Modern Markets Demand a Modern Approach to Research

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How to blend always-on quantitative and qualitative market research to gain deeper consumer insights.

No market is immune to change, and if we’ve learned anything in the past year it’s that change can come quickly, drastically, and in unexpected ways. For that reason, brands need an agile market research strategy that provides meaningful insights about changing attitudes and emerging behavioral patterns—as they’re beginning to take hold. 

So how do you build a strategy that provides deep consumer insights while responding to unpredictable, ever-changing markets? 

At Suzy, we’ve found that a four-step agile research approach provides our clients with everything they need to respond to today’s unique challenges. When executed correctly, every step of this framework reveals crucial insights about consumers. 

Today we’re going to look at the first step in that framework: foundational learning. 

Gain a Deep Understanding of Consumers With Always-On Surveys

During the foundational learning stage, the focus should be on knowing exactly who your target consumers are. There’s no better source for this information than consumers themselves. Historically, research projects require teams to brief vendors to conduct studies with their consumers. Those traditional methods can take up to a month to fully build and execute—not exactly agile, is it?

The trick is building a consumer panel that is tailored to your business category, an accurate reflection of consumer needs, and ready to go at a moment’s notice. 

“I don't want to do a big study that's going to take me six months, that lays out the whole landscape because guess what? The consumer, especially in these rapidly changing times, their behavior may have shifted,” explains Lisa Saxon Reed, Global Director of Sensory for Mars Wrigley. “The question I had six months ago may not be the question I have today to move the business forward. Why can't I just ask the question, get the answer, and get on with it? And that's, to me, why speed is so important to drive our business today.”

Ask the Right Questions, Gain the Right Insights

Building consumer panels that reflect your brand’s category is only the start. 

Once you have access to a sample that reflects your market, it’s time to start gathering consumer insights—on-demand, and in real-time. 

Here you want to focus on areas that provide you with the most valuable insights into your consumers. Things like demographics, brand share, brand awareness, brand consideration, brand usage, and retail channel interaction. 

Use in-depth surveys to get consumer impressions on your ideas, concepts, and products. Learn if you’re meeting consumer needs and continue iterating and testing until you get the results you need to know you can successfully reach your market. 

“A big benefit is having those built-in target consumers that we can not just talk to once, but we can follow up with when we need additional details that we didn’t think about the first time,” says Patrick Egan, Director of Strategy, Insights, and Analytics at Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. 

This strategy allows you to leverage qual to identify important consumer behaviors, and quant to measure the importance of those behaviors. Most importantly, the on-demand nature provides you with the agility you need to stay ahead of the market as it continues to change.

Foundational Learning in Action

Our customers have seen great success using this foundational learning strategy in their consumer research projects. 

Recently, a pet food manufacturer needed to launch a new line of products. The brand first used Suzy surveys to understand what would drive purchasing behavior among their consumers and then paired the findings with Suzy Live interviews to identify which behaviors were the most important. 

They learned that their consumers' primary motivator to buy was “a sense of confidence” that any pet food they buy would maintain their pet’s overall wellness. Knowing that, the brand was able to develop products with healthier ingredients—and place those wellness benefits front-and-center in their marketing campaigns.

Interested in learning more about building an agile, on-demand market research strategy? Read more in our new eBook.