Recent electoral and referendum upsets on both side of the Atlantic have caused many to question how effective polling and market research can be. In these uncertain times, thanks to the impact of social media, the public’s attitudes towards brands and issues are more unpredictable and complex.
Brands face uncertainty and are more likely to be broadsided by unexpected events. Consider the damage to its reputation that United Airlines suffered following the extraordinary and unhappy experience of just one customer.
“Technology has changed the entire branding paradigm,” explains Jamin Brazil, chief executive of FocusVision, a leading global provider of quantitative and qualitative technology solutions to the market research industry. It provides an online survey platform, research facility, video streaming, webcam focus groups, ethnography streaming, panel management and mobile device usability studies.
“Previously brands were essentially whatever they told customers about themselves. Now it’s what those consumers are saying about brands that really matters. Today, the customer is driving the brand narrative,” says Mr Brazil.
He cites the US election campaign last year as an example of how organisations need to gain a better, deeper, most nuanced understanding of their customers. “Hillary Clinton’s campaign was based almost entirely on survey data,” he says. “But Barak Obama’s campaigns had combined surveys, focus groups and one-to-one interviews. As a result, the Clinton team missed out because even though they got the figures and answered the ‘what’ question, they never got close enough to voters to understand why they felt the way they did.”
Similarly, using quantitative polling alone United Airlines would have understood that a single customer was unhappy, but effective qualitative research was needed to show the effect this one event was having on the airline’s brand image.
Meanwhile, in the current economic climate brands need to take products to market more quickly than ever and chief marketing officers (CMOs) are being challenged to do more with less. And yet they cannot afford to make mistakes with their marketing strategies. After all, United Airlines aside, the media is full of examples where even well-established companies have misjudged their audiences and suffered as a result.
In this fast-changing marketplace, the smartest brands and most successful companies are those that are developing better emotional intelligence and, says Mr Brazil, bringing the voice of the consumer into the boardroom.
“We did some work with eBay, for instance, to try and understand why consumers choose it over other online retailers and what eBay needs to do to keep it that way,” he explains. “The traditional A/B testing alone will only show you which option customers prefer. However, we helped eBay to understand why they opted for one instead of the other.”
As well as quantitative testing, FocusVision created a montage of video interviews with consumers from qualitative testing work. These videos articulated key points from the polling data so board members were able to connect with their customers.
“They could put a face to the data and humanise it,” says Mr Brazil. “This combination of qualitative and quantitative data allows you to empathise with the customer, to connect with them and, very importantly, to relate to them. And it’s this ability to relate to customers that will define to right to win. The actions you need to take suddenly become crystal clear.”
To combine qualitative and quantitative market research to create these richer, more useful insights and actionable information, shrewd CMOs are adopting new technology to allow them to carry out a variety of different market research projects more quickly and cost effectively, while also getting closer to their customers and asking the “why” questions.
“Technology is democratising the availability of data,” says Mr Brazil. At FocusVision’s head office, the receptionist regularly carries out research projects to see how the office is running and to check staff are happy with their environment. “I’ll also carry out surveys – it’s so quick and easy these days. Anyone can do it and then use the results,” he says.
This combination of qualitative and quantitative data allows you to empathise with the customer, to connect with them and, very importantly, to relate to them
More CMOs, for instance, are using FocusVision’s Revelation product. A hybrid qualitative and quantitative platform, which is employed by Facebook and Proctor & Gamble among others, it helps researchers to capture in-the-moment behaviour, emotions and decisions that provide essential insights. “It’s asynchronous, so consumers can come back to it and respond to questions a few hours later if that suits them,” says Mr Brazil.
Its social web-inspired design provides easy and intuitive interaction to create more engaging, enjoyable and natural experiences for consumers while delivering more robust insights. For instance, participants can take part in daily or weekly diaries, upload photos, and document their lives and behaviour through day-in-the-life exercises. Researchers receive in-the-moment insights, which are unfiltered and unaffected by being remembered.
“You can ask consumers to take a photo of the cereal aisle in their local supermarket, for instance, to get a clearer picture of the market,” says Mr Brazil. “You might discover that the eye-level shelves are where most people are buying their cereal, even though consumers probably wouldn’t be aware of this fact themselves. You can hear the customer’s comments while literally seeing their interaction with products or environments.”
Another increasingly popular product is FV Video Insights. This allows researchers to capture consumer focus groups with a 360-degree camera. “Facial recognition technology pulls out the emotional outliers – the positives and negatives. From this you can generate a highlight reel,” says Mr Brazil.
“Most brands conduct surveys regularly these days. But they need to get better at getting quickly to the ‘why’ question to really understand their customers and to better control their brand perception – something that’s more important than ever these days.”
For more information please visit www.focusvision.com
