And day two of IIeX 2022 in Amsterdam has come to a close! Though I’m sad to say good-bye to everyone, I am happy to return home with lots of intriguing ideas to ponder (plus a very lovely watercolour produced by Anna Wijnands). Have a read through and then feel free to get in touch with me or any of the speakers with your thoughts. See you on the road soon!
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Inclusive Communities Build on C-Creation, Equity and Collabs

Hayel Wartemberg, Co-Founder, Word on the Curb; Isabelle Cotton, Senior Research Manager, Word on the Curb

• Despite what the media keep on repeating, blanket generalizations about Gen Z are not accurate – not all young people are sustainability experts, not all are activists, and not all even know or agree on what Gen Z is. How much do 8 year olds really have in common with 20 year olds? Remember that cohorts are very broad brushstrokes that only explain a small piece of the puzzle.

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We Better Behave! Why Sustainability? Why Now?

Christian Niederauer, Global Head of Insights, Colgate-Palmolive; Michael Swaisland, Head of Insights & Analytics, Mattel; Andrea Gonçalves da Silva, Senior Market Intelligence Manager, Philips; Anders Bengtsson, Founder, Protobrand; Christian Dössel, SVP, Behaviorally

• Sustainability is not all or nothing. Brands can start small at any stage of the supply chain, energy usage, or packaging, and make bigger changes later. If you can’t reduce packaging, you can use different packaging and make it multi-purpose. Think about what you would do differently if you were starting from scratch and aim for those changes. And, go above and beyond legal requirements.

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We Better Behave! Being Sustainable & Living a Good Life: Can this Unite?

Edwin Taborda, Global Head of Insights, Electrolux; Anna Martynova, Research Manager and Analyst, Protobrand

• Brands can contribute to people having better lives by helping them gain more experiences rather than more stuff. People expect brands to have the minimum requirements (e.g., works well) so now brands can focus on longer lasting products that help people consumer less and live better. It can also include giving people the tools to change long-term habits into more sustainable behaviors (e.g., use more often, recycle more often).

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We Better Behave! 3 Pillars for Brands to Chart a New Course Towards Sustainability

Monica Tenorio, Vice President, Insights & Analytics, PepsiCo Europe; Crispin Beale, Group President, Behaviorally

• Brands that have a direct link to unhealthy lifestyles (e.g., sugary drinks) have a responsibility to help people do better. This can be by focusing on regenerative agriculture, ethically sourced and sustainable materials, and enabling a circular economy. These brands should offer positive choices for people and planet via a balanced portfolio.

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We Better Behave! Looking at the Future of Sustainability

Stephen Donajgrodzki, Director Behavioral Science, Kellogg Company; Philippe Coquelle, Head of Insights, Europe, Barilla; Alex Peters, Global Insights Lead, Purpose, Reckitt; Jennifer Picard, Head of Center of Excellence for Mix Optimization – Global Consumer Insights, Pernod-Ricard; Anders Bengtsson, Founder, Protobrand; Christian Dössel, SVP, Behaviorally

• Philippe Coquelle shared a fantastic story about sustainability. They wanted to switch from an all plastic package for their pasta to a paper package with a small plastic window. But consumers weren’t having it. They’ve always bought a solid plastic bag that let them see all the pasta and nothing else would do. Barilla knew they’d take a hit by moving to a paper package and lose market share. However, as a brand, you have to know what you stand for and what you want to achieve with your brand. Sometimes your insights will say one thing but your mission and vision will lead you in a different direction. And that’s ok. In fact, in this case, it’s great. (This shopper is immensely appreciative!)
  

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Real-Time CX Insights: How IKEA Listens, Understands, and Acts

Olga Smits-Mohlmann, Insights Professional, IKEA; Tim Stierman, Product Owner PulseCX, IKEA

• Dashboards offer massive cost savings over traditional surveys. Where a few people may review a report and then put it away, IKEA sees thousands of people use their dashboard every week. Imagine the equivalent costs of 1 million completes per month. They’re dashboard is a minimum viable product, and they expect to try and fail fast. As their founder says, “Only while sleeping, one makes no mistakes.”

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Kitchen Sink Dramas: Lifting a Veil on Food Hygiene

Daniel Clay, Managing Partner, Basis Social; Darren Bhattachary, CEO, Basis Social; Alice Rayner, Senior Social Science Research Officer, Food Standards Agency; Dan Jenkins, Senior Client Strategy Director, Lifestream; Helen Heard, Senior Social Science Research Officer, Food Standards Agency

• “Always on” video ethnography reveals human behaviors that would never otherwise be captured. People don’t know what their household members did in the room immediately before they did something, nor do they remember all the subtle behaviors that are 100% rote and unattended to. It makes it far easier to identify and consequently prevent safety issues, such as cross-contamination that you’re not even aware of. Obviously, this type of research requires extreme attention to ethics, privacy, and duty of care should dangerous behaviors be recorded.

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Learn more from our other blog posts

• Trackers Suck. Here’s how to fix them.
• 8 Reasons to Invest in a Hybrid DIY Market Research Team
• Everything You Need to Know about Conducting Effective Secondary Research

Hello from Amsterdam!

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I’m thrilled to be back at in-person conferences again. Amsterdam in the summertime is a hard to beat but IIeX offered lots of excellent sessions (and some tasty treats!) today. I’ve gathered just a few of my favourite takeaways below. Enjoy!

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Why Market Researchers Should Embrace the UX Research Opportunity

Mike Stevens, Insight Platforms; Helen Devine, The Economist

• UX research is somewhat different from market research in that it is faster and closer to the end product. The need to be agile is a good reminder that researchers can stray from the extreme structure of formal research and be less polished reports. Good research can use guerrilla recruiting and fast interactions.

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Why We Should Kill NPS (and What to Use Instead)

Nyssa Packard, Senior Director, Insights, Skyscanner

• NPS scores are used widely yet disliked even more widely. No one knows what a good score and those supposedly “good” are meaningless. The same number can be achieved from a multitude of good and bad scenarios, and can represent completely opposite outcomes depending on the cultural bias it was created within. You are far better to use a measure that has meaning for the stage in which your brand lies, e.g., purchase, loyalty, retention. Definitely a talk that is worth getting the paper!

