Traditional Research
Through the combination of familiar and cutting edge qualitative research methods, you can gain fresh perspectives and insights of the customer, value chain and technology.
Respondent Profiles
Using multiple perspectives throughout your project can add significant value to research findings.
- Friend Dyad or Triad Interviews: a comfortable multi-person discussion on a target topic. Friend pairs are used to encourage comfort and openness
- Creative Customers: research with primary or secondary target customers, who have been proprietarily screened for personal or group creativity
- Supersumers: research with screened creative experts and professionals, who have relevant knowledge in a category or industry
- Lead User: research with those who modify, change or adapt current products to compensate for a product's short-coming
- Research the Researcher: research with non-competing marketing or market research professionals, who are also consumers of your product
- Alternative Perspectives: research with recruited respondents, who display exaggerated behavior, qualities or characteristics of the target market
- Early Adopter: research with experts, trend leaders and people who adopt new technologies prior to cultural acceptance
Location Selection
The research environment can have a direct impact on the amount and type of insights generated from the research.
- Focus Groups & In-depth Interviews: targeted discussion around a topic of interest held at a central viewing facility
- On-site Immersion: a "scavenger hunt" session to give participants multiple touch points with the environment and trends of the target market to provide quick understanding and insight into the customer
- Value Chain Visits: research with key people who touch a product as it moves from raw material to finished good, to understand the value added by each step
Research Techniques
Multiple techniques can be used to generate a further understanding of the consumer, the market and emerging trends that may impact your industry.
- Environmental Scanning: internal and external review of secondary research, periodicals, journals and culture for trend nuggets
- Psyma Search & Self-study: customer homework or post visit work using blogs, diaries, journals, collages, photography or video
- Real Life: longitudinal study with customers through multiple interviews or time spend on-site with the customer
- Role Reversal Groups: creative customers and supersumers take on different roles while participating in a discussion and brainstorming session in order to capitalize on their creative potential
- Projective Metaphor Analogies: techniques designed to elicit a better understanding of the brand perception with customers
Analysis Techniques and Reporting of Research Findings
- Brand Value Pyramid: understand the main attributes, features, emotions and essence of a brand
- Experience Exchange: debrief discussion immediately following site visits to determine key insights, learnings and connections to future product ideas
- Insight Encounter: convergence of data points to identify important themes and highlights from the research
- Data Map: diagram of relational themes and insights
- Hypothesis Development: target recommendations based on data from research, emerging industry trends, thought leader interviews and existing industry knowledge
- Multi-Media Research Report: executive summation and detailed findings brought to life through video, photography and vivid respondent quotations