research
Forget Advertising, Do Market Research
- by Karl Greenberg , January 17, 2012
This is a bit like recent news from researchers that chocolate can actually help you lose weight: Market research, it turns out, isn't only a means of fine-tuning your
advertising, branding, and packaging, it also boosts consideration of your brand among consumers who participate in the research. Just getting people to give their opinions about your products and
brands makes them more likely to become customers.
Research firm Cint found that 62% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product if their opinion has been sought by brand, and 56% of those polled felt more loyal to a brand if it takes the time to find out their opinion. It's actually too bad that Stockholm-based Cint itself isn't a consumer brand, as its market research is based on a poll of 1,200 people.
Other findings: 90% of consumers prefer to undertake market research via new technology, and people think the retail sector would benefit the most from consumer insight. When asked what made them more inclined to carry out market research for a brand, 55% said "show me the money"; 34% said free products and 6% vouchers. When quizzed on which sector respondents’ believed would benefit most from undertaking consumer insight, retail companies came out top with 41%, followed by banking at 14%, travel and mobile tech at 11%.
Cint reported that the majority of those surveyed, evenly split by gender, get the whole market research zeitgeist, with nearly 70% saying they think brands act on the market research results they achieve, and 77% saying they feel brands listen more to what consumers want now than they did 10 years ago. "This was attributed to a number of factors, primarily increased market competition, the economic climate, and a decrease in customer loyalty towards particular brands," said the firm.
Forget luring consumers into focus groups with finger sandwiches, crudités and wine in plastic cups. People respond to convenience afforded by mobile digital tech. Over 91% said their preference was smartphone, web and SMS. Only 4% of those surveyed would choose to undertake market research by mail as their first choice, and just 1% would like to be surveyed over the telephone.
Forty percent of those surveyed said they would only spend one to five minutes responding to a survey, while 30% would agree to spend six to ten minutes of their time completing a survey. Only 13% said they'd devote 20 minutes getting researched.
“This survey shows that [market research] is as valid a tool as it has ever been, and investing in consumer insight can reap significant rewards in terms of brand loyalty," said Bo Mattsson, CEO of Cint, in a statement.
This supports the general change in marketing, away from "buy me" to relationship building and adding value!
Go forth, do the studies, then have them loaded in Telmar tools for analysis. Telmar can help you easily pull the best insights from the studies.
I completely understand the concept of this study, but how ODD that he does not mention the Cost Per Interview (CPI) to attract customers as being massively expensive.
First time I ever heard a researcher saying you should add research as part of the marketing mix and it not being "tongue in cheek"
Would love to hear what others think about this.
Very good point from Jon there - as tools go, it's hardly the most effective way to paint a picture of a brand, build an engaging experience and so on.
Realistically, if these results gain traction, expect to see brands using their Facebook pages as sounding boards, perhaps missing the point that it's the personal approach (and one of actually seeming interested in the responses) that counts, not pushing out 3 questions publicly to 2 milllion people...
This is ridiculous. the cost is prohibitive.
But even more serious, it demeans all research for consumers. And that takes this critical step that can drive massive success and makes it less effective - potentially leading to a complete breakdown of research.
We've seen this develop already with political "push polling" - message delivery disguised as research. And through the complete research overload and chaos of the web.
The end result is to make it impossible for those of us who rely on finding actionable reality through research.
Of course, this is also based on a survey. So a cynic reading this could say: "So they asked people who already do take surveys, if taking surveys influences brand behavior." Also, we don't know from this article if the statement "62% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product if their opinion has been sought by brand" means 62% SAID they would, or if they correlated this to actual purchase behavior (doubtful). So my hunch--and I oculd be wrong--is that the precise statement should be, "of the less than 5% of consumers who are willing to take surveys in general, 62% SAY that it impacts their brand behaviors. All that cynicism aside, I actually agree with the key point--exposure to brand names in research can influence brand awareness and perceptions. I have seen this anectdotally for years across many research projects. But I have also seen it backfire (companies do a customer survey, then seem to do nothing with the data, and customers get p*ssed off). As for the question of affordability, research costs have plummeted. You can do a very low cost online study with firms like Zoomerang, AYTM, etc for a fraction of the cost it was to do survey research just 5 years ago.