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The New Creator Economy: How Data Inspires Ideas

Steve Phillips, CEO, Zappi; Amanda Seal, Global CMI Director, Mars Petcare

• As behavioural measures have become vastly easier to collect, store, and analyze, methodologies like questionnaires and groups have become less essential. However, there is a place for all types of research. Where transactional and loyalty data are fantastic for post-launch brands, questionnaires and groups are fantastic for pre-launch brands.

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Let’s Talk about the Elephant in the Brain: How Brands Can Tackle Diversity in their Communications

Christian Niederauer, Global Head of Insights, Colgate-Palmolive; Cristina de Balanzo, Board Director, Walnut Unlimited

• Incorporating people with disabilities in your advertising can increase sales and brand affinity. The trick is people feel compelled to say positive things even when they don’t like the ad. Sometimes, simply changing the narrative around the videos (rather than the videos themselves) is enough to shift weak perceptions into positive perceptions.

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The Perfect Glass of Wine: 7 Insights From a Parallel World

Kristin Hickey, Founder, CEO, Kubi Kalloo

• Be open to accidents – when things go wrong, look on the bright side and you’re sure to discover positive outcomes and learnings for next tie. Getting dirty into the details is good – it means you know every piece and can optimize the processes. And, even when you do know all the pieces of the process, let the experts tell the story – they know how to serve up a story that will generate excitement and action. (Plus several more insights. Ask for the paper 🙂

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Navigating the Crisis: Pricing Sensitivity Amid Inflationary Pressures

Joris de Bruyne, Partner, EyeSee; Anne-Lise Flaction, Head of Insights Cereal, Nestle

• Even with higher prices, people are more loyal to brands that touch their skin (e.g., skin cream, shampoo) or go inside their bodies (e.g., food, medication) because the risk (of wasting a disliked product) is too great to try other brands. Decreasing the volume of a package is an effective way to keep a price lower when all the competitive packages are a different size. Bacon is an anomaly because a higher price is associated with better quality.

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Learn more from our other blog posts

• NewMR Webinar with Annie Pettit: Statistics are dead. Long live statistics!
• Getting started with consumer, customer, and market segmentation
• 8 Engaging Question Types to Improve Participants’ Survey Taking Experience

Most questionnaires have at least a couple open ends or verbatims in them. Places where research participants can share their thoughts or opinions in a text box instead of clicking on radio buttons or checkboxes.

When they get the final dataset, researchers who are quantitative at heart might quickly scan those verbatims to identify poor quality answers, delete those entire completed questionnaires, and then proceed directly to the quantitative analysis.

Is that the best use of verbatims? Why do we cast those questions aside so quickly? Well, there are lots of reasons but let’s start with two.

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Quantitative analysis is easy

Quantitative questions are much easier to count and summarize. You can say that a specific number of people clicked in a specific box to endorse a specific idea. You can run statistical tests, create charts and tables, and quickly see side-by-side whether there are differences of opinion among different people. It’s fast, easy, and can be done with minimal thinking – just follow the rules.

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Qualitative analysis is less precise

On the other hand, qualitative questions generate less precise answers. Words have nuance and diverse meanings depending on your background, experience, and understanding of the language at hand. It’s really hard to count and summarize opinions when 100 people say 100 different things. Coding and analyzing those answers takes a lot of time, particularly if multiple coders need to agree on an end result. Besides, some of the answers are garbage because some people don’t like typing or they have a hard time articulating their thoughts.

Is that a fair summary though?

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Imperfect precision plagues all question types

Of course not. Qualitative questions aren’t the only ones plagued with precision and validity issues. EVERY type of question, qual or quant, has it’s own set of issues affect precision, validity, and reliability.

Let’s consider the process a person takes to answer a very simple quantitative question, for example, “What kind of milk did you buy last week?”

• They must interpret the words in the question: Could “you” be my partner or other household members? Does “last week” mean the last 7 days or this calendar week? Does it include baby formula? What about milk that was given to me, not bought? What if I bought milk 8 days ago?
• They must interpret the words in the potential answers: Could “dairy milk” mean goat milk? Could “plant milk” mean nut milk? Does it include powdered milk? Does “other” include 8 days ago and never?
• They must interpret the instructions: Does “Please specify” mean I need to share the brand name and the person who bought it and the date they bought it?
• They must think about their own perspective related to that idea: Am I comfortable sharing this information? Do I have enough details to answer this question?
• They must translate their answer into one that comes closest as possible to one of the existing options. And do this without accidentally choosing an answer in the wrong row or column.

 

For such a simple question about buying milk, there’s a lot of room for interpretation and misinterpretation. There’s a lot of room for imprecision. A lot of room for error. As much as we’d like to think there’s a cut and dry answer, that’s simply not the case for everyone.

Even the most simple quantitative questions come with nuance and imprecision.

Open ends are valuable work

Leveraging open-ends means that additional work falls into the hands of the researcher. WE must take the time to interpret answers, grasp the intended meaning, and properly categorize them. That’s a lot of work, especially when 1000 people have filled out an open-end.

At the same time, though, open-ends give participants the opportunity to share their thoughts in a way that truly reflects their whole self.

• They can use swear words to demonstrate the intensity of their emotions. This is far better than seeing a 5 out of 5 on a Likert scale.
• They can use slang to reveal their culture and social experiences. This is far better than inferring from their employment and education.
• They can talk about issues that didn’t occur to you because your background, culture, and experience are completely different than theirs. This is true insight!

And, using open-ends shows participants we really do respect and value their opinions.

What’s Next?

Though incorporating open-ends requires additional time for analysis and coding, they have essential benefits for both the researcher and the participant. We can’t avoid using them because they aren’t “precise” or they aren’t “useful.” They are an essential part of the wise researcher’s toolkit. It’s time to cast aside our quantitative tendencies and truly embrace the open-end answers.

