers for ever faster and more cost effective data capture. Researching consumers via online panels clearly has its benefits however marketers also recognize the importance of gathering insights through real world techniques such as qualitative groups. That said, focus groups ar notoriously expensive and, frankly, recruitment standards at times somewhat dubious.
In marketing terms brands brand owners recognize the power of physical engagement with consumers via experiential marketing, however many are missing an obvious opportunity to consider these consumer touch-points as insight gathering opportunities. Admittedly many experiential agencies may talk about data capture at events as metrics of performance and ROI but at Closer we have taken this one step further.
With every consumer interaction we take the chance to explore not only their reactions to that days experience but also their attitudes to the brand in question, its competitors and the category in which they operate. Conducting quali-quant in depth interviews in this way helps provide our clients with unique insights often from their more elusive harder to reach consumers and at a time that they are fully immersed in the world of the brand. Our field researchers use the very latest handheld terminals to carry out the interview so that the interaction is as quick and unobtrusive as possible to ensure we do not distract from the consumer experience of the event in question. And by gathering the ‘real time’ data in this way we can turn around research results in hours rather than weeks.
For one particular client we actually record brand usership and post codes which then allows us to integrate with ACORN via our proprietary data synthesis methodology. This enables us to create rich profiles and consumer portraits from which we have created an attitudinal based market segmentation that now informs the client’s strategic direction and portfolio management. What’s more the ACORN profiling means that we can then further optimize our field marketing initiatives for future brand experiential activation programs.
Of course not every experiential agency operates in this way because they do not have the necessary planning and data skill sets and resources. This is why we call our proposition ‘Research Through Experience’; a truly integrated experiential & research offering ensuring further experiential return on investment as well as enhancing clients’ existing armoury of research tools and techniques.
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