The Market Insights Research Unit provides marketers with cutting edge tools and techniques leading to a profound knowledge of customers’ needs. We also go one step further, devising strategies for how to appeal to the market, and recommending practical steps you can take to meet demand.
Our quantitative research gives an overall analysis of the market, looking at total consumers, market value and other general indicators. This broad introduction allows us to ask the right questions and identify relevant segments while investigating further.
Qualitative research gives us a much more detailed understanding based on segmentation and taking into account consumer behaviour, motivations, competitors, obstacles to purchasing and a wide range of other factors to get a deep and true picture of the market.
We gain these insights by combining online and offline research. We have developed innovative methods for creating research communities, ad hoc discussions and conducting interviews online. But we also value the perspectives offered by traditional methods, arranging roundtable discussions, face-to-face interviews, and detailed surveys.
Sensing, defining, shaping, tracking
Our research can be broken down into four categories.
Sensing the market is the descriptive research phase, allowing us a general understanding of the market, and describing it in terms of volumes and motivations. It’s a process of observation and understanding, typically involving usage and attitude studies.
Having gained an understanding of the market, defining involves segmentation according to a multitude of criteria – this might be consumers who love the brand, those who are neutral, people who shop for value, or those who are motivated by image and status. In every case, segmentation is tailored to your business and your market.
Shaping is the practical process of studying individual market segments and asking questions about how to reach them, the likely effect of pricing strategies, which channel should be used, how packaging will affect sales, whether your branding is appropriate, and a multitude of other variables.
Tracking is the measurement phase, and looks at how sales evolve over time and how consumer react to variations. The information gathered is fed back into recommendations and often results in the need to dig deeper into certain areas to better understand obstacles or unexplained behaviour