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Qualitative research podcasts You Might Like

• Between the Data – NVivo Podcast Series
• The New Mainstream Podcast
• Ethnography Atelier Podcast
• Qualitative Conversations
• The Qualitative Escape
• Research with Dr. Anil
• An Eye For Detail

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Qualitative research conferences You Might Like

• QUAL360 North America, March
• International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, May
• QRCA Annual Conference, May
• The Qualitatives, June

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Learn more from our qualitative research case studies

• Face-to-Face On-Site Medical Leader Interviews – A B2B interview case study
• Sentiment and Content Analysis of Qualitative Consumer Comments – A food survey + text analysis case study
• Sentiment and Content Analysis of Qualitative Hiring Data | A qualitative research case study

Are you launching a start-up? Then I bet you have hundreds of questions about your potential product and your target audience.

From conceptualization to market sizing and scaling, innumerable questions must be answered in order to build a solid foundation for a successful business.  Fortunately, a full range of qualitative and quantitative research, primary and secondary research, and data analytics solutions exist to help you discover actionable answers to those questions throughout the entire process.

During the initial conceptualization stage, you’ll need to gain a comprehensive and unbiased understanding of the problem and potential solutions. You’ll also need to understand the tangents, side-conversations, and unspoken truths and myths that people won’t necessarily share with just anyone. To gain these types of insights from your target audience, qualitative research will be your go-to method.

Numerous qualitative techniques can help you at this point so let’s start by learning about in-depth, individual interviews.

What are individual interviews?

As the name suggests, individual interviews are in-depth conversations between a trained moderator and one other person. If the product or service is specifically designed for 2 or 3 people to use together, dyads or triads with colleagues, best friends, children, partners, or spouses may be used as well.

Key to this technique is working with a trained moderator. Although everyone has experience chatting with consumers, customers, or clients on a one to one basis, a research interview is completely different from a “chat” or “conversation.”

Trained moderators have unique skills which include understanding and responding to the body language of the person they’re interviewing. They have learned how and when to use specific language to encourage someone to share more detailed and personal insights. And, most importantly, they actively strive to prevent bias from unconsciously creeping into a conversation.

Interviews are an excellent way to deeply connect with your target audience and get a first-hand look into their emotional and physical real world. Interviews will allow you to:

• Spend meaningful time with them such that they open up about their personal habits, behaviors, needs, drivers, emotions, and opinions.
• Watch and listen to them struggle using unsuitable, existing products and services in their real world, whether that’s in their home, school, office, or gym.
• Watch and listen to them as they attempt to shop for alternative products using both online and offline channels.

These observations will guide you towards a thorough and unbiased understanding of what the problems and required solutions really are.

What follows are key questions that an interviewer might address during the initial, conceptualization stage.

How are people emotionally connected to the problem?

• How do you feel about this situation? What types of emotions do you have dealing with this situation? How strong are those emotions?
• How does this situation interact with different aspects of your life – at home, at work, with your kids or parents?
  
• How do you feel about the available alternatives or lack of alternatives? How do you compensate for the lack of easily accessible alternatives?
• What is your emotional state when you really need an alternative and can’t find one?
• How do your personal finances and resources fit into finding alternatives?

Who are the primary and secondary stakeholders?

• Who uses or needs the product? Who else might use it if they saw it lying around? Who would do the shopping for it? Who would approve and pay for it? Who would ensure the product gets used? Who would help you use the product and how would they help you use it?
• What frustrations and pain points do you have during the situation? What are the pain points of people who must find alternative options and pay for alternatives for you?
• Who is negatively and positively affected by this situation being unresolved?

What alternative solutions are being used now?

• What compromises do you make regarding this situation?
• What do you wish you could do? How would you solve the situation?
• How do you find and learn about potential alternatives?
  
• How do you physically manipulate or use current products? What other items do you use the product with? What do you buy to support using the current product?
• Where do you use current and alternative products? How do you use them?
• Where do you store current products and packages? What are your fears about storing them?

What’s Next?

During the conceptualization stage, your main goal is to listen and understand the problem without bias. You need to truly hear people and learn about their personal experiences so that you can identify both major and minor problems that may need to be solved. Individual interviews are the perfect solution for understanding people’s most intimate perceptions and behaviors. You’ll build a broad and deep baseline for what the key problems are and the range of major and minor issues that need to be resolved.

If you’re ready to deeply understand your target audience with individual interviews, please get in touch with us. We’d love to help you grow your start-up into a successful business! Email your questions about gathering information to support your startup to our research experts using Projects at E2Eresearch dot com.

Learn more from our case studies

• Building a Strategic Business Plan Grounded in Industry Data – A pharmaceutical data analytics case study
• Creating a Beverage Launch Strategy in a Competitive Market – A beverage desk research case study
• Developing a New Nutritional Pasta Product – A survey + desk research case study
• Identifying Optimum Price Corridors to Predict Volume Share – An advertising price simulator case study

Podcasts You Might Like

• Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman
• The Tim Ferriss Show
• Business Wars with David Brown
• How I Built This with Guy Raz

Books You Might Like

• What It Takes: How I Built a $100 Million Business Against the Odds Hardcover by Raegan Moya-Jones
• The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: It’s Your Turn to #Jointheride Hardcover by Darren Hardy
• What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 – 10th Anniversary Edition: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World by Tina Seelig

Conferences You Might Like

• CES Consumer Technology Association (January)
• AWE (June)
• Collision Conference (June)
• The Startup Conference (May)
• SaaStr Annual (September)

It’s been a long two years, and we’re ready to reconnect at Quirk’s London on May 4 and 5!

What have you been up to? What’s new and cool in your world? What challenges have you overcome and how have you made great strides? Let’s learn from each other!

From our end, we’re eager to share our newest solutions to help you answer your research questions more effectively and efficiently!

Our Raven dashboards are ready to make data analysis easier and more accessible to both researchers and senior leaders. Whether you’ve got a small concept test or gigabytes of data, Raven is an affordable and fun way to visualize research data from brand trackers, campaign tests, U&As, and much more.

With quick filtering, crosstabs, and exportable charting, you’ll love how easy Raven is to use.

Learn more about Raven by clicking here or ask us for an in-person demo in London!

