Binders full of market research and data?
Searching for insights among all the data?
Looking for blind spots to drive brand growth and innovation?
Global Market Research and CONSULTING Firm
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Consumer Packaged Goods
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Food & Beverage
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Healthcare
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Pharmaceuticals
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Multicultural & Diverse audiences across multiple industries
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And more
TESTIMONIALS
"We spent four days doing an amazing process of Kaylie’s and we came away with three products that went to shelf."
“I’ve gone through some research projects in previous decades, and we never really understood how to take action from the findings – so appreciate you leveraging your marketing experience to help us move forward!
-Brent, Brand Manager
-Julie, Marketing Content Manager
“I heard people say things that have stayed with me for a long time.”
- Janet, Market Research Manager
“Our advertising is so much better at motivating consumers because we can communicate higher level benefits we didn’t know about before.”
— Karen, VP of Innovation Advertising
“This was one of the most successful projects we’ve done. The recruitment was impeccable, and the turnaround time was fast.”
-Donna, Chief Marketing Officer
“I was stunned when I learned how people actually shopped for our products. It turns out we have the grocery shelf organized all wrong. I’d call that a real insight.”
-Mark, Senior Brand Manager
What is market research?
Market research (also referred to as marketing research) is the practice of assessing the viability of a new product or service through research carried out directly with current and potential customers.
Market research is both an art and a science. Qualitative research is a journey of discovery to learn as much as possible about a target audience, answer strategic business questions, and gain directional feedback on ideas, opportunities, and hypotheses. Whether the brand sells to businesses or consumers, we approach qualitative research as a conversation with people. The ability to build rapid rapport that leads to juicy insights is a superpower of the moderators at Driven to Succeed.
Quantitative research is a more systematic approach to efficiently gathering feedback at scale with hundreds to thousands of people. Since the base size is generally much higher than qualitative research, results are more conclusive. This approach to research can validate or invalidate hypotheses, giving a business or brand team even greater confidence to make data-based decisions for the business.
What is the main purpose of market research?
Market research gives you vital knowledge about your industry, brand perceptions, competitive environment, and target audience. Brand research can also inform you of how current clients and prospective customers view your business and even competitors. Most importantly, the outcomes of market research should inform innovation, sales, marketing, and business strategy. Several market researchers from Driven to Succeed are classically trained brand managers who have been responsible for P&Ls (profit and loss) of global iconic brands. Our mission is to Translate Insights into ‘So What’ and ‘Now What’™ to help your brand grow, and to help more people thrive.
When should market research be used?
There are many occasions where brand market research is useful:
1. Inspiring innovation
2. Expanding to a new target audience
3. Validating new products and services
4. Confirming that a target audience fits with new products and services
5. Discovering success, failures, and use cases of existing products and services
6. Influencing marketing campaigns
7. Positioning brand relative to competition
8. Measuring brand impressions
9. Deepening consumer and customer intimacy
What are the benefits of market research?
Including marketing research in your company’s strategic planning will equip you to keep pace with rapidly changing customer behavior and evolving environment in which your company operates. The most sophisticated companies use market research to stay abreast of trends, deeply understand their customers, and shape the future using “future-ready research.” After all, as Peter Drucker famously said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Some of the benefits of market research are:
• Builds empathy and a deep understanding of the brand’s target audience
• Helps companies bolster their competitive market position
• Helps identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your competitors
• Discerns potential possibilities and dangers, often referred to as opportunities and threats
• Reduces investment risks through informed, data-based decision making
• Prioritizes and identifies tradeoffs among different options
• Provides revenue estimates to inform financial forecasts
• Makes strategic planning easier
• Aids in identifying new trends
• Identifies customer unmet needs and demands
• Informs sales and marketing messages
Market research is a crucial element of corporate strategy and a key contributor to maintaining or gaining a competitive edge.
What is brand research?
Brand research is a process of combining formal data collection, empirical analysis and open-ended research to analyze both the brand’s reputation and visibility. The results will help your company to better understand the industry and your company's place within it.
To gain insights into how a brand is viewed, brand research examines many aspects of branding, such as your brand identity, vision, goals, mission, and brand positioning relative to competitors. It enables you to determine whether the public's impression of your brand aligns with your company’s vision of the brand and enables you to pinpoint areas that require development and greater distinction. A brand must be desirable, deliverable, and distinctive, that is, it must solve a need that the target audience wants and is willing to pay for, in a way that is unique and better than the competition.
