• by Mike Oddi , June 8, 2011

While category leaders and their agencies invest millions in resources and tools to gain consumer insights for marketing and product development purposes, challenger brands often cannot afford to. Yet, challengers need the same insights to navigate the competitive landscape and develop their creative messaging and media strategies.

Marketers tend to research the "Five Ws"

Who A client's best customers are in the form of clusters that share common demographics and lifestyle behaviors, based on data from consumer segmentation systems like Mosaic, Personicx, and PRIZM.

What Target customers with respect to the consumption of media, goods and services, based on syndicated data from Simmons, MRI, Scarborough and others. This includes the media channel, programming and device preferences that can be linked to the purchase of certain goods and services by category or brand.

When consumers interact with media based on a daypart analysis from syndicated research data.

Where consumers are most likely to interact with media or purchase goods and services.

Why do they behave in the ways that they do?

While all of these factors are important in developing media strategy, the "Why" factor is critical, since it translates observed behaviors into insight. It is the factor that explains the reason behind consumer behavior.

Measuring consumer action has increasingly become the domain of media, particularly in the interactive and mobile channels. Understanding the behavior that occurs between exposure to an ad and a consumer's subsequent online search activity and/or retail purchase is an imperative to effective media strategy. It is key to delivering real consumer insight that clients want from their media agencies.

Why is "Why" so important to media buyers?

In the media models of the past, reach and frequency were king. Media costs and ROI from sales were the metrics. Eventually, brand awareness became an intermediary KPI to measure the effectiveness of advertising. However, with the emergence of direct response, the Internet and social media, consumer engagement has become an important factor in driving sales.

The emphasis is getting a consumer to "do" something that creates a connection to the brand. Facebook "likes," blogging, YouTube videos are all part of this engagement process. So the question has become: Why do some people engage while others don't?

The second reason why the "Why" has become important deals with the purchase process, which is more complex today than ever before. Years ago, people would see a commercial, go to the store and purchase the product. In some cases, they might receive a coupon either in-store or by mail that would motivate them to purchase sooner rather than later.

Consumers may now see a TV commercial that creates awareness and then go online to research the product via a branded or keyword search. Now they can easily compare the product to similar ones. If it's a simple product, people are able to visit a blog or text their friends or post something on their Facebook page seeking advice.

Once they have gathered information, they can then search to find the best price on the Web and immediately purchase the product online. For a more complex product, such as a HDTV, a consumer may decide to visit a retail location to check out the picture quality.

If they decide to buy, they can use a smart phone to compare prices with other vendors or use the data to negotiate a better price with the retailer. In fact, a shopper can even pay for the product on their smart phones and have it delivered the very next day.

Two succinct branches of statistics -- predictive modeling and time-series analysis -- allow marketers to address the "Why" factor. Predictive modeling uses observed past behavior to ascertain if a consumer is entering into a pattern of future behavior that suggests a higher probability to purchase.

Time-series analysis looks at the impact of internal and external marketing events to "push" a consumer toward a desired action or outcome. Both are receiving greater attention from marketers and media agencies these days.

Neuromarketing

Marketers are also increasingly turning to more advanced research to probe the "Why" factor. Some have invested in "neuromarketing," where brain imaging is used to uncover hidden information about reactions to advertising, product preferences and purchasing behaviors.

Consumers are shown a print ad or TV spot, and researchers measure the brain's response via blood oxygenation measurement, which is interpreted as a proxy for neural activation or engagement. In this case, consumer engagement begins not when the consumer does something, but when they think about doing something -- the ultimate answer to the question of "why."

Marketers have engaged in focus groups to gauge consumers likes and dislikes toward specific products for many years; however, this method is a more scientific and true study of the human brain and there has been a tremendous rise in this area of research.

In fact, some of the world's biggest marketers are now probing consumers' brains utilizing a variety of biometric measurement technologies to determine how minds respond and are influenced by media and marketing stimuli. Nielsen has also recently added this method to their tools.

Knowing the reasons why consumers do something is critical to connecting media investments to sales. It is equally important to know what are the barriers that stop consumers from doing what you want them to do. Understanding the "Why" behind consumer behavior is as important as the who, what, when and where questions combined because it represents the consumer's reaction to the advertising impression.

While advertising may be considered an art, the "Why" factor of media engagement is really a science that is continually expanding with new methods. Brain scanning and many other cutting-edge measurement tools will likely be a growing practice in the media and advertising industry.They can shed light on key consumer insights to help marketers understand their target audience and how best to capture their attention.