Say hi to the E2E Research team in person!

Rupa Raje, CEO

Rupa leads our team of more than 200 experts, including researchers, analysts, and statisticians, through thick and thin to help our clients understand buyers, brands, and businesses, and become more successful. If you’re a mountain climber, come chat about your most impressive climb. Or, come compare notes about maintaining an orchard of mangoes, guavas, and bananas!

Yogesh Rana, COO

Yogesh is our chief geekologist who inspires his expert engineers and developers to bring all of our new products to life. That includes conceptualizing and building Raven, our brand new, easy to use dashboard. If you have recent, peer-reviewed data  how to grow the best sugarcane and mushrooms, come say hi to Yogesh!

Annie Pettit, PhD, CRO NA

Annie, sometimes known as LoveStats, loves to get into the nitty gritty of data quality and participant engagement. She’s always ready to talk about how researchers can connect in more personal ways with participants to help them share more valid and reliable data. And if you want to talk ukuleles, ASL (American Sign Language), or test out every single sweet at the snack table, she’s ready for that too!

We know not everyone feels the same way right now. Rest assured, our team is fully vaccinated and happy to wear a mask indoors and out! We want you to feel safe AND be safe. Let us know how we can do that for you.

See you soon!

There’s more to creating a successful food or beverage product than selling something you love eating or drinking. Consumers are always on the lookout for food and beverage options that are scrumptious but also better quality, healthier, affordable and easily available.

If you’re hoping to move a product from successful with kids in your household to successful with kids in your country, many questions need to be identified, answered, and acted on. This list of questions focused around the five Ps will ensure you gather the information you need to get there.

Better Understand the Product: Nutrition, sensory, packaging

At the heart of a successful food or beverage business is a carefully researched and designed product that meets the key needs of its target audience – yes, even food and beverages products have key needs. By conducting well designed surveys and product/sensory tests via IHUTs or Central Location Tests, you can understand:

• What nutritional, sensory, or emotional needs are your shoppers and consumers trying to meet and what unmet needs need additional development?
• How is the food or beverage used to meet unexpected needs such that new audiences could be targeted? E.g., are slow foods being converted into fast foods, are meat foods being converted into meat-free foods, are solid foods being converted into drinkable foods?
  
• What features, whether sensory, emotional, packaging or otherwise, of the product are unique within the broader, competitive category and how could they serve as your unique selling points?
• How are the package and eating implements “correctly” and “incorrectly” used suggesting needs for redesign or improvements?
• Does the memorability of your food or beverage require improvements in terms of its sensory features, packaging, branding, colors, or logos?
• Should certain product lines be expanded or reduced based on growing or decreasing market needs?

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    Review a product case study:

• Developing a New Nutritional Pasta Product – A survey + desk research case study
• Identifying An Optimal Set of Flavor Variants to Achieve Incremental Reach – Case Study
• Choosing a Set of Flavors to Minimize Substitutions – A food survey + data analytics case study
• Fine Tuning New Personal Care Products with JAR Analysis – A sensory IHUT case study
• Sentiment and Content Analysis of Qualitative Consumer Comments – A food survey + text analysis case study

Better Understand the People: Cooks, bakers, shoppers, eaters, snackers, caregivers, meal planners, meal preppers

Before a new food or beverage product is even launched, it’s important to understand the perceptions of all key stakeholders. From eaters to shoppers and those who will be preparing or recommending the product, it’s imperative that each group understand the benefits and drawbacks of the product to ensure maximum success. Using questionnaires, business intelligence, and secondary research, you can understand a number of key questions:

• Who are your target shoppers and consumers in terms of their demographic, psychographic, family, social, economic, and health characteristics?
• Which stakeholders come into contact with your food or beverage e.g., caregivers, shoppers, cooks, bakers, eaters, snackers, meal planners, meal preppers?
• Which stakeholders will influence your target audience to consider using or buying food and beverages?
• What does each stakeholder group need, want, feel, and prefer, and how do their needs conflict with each other?
• What drives each key stakeholder group to choose, use, buy, and recommend your brand vs competitive brands?
• How does the shopper journey evolve from discovering a need through to shopping, comparing, and buying while also considering nutritional, emotional, financial, and social needs at each stage?
• What personal histories and experiences do people have with the food or beverage product and category including with your brand and competitive brands?

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    Review a stakeholder case study

• Measuring Consumer Preferences for Successful Ready-To-Eat Development | A Sensory Research Case Study
• Identifying Target Audiences of Two New Tea Variants – An IHUT + JAR analysis case study

Better Understand Placement, Industry, and Competitive Market Space

Every food and beverage product exists within a broad ecosystem of competitive brands and companies. By conducting engaging questionnaires or secondary desk research, you can understand a wide range of business problems such as:

• Who are your primary and secondary competitors locally, globally, and virtually?
• What sensory, product, physical, emotional, social, and economic needs is the market failing to address?
• How has the competitive landscape changed over the last year and how might the food and beverage category evolve over the next 3 to 5 years within your region and potential expansion regions?
• Where are the white spaces to develop new food and beverages, or new service locations?
• Can secondary data help you understand how large your existing market is and how large it could be while still remaining profitable?

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   Review a market case study 

• Benchmarking Brand Awareness and Competitive Brand Space – A consumer food survey case study
• Tracking Customer Satisfaction Across 8 Countries – A consumer food survey case study
• Creating a Beverage Launch Strategy in a Competitive Market – A beverage desk research case study

Better Understand Promotions, Advertising, and Campaigns

With a great food or beverage innovation and a well understand target audience, a marketing campaign is often required to reach out to a wider audience and introduce the masses to your offering. Using questionnaires or data analytics, a number of key questions can be answered:

• Which online and offline information channels do your consumers and shoppers use to learn about new food and beverages, gather recommendations, or make purchases?
• What types of messaging would be most successful at reaching your target audience and differentiating your product from competitive products?
• What types of ads would be most effective with each of your audience segments when considering likability, meaningfulness, believability and the likelihood to act?
• What types of food and beverage marketing campaigns are more likely to be successful?
• What types of brands, companies, or influencers would your consumers and buyers like to see incorporated in an integrated marketing campaign?
• Which food and beverage concepts are most memorable and would generate the most action from your target audience?