Reputation and visibility together create a brand. Having a strong brand means your company is well-known within its target market and has a solid reputation for a particular area of competence. If your company wants to grow faster and be more profitable, conducting brand research will provide an evidence-based foundation on which to build a solid strategy.
Why is brand research important?
To assess the health of your brand and learn more about how your current and prospective customers view it, brand research is key. You may obtain a competitive edge and improve the positioning of your brand to draw in more customers by continuously performing brand research. Branch research can help your company:
• Measure brand awareness, usage, loyalty, and associations
• Understand consumer sentiment and preference toward your company, brand, and competitors
• Unlock deeper insights, strengths, and risks into your brand’s overall health
• Improve efficiency of marketing and media spending
• Gain clarity about what your customers need to drive innovation
• Identify opportunities to build emotional connections with your customers
What are the types of market research?
There are numerous types of market research, including but not limited to:
Qualitative research
• Focus groups bring together a small group of people to answer open-ended, discovery-oriented questions in a moderated setting
• Ethnography research is the study through direct observation of people in their natural environment, for example, their home
• Digital diary is an “in the moment” user experience research where people use their mobile devices to self-report their in-the-moment activities, thoughts, and feelings around the research topic
• In-depth interviews occur with an individual or circle of friends to deeply explore their points of view, experiences, feelings, and perspectives in person, by phone, or virtually
• Shop-alongs is one-on-one observational research where a moderator interviews a person during a consumer shopping trip
• Concept labs is an iterative process that exposes consumers to a written concept, and gathers feedback on key messages, perceptions, likes, and dislikes so the client team and moderator can make revisions to the concepts in between sets of groups, then repeat the research with a new group of respondents with final concepts.
• In-home usage tests evaluate the use and performance of a product in a setting more consistent with how the product might normally be used by consumers
Quantitative research
• Online and mobile surveys are a set of carefully designed questions to gather feedback from hundreds to thousands of people. Online surveys can be used to measure and gather feedback on:
o New product or service ideas
o Advertising images and videos
o Product claims
o Pricing
o Brand equity
o Brand impressions
o Shelf placement
o Product packaging
o Drivers of purchase
o Consumer segmentation
o Jobs to be done
o Voice of the customer
o Concept tests, which evaluate an idea and measure the appeal, acceptance, and willingness to buy with a brand’s target audience prior to launch
Mixed methods research combines both qualitative and quantitative research methods to gain deep insights through empathy-rich conversations, then validate findings at scale.
What is brand qualitative research?
By carefully studying how consumers feel about a brand, qualitative research provides context on what motivates such feelings and their associations with it. Questioning can further elicit behaviors, brand perception, opinions, and attitudes because qualitative research is frequently a process of engaging in small group, or one-on-one conversations. In qualitative market research, customer motivation is identified by combining careful observation, curious listening, and empathy face-to-face in person or virtually.
Respondents leave clues, and a good brand research moderator can detect the unspoken. At Driven to Succeed, we have a head for investigation and logic, and a heart for empathy and insight. One of our superpowers is having an “AHA detector.” We lead the conversation using a client-approved discussion guide and have a knack for probing deeper to understand what’s not being said. Often, that’s where the richest, most inspiring insights reside to drive growth and innovation for your brand.
What makes a good marketing insight?
Marketing insights give companies a deeper understanding of consumers, customers, competitors, and their respective industries. Unlike data or information, a good marketing insight is relevant, leads to specific actions, and is previously unrealized, leading to “AHA moments” to impact and benefit the business strategy. It combines life and work experiences with data that has been systematically collected and analyzed. Marketing insights are important because they:
• Help companies better understand what their customers want
• Provide improved and more personalized customer experiences
• Allow companies to outsmart their competition instead of outspending them
• Maximize return on investment (ROI) by helping companies make decisions that will reduce costs and boost results
What are key marketing insights?
Marketing insights can be attained through marketing analytic tools and useful reports. Some examples of key marketing insights are by observing:
• How customers respond to your company’s marketing messages and content
• Which paths customers take in their decision-making
• Logical and emotional factors that influence consumer decision-making and brand perception
• Where customers come from
• What influences customers to buy or reject a brand
• Why customers leave for competitors