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   Review an advertising case study:

• Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Campaign with Brand and Message Recall – A consumer media survey case study
• Identifying Optimum Price Corridors to Predict Volume Share – An advertising price simulator case study

Create A Fair and Profitable Pricing Strategy

There is more to pricing than picking a number that will generate profit. A price that is too high can reduce recommendations from friends and family. A price that is too low leaves achievable profit on the table. A final price can only be determined by understanding your true profit margin, market pricing, and stakeholder needs. To build the most effective pricing strategy for your new food or beverage, conduct the appropriate surveys, interviews, and secondary research first.

• Based on secondary research, how are competitive products on the market currently priced?
• Using questionnaire data, what type of pricing strategy is most appealing to shoppers?
• What type of pricing strategy would facilitate product recommendations from influential friends and family?
• Which user segment has the least and the greatest revenue potential?
• Based on a Conjoint or MaxDiff questionnaire, which product features drive higher and lower prices?
• What type of pricing strategy is fair and accessible versus out of reach to lower income people vs higher income people?

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   Review a pricing case study

• Optimizing Trade Promotion Spends with a Pricing Simulator – A food business analytics and price simulator case study
• Improving Operational Effectiveness at a CPG Company – A retail B2B survey case study
• Identifying Optimum Price Corridors to Predict Volume Share – An advertising price simulator case study

Conclusion

Creating a successful food or beverage product requires a foundation of well designed and executed research coupled with well actioned research results. Whether you’re tasked with supporting the growth of an innovative cannabis beverage or helping a company understand the different needs of buyers and consumers, our team has years of experience helping researchers, marketers, and brand managers generate great quality food and beverage data and insights. Please email your project specifications to our research experts using Projects at E2Eresearch dot com. We’d love to help you convert your enigmas to enlightenment!

 Learn at upcoming food and beverage industry conferences

• Food and Beverages, London, March 9 to 10, 2022
• International Conference on Food Marketing and Tourism, London, March 11-12, 2022
• Food Marketing Conference, Michigan, March 22 to 23, 2022
• Food 2.0 Conference, Las Vegas, April 11 to 13, 2022
• Beverage Forum, Chicago, April 28 to 29, 2022
• International Conference on Food Marketing and Tourism, Netherlands, May 16-17, 2022
• Food & Drink Trends & Innovations, London, May 18, 2022
• Food and Beverage Packaging, Spain, June 13 to 14
• International Food Marketing Research Symposium, Texas, June 14 to 16, 2022
• The Ecommerce & Digital Marketing Conference for Food & Beverage, Austin, July 25 to 26, 2022
• Food Marketing Institute Annual Business Conference, Chicago, September 11 to 14, 2022

Listen to some great podcasts about food and beverage marketing

• A Fresh Perspective Food News with Jenny Kolzer (Player.fm)
• Beyond the Shelf
• Dennis Knows Food with Luke LaBree (Player.fm)
• Food Biz Wiz with Allie Ball
• Real Food Brands Marketing Podcast with Katie Mleziva (Spotify)
• Restaurant Marketing School with Josh Kopel (Player.fm)
• Restauranttopia with David Ross, Brian Seitz, and Anthony Hamilton
• Secret Sauce – Restaurant Marketing Podcast with James Eling (Spotify)
• The Experiential Table with Cynthia Samanian (Player.fm)
• The Insatiable Appetite
• The Virginia Foodie with Georgiana Dearing (Player.fm)

Launched this year by Significant Insights, the Global 30 under 30 award aims to identify the next generation of global leaders who are on the verge of making it big in research and insights.

I was delighted to be asked to join the team of 15 judges from 13 countries! I knew it would be a tough job, but I didn’t realize just how difficult it would be to review submissions and identify just 30 people from so many amazing nominations.

This inaugural year, our nominees represent 16 countries including, among others, Australia, Canada, Germany, Poland, UK, and USA. There are nearly 200 countries in the world so that leaves a lot of room for growth next year!

Here’s what I’ve seen.

Our young people are busy founding brand new research and analytics companies, building new company functions and services leading to incremental revenue growth, leading multi-country global projects, speaking at conferences, training colleagues, and earning multiple promotions more quickly than you can imagine.

They’re focused on improving work environments for themselves and their colleagues. This includes launching and building diversity and equity programs, working on corporate responsibility programs, and creating advisory boards to ensure everyone has a voice.

Outside of their own company, they’re active members of the insights and analytics community. Some of them have already served as leaders and organizers for their local insights and research association, and they’re keen to promote our industry to other young people. They’re even solidifying their commitment to our industry by earning advanced degrees in market research.

And perhaps most importantly, our young people care tremendously about the communities around them. They volunteer so much of their time to create a better world whether that’s mentoring children and young people, supporting mental health associations, or advocating for sustainability and diversity.

It’s been a difficult year for many people but it looks like nothing is hold back this group of amazing people.

The winners will be announced on November 30, 2021. Good luck to each and every one of you. We’ll be watching your successes in years to come!

NewMR hosted their event focusing on New Thinking on Wednesday, November 10, 10am Eastern. We’re happy to share all three recordings below. Enjoy!

Annie Pettit, E2E Research: Statistics are dead. Long live statistics!

• It’s time to stop letting statistics do the thinking for us. I’ll share how it’s finally time to give up on statistics and learn how to interpret and action on research results in more impactful ways.

Ray Poynter, Potentiate and NewMR: The Implications of Democratising Insights for Research

• 50% of insight projects are conducted internally by clients. Research is being democratised, a shift enabled by the explosion in the number of platforms. Ray will highlight the implications of more research being conducted by people who may have less research knowledge, but who have a greater topic understanding (& with the ability to implement results).

Stephen Cribbett, Further: The Mindful Consumer’s Contradiction

• People are more concerned about the future survival of the planet and society than ever before, but this isn’t shifting the way people shop and consume as much as you think it is. This presentation explores the say-do gap and provides useful methods and techniques that researchers can deploy to surface it and set about changing it.

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Check out our case studies

• Customer Behavioral Segmentation to Support Targeted Marketing – A BFSI data analytics case study
• Ensuring Optimal Inventory with SKU Level Demand Forecasting – A consumer products forecasting analytics case study
• Optimizing Healthcare Technology Offerings to Avoid Cannibalization | A MaxDiff TURF Case Study

Marketers and researchers use the word ‘analytics’ to describe many different things that can be done with digital data. Without a common understanding, it can be easy to misinterpret what a client actually needs and end up assigning project tasks to the wrong people, costing jobs inaccurately, and not meeting client expectations.

In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into the different interpretations this word can have to ensure that both clients and suppliers are on the same page when it comes to extracting relevant insights from from myriad datasets about buyers, brands, and businesses.

Before we get into the details, you might appreciate this short introduction to data analytics from The Career Force on YouTube.

Types of Data

First of all, let’s look at some types of data that business leadership, marketers, brand managers, and researchers have access to in order to better understand consumer and market enigmas.

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Primary research data

Primary research data is generally considered ‘small data. They’re easily stored in traditional spreadsheets like Excel and the files are small enough to be emailed without getting stuck in your outbox or flagged as spam. These data tend to represents people’s opinions and perceptions about various topics asked of them in a quantitative questionnaire, or a qualitative interview or focus group.

• Ad hoc survey or interview data: Often under 1000 records and under 100 variables. Normally focused on one brand or topic. Qualitative datasets converted to quantitative formats may have fewer records but much more, or much larger, variables.
• Tracker survey data: When gathered across multiple brands or countries, may be up to 50 000 records and a couple hundred variables. Normally focused on one product category though they may shift in focus from time to time.

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Business data

Business data is often created in passing – as something happens in the company, a physical or digital record is created. Created and stored over years and in many disparate formats, these records are used to fulfill customer requests, manage employees, or keep track of product development. In many cases, these data are left lying around, ignored on servers, collecting virtual dust, and not leveraged for the insights that lie within.

• Employee data: Records of retention, satisfaction, reviews, salaries, promotions, complaints, departments and more can be transformed and standardized as variables for statistical analysis.
• Customer data: This is where we start to use the phrase “big data.” Transactional data reflecting purchases, SKUs, prices, times, dates, and more can come in datasets of millions or trillions of records with thousands of variables. Click-stream data gathered from websites can be exponentially more massive as every tiny movement and action made by a finger, pen, or mouse on digital screens is tracked. These data are already collected in standardized datasets and ready to be reformatted or transformed into specialized datasets for analysis.
• Business data: Executives are often most interested in these data – revenue, costs, finances, operations, inventory, supply chain, & logistical data. These data, also usually available in standardized datasets, are often summarized from individual level data but are even more valuable at the individual level.
  

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Secondary research data

Secondary research data is all-encompassing. It can include any type of primary research or business data that were collected for some other purpose, whether by yourself, someone else at your company, or someone at a different company. As such, you might have access to small survey datasets, massive transactional datasets, or compiled and summarized datasets. In addition to the primary and research data already described, it could include:

• Third party data: A huge range of data types and sizes can be purchased from third parties that create, curate, and collate many sources of data, potentially terabytes of individual or summary level data.
• Social media data: Originally created to communicate a specific message to a specific person (or persons), social media data can be gathered and used for purposes other than originally intended. These data may include information about brands, people, and companies, date, time, geography, sentiment, and more. It may need to be transformed and standardized but a wealth of insights exist here as well.

Types of Analyses

There are three categories of analytics and skill-sets that might be required in the course of a research project. 

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Standard analytics

Most quantitative market researchers have a broad understanding of the theory and application of statistics. They know when and why to apply certain types of analyses to achieve specific research goals. Specifically, they have a lot of experience interpreting massive data tabulation files and running standard survey analyses to help us identify patterns and understand what happened and why.

They focus mostly on:

• Types of data: Primary data, usually quantitative survey data
• Types of analyses: Correlations, t-tests, chi-square, means, standard deviations, ANOVAs, descriptive and diagnostic statistics
• Analysis tools: Menu driven SPSS, Excel, data tabulations
• Outputs: PPT reports, static Excel reports

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 Questions to Find Out If This Is The Goal

• Will the analyses focus on details from the data tabulations?
• Do you need insights beyond what is covered in the data tabulations?
• Do you need anything beyond descriptive statistics like means, standard deviations, and box scores?

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 Possible Research Questions

• What parts of the shopper experience do my customers like the most?
• What problems does my product help consumers solve?
• What types or segments of shoppers prefer my brand and how can I tailor my products and marketing for them?
• How many people are aware of my brand and where does it sit in the competitive brand space? – A case study

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Advanced analytics

Advanced analytics are usually conducted by people who have specialized training and expertise in statistics. They are experienced with non-standard and special cases of statistical tests that can’t be determined from data tabulations. Advanced analytics can help us understand what happened, why it happened, and predict what is likely to happen next.

They focus mostly on:

• Types of data: Primary research data, small business datasets, biometrics data
• Types of analyses: All of the standard analytics plus linear / logistic / multiple regression, conjoint, MaxDiff, TURF, factor analysis, cluster analysis, segmentation, discriminant analysis, perceptual mapping, special cases of standard analytics, predictive analytics, forecasting, and more
• Analysis tools: Menu or script driven SPSS, SAS, R, Python
• Outputs: PPT reports, static or dynamic Excel reports, user-guided dashboards, simulators

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 Questions to Find Out If This Is The Goal

• Do you need to segment people or products into groups?
• Do you need to predict purchases or forecast sales?

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 Possible Research Questions

• What is the highest price we can charge without making our customers feel ripped off while also earning as much profit as possible?
• What do my customers’ spending patterns look like?
• What is the best set of flavors for my products that won’t result in cannibalization? – A case study
• What is the potential size of my market given various product feature scenarios?
• Which employees are most likely to stay with our company for a long timer, thereby reducing costs of recruiting and training?

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Business Analytics/Intelligence

Answering business intelligence questions to improve strategic decision making and create a competitive advantage normally requires advanced expertise in both statistics and data management. That skill set is often described as data science. Of course, for maximum effectiveness, you would also want this person to have extensive experience with marketing and consumer data.

These experts focus mostly on:

• Types of data: Big data, business data, transactional data, logistics, employee data, real-time or near-time data
• Types of analyses: All standard and advanced analytics, plus data transformation and manipulation, data fusion, data mining
• Analysis tools: Python, R, SAS, SQL, machine learning, AI
• Outputs: PPT reports, static or dynamic Excel reports, user-guided dashboards, simulators

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 Questions to Find Out If This Is The Goal

• Do you need to combine different types of data from multiple sources?
• Do you need to make sales or logistics predictions in real-time?

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 Possible Research Questions

• Why are we unable to keep warehouses stocked with the right products at the right time?
• Where are we dropping the ball with our processes and logistics, and how can we solve small problems before they become big problems?
• How can we increase our efficiency to improve our overall profitability?
• When a customer has selected a single product, what other products would they be most interested in?
• Can we drop a rarely purchased product without causing our highest value customers to switch retailers?
• How can we ensure optimal inventory for every SKU using existing business data? – A case study

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What’s Next?

There’s a lot of overlap among various analytical techniques and objectives. One project may require only standard analytics whereas another may require all of them. However, once the research problem and the available datasets are clearly defined (not as easy as you’d think!), your analyst will know which techniques and software are best suited to uncover your answers.

If you’re ready to gather top quality insights about your buyers, brands, and business, please do email your project specifications to our research experts using Projects at E2Eresearch dot com. We’d love to help you turn your enigma into enlightenment!

Podcasts about Business Intelligence

• Analytics Power Hour with Michael Helbling, Tim Wilson, and Moe Kiss, Apple Podcasts
• Analytics on Fire with Mico Yuk, PlayerFM
• BIFocal – Clarifying Business Intelligence, Spotify
• Data Science at Home with Francesco Gadaleta, Spotify
• Data Stories: A podcast on data visualization with Enrico Bertini and Moritz Stefaner, Spotify
• Hub & Spoken: Data | Analytics | Chief Data Officer | CDO | Data Strategy, PlayerFM
• Making Data Simple by IBM, Apple Podcasts
• Raw Data By P3 Adaptive with Rob Collie, PlayerFM
• The PolicyViz Podcast with Jon Schwabish, Apple Podcasts

Business Intelligence and Data Analytics Conferences

• SAS Hackathon: Winter, 2022
• The Global CDAO: Driving a Global D&A Strategy: Beverly Hills, January 30 to February 1, 2022
• Gartner Data & Analytics Summit: Florida, March 14 to 17, 2022
• Big Data & Analytics Summit: Toronto, March 22 to 23, 2022
• Informs Business Analytics Conference: Texas, April 3 to 5, 2022
• CIO’s Data & Analytics Summit: April 13 to 15, 2021
• SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM22): Virginia, April 28 to 30, 2022
• Data Innovation Summit 2021: Stockholm, May 5 to 6, 2022
• TDWI Data Conference: Chicago, May 8 to 13, 2022
• Data Summit Connect: Boston, May 17 to 18, 2022
• SAS Innovate: San Diego, April 11 to 13
• TIBCO Analytics Forum: June 13 to 15, 2022
• DATA 2022: Lisbon, July 11 to 13, 2022
• SIAM Annual Meeting (AN22): Pennsylvania, July 11 to 15, 2022
• Industrial Conference on Data Mining (icdm): New York, July 13 to 17, 2022
• Real Business Intelligence: September
• SAS Explore: Fall, virtual
• Chief Data & Analytics Officers Exchange: September
• The 8th IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics: Portugal, October 6 to 9, 2021
• Chief Data & Analytics Officers (CDAO), October 12 to 14, 2021
• BigData & AI: Toronto, October 13 to 14, 2021
• The Data Science Conference: Boston, October 14 to 15, 2021
• DataScienceGO: California, October 15 to 17, 2021
• Open Source Analytics (OSA CON): November 2, 2021
• Marketing Analytics and Data Science: Tennessee, November 15 to 17 2021
• Business Intelligence & Analytics Conference, London, November 14 to 17, 2022
• Disney Data & Analytics Conference: Florida, November 30 to December 1, 2021

Market research is the foundation of any successful business. Within the healthcare industry, it helps us to better understand perceived strengths and weaknesses of medical devices and pharmaceuticals, gain a better understanding of key stakeholder wants and needs, gain a better understanding of the industry and competitive market space, gain a better understanding of advertising campaigns and promotions, and create fair and profitable pricing strategies. Let’s address each of these areas individually.

(Of course, feel free to skip to the end for a list of healthcare/pharma conferences and podcasts!)

Better Understand the Product Strengths and Weaknesses

At the heart of a successful business is a carefully researched and designed product or service that meets the key needs of its target audience. By conducting well designed surveys and product/sensory tests via IHUTs or Central Location Tests, you can understand:

• What needs does your product meet and what unmet needs need additional development?
• What features of the product are unique within the broader, competitive category and can serve as your unique selling points?
• How is the product correctly and incorrectly used suggesting needs for training or redesign?
• How is your product used in unanticipated ways such that new needs or audiences could be addressed?
• Does the memorability of your product require improvements in terms of its features, branding, colors, or logos?
• Should certain product lines be expanded or reduced based on growing or decreasing market needs?

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    Review a product case study:

• Understanding the Relative Importance of Healthcare Imaging Features for New Product Development – Survey + MaxDiff

Better Understand the People: Patients, Caregivers, Physicians, Healthcare Workers, Payers

While a quality product or service is being build, it’s important to understand the perceptions of all key stakeholders. From users to buyers and those who will be recommending the product, it’s imperative that each group understand the strengths and weaknesses of the product in order to ensure maximum success. Using questionnaires, business intelligence, and secondary research, there are a number of key questions you will need to understand about your key stakeholders:

• Who is your target audience in terms of their demographic, psychographic, family, social, economic, and health characteristics?
• How does the patient journey evolve from the onset of symptoms through to diagnosis, treatment, management, and recovery while understanding medical, emotional, financial, and social needs and situations?
• What personal experiences do patients have within the category including adverse events from your brand and competitive brands?
• Which stakeholders come into contact with your treatments, medical devices, or healthcare facilities e.g., buyers, administrators, payers, technicians, clinicians, patients, families?
• What does each stakeholder group need, want, feel, and prefer?
• What drives each key stakeholder group to choose, use, buy, and recommend your brand vs competitive brands, e.g., clinicians, patients, payers, buyers, sellers
• Which stakeholders will influence your target audience to consider using or buying treatments, medical devices, or facilities?

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    Review a stakeholder case study

• Mapping a Patient Funnel to Mitigate Treatment Barriers – Cancer patient surveys
• Tracking Physician Perceptions of Diabetes Pharmaceutical Representatives – Physician surveys
• Understanding Patient Preferences to Inform Differentiation Strategy – Medical device patient surveys
• Face-to-Face On-Site Medical Leader Interviews – A B2B interview case study

Better Understand the Placement, Industry, and Competitive Market Space

Every product or service exists within a broad ecosystem of competitive brands and companies. By conducting questionnaires or secondary desk research, you can understand a wide range of business problems such as:

• Who are your primary and secondary competitors locally, globally, and virtually?
• What product, physical, emotional, social, and economic needs is the market needs failing to address?
• How has the competitive landscape changed over the last year and how might it forecast into the next 3 to 5 years within your country and potential expansion countries?
• Where are the white spaces to develop new products, extend services, or open new locations?
• Can secondary data help us understand how large our existing market is and how large it could be while remaining profitable?

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   Review a market case study

• Building a Strategic Business Plan Grounded in Industry Data – Pharma data analytics
• Stretching Brand Equity into White Spaces Using Data Fusion – Pharma data analytics

Better Understand Promotions, Advertising, and Campaigns

With a great product or service built and the target audience well understood, a marketing campaign is normally required to reach out to the target audience and introduce them to your offering. Using questionnaires or data analytics, a number of key questions can be answered:

• Which online and offline information channels do your users and buyers use to learn about new products, gather recommendations, or make purchases?
• What types of messaging would be most successful at reaching your target audience and differentiating your brand from competitors?
• What types of ads would be most effective with each of your audience segments when considering likability, meaningfulness, believability and the likelihood to act?
• What types of healthcare marketing campaigns are more likely to be successful?
• What types of brands, companies, or influencers would your users and buyers like to be incorporated in an integrated marketing campaign?
• Which concepts are most memorable and would generate the most action from your target audience?

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   Review an advertising case study:

• Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Campaign with Brand and Message Recall – Consumer media survey

Create A Fair and Profitable Pricing Strategy

There is more to pricing than picking a number that will generate profit. A price that is too high can reduce physician recommendations and insurance coverage. A price that is too low leaves achievable profit on the table. A final price can only be determined by understanding your true profit margin, market pricing, and stakeholder needs. To build the most effective pricing strategy for your medical device, pharmaceutical product, or service, conduct the appropriate surveys, interviews, and secondary research first.

• Based on secondary research, how are competitive products on the market currently priced?
• Using questionnaire data, what type of pricing strategy is most appealing to healthcare administrators and payers?
• What type of pricing strategy would facilitate product recommendations from clinicians and physicians?
• Which user segment has the least and the greatest revenue potential?
• Based on a Conjoint or MaxDiff questionnaire, which product features drive higher and lower prices?
• Which set of product features would drive the most profit?
• What type of pricing strategy is fair for and accessible versus out of reach to patients?

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   Review a pricing case study

• Optimizing Trade Promotion Spends With A Pricing Simulator
• Identifying Optimum Price Corridors to Predict Volume Share – Advertising price simulator
• Optimizing Treatment Pricing Strategies For Multiple Patient Segments – Pharmaceutical survey analytics

Conclusion

Building a successful medical, pharmaceutical, or healthcare product or service requires a foundation of well designed and executed research coupled with well analyzed and actioned results. Whether you’re tasked with supporting the growth of an innovative new brand or helping a company understand their buyers and their business, our team has more than ten years of experience helping researchers, marketers, and brand managers generate great quality healthcare data and insights for the questions outlined above. Please feel free to email your project specifications to our research experts using Projects at E2Eresearch dot com. We’d love to help!

Learn at upcoming healthcare industry conferences

• Future of Pharma Marketing Summit 2022: January 25 to 26, 2022
• Pharma Multi-Channel Excellence: January 26, 2022
• Joe Public Retreat: Nashville, February 7 to 9, 2022
• Annual PMRC Conference 2022: Newark, February 9 to 10, 2022
• Medicare Marketing Sales Summit (MMSS): Las Vegas, February 16 to 18, 2022
• Pharma CI: Zurich, March 24 to 25, 2022
• Annual PMRG/Intellus Summit: April
• DTC National: Boston, April 20 to 21, 2022
• Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development (SHSMD): Maryland, May 4 to 6, 2022
• Pharma Marketing Summit: Boston, May 12 to 13, 2022
• Annual PMRC Conference: Bay Area, Summer, 2022
• Annual EphMRA Conference 2022: June 21 to 23, 2022
• Annual PMRC Conference: Europe, Fall, 2022
• Pharma CI: Newark, September 21 to 22, 2022
• OTC National: October

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Listen to some great podcasts about healthcare marketing

• The Medical Marketing Podcast on Google Podcasts
• MM+M Podcast: Medical Marketing and Media Podcast on Spotify
• Healthcare Insight for Marketers True North Custom on Apple Podcasts
• Patient Convert Podcast: Healthcare Marketing on Apple Podcasts
• Healthcare Rap on Acast Podcasts
• Insight Marketing Group Podcast
• Syneos Health Podcast on PlayerFM
• RX Digital Marketing Podcast on PlayerFM
• The Pharma Marketing Podcast on PlayerFM
• Pharmacy Marketing Simplified
• Pharma Marketing 411 on Apple Podcasts