Concept testing

• Product concept testing is an early-stage market research method that maximizes the chance of launching a product or service that people want to buy. You investigate the feasibility of a product or service among the target group at an early stage and improve its development based on the feedback.

If you don't test a product before it goes to market, you don't know how reliable it is, nor how well it can handle the challenges of the 'real world'.

The fact is that while products are designed to solve certain problems and used in a certain way, customers may end up using them in a different way, adding their own habits.

With this in mind, you need to ensure that your product is robust enough to survive under real-world conditions and flexible enough to accommodate different methods of use.

• Ad testing is simply the process of vetting your advertising concepts with a representative sample of your market. It determines the effectiveness of an advertisement based on consumer reactions, feedback and behavior. You can test multiple ads, an entire ad, or even parts of your ad to make sure your ads resonate with your target audience.

>>>Read more about the importance of effective mediaplanning for your advertising campaign: here

• Packaging test
  Whether it's a branded box for a physical product or a bundle of services, packaging design makes a huge difference to your brand.

How your products look and feel matters.
For most brands and companies, the packaging of their product is usually overlooked. Instead, they opt for the cheapest and fastest packaging solutions because they don't believe in the power that custom packaging has – both for them and their customers.

But at a time when so many companies are looking to differentiate themselves and stand out from the competition, delivering a great product – especially in the B2C space – is only part of the puzzle. How it looks and feels is important too.

As more brands and companies respond to customer expectations and begin to realize how crucial every element of the customer experience is, they are taking the time to invest in packaging design.

No matter how great your product is, if it comes in low-quality packaging that isn't durable or exciting, you're missing out on the opportunity to wow your customers.

Brand tracking

Brand tracking continuously measures the health of your brand and analyzes how your consumers buy and use your products, and what they think and feel about the brand itself. Good brand tracking will highlight which brand initiatives are working well and positively impacting sales, and identify which brand initiatives are not so they can be targeted and improved.

What are the benefits of following your brand?
A brand is nothing without its customers. It is essential to listen to them. Brand tracking collects customer feedback, analyzes the data and identifies what matters to them. This allows you to improve your product or service in line with customer needs and wishes.

Brand tracking also helps you:

• Measure and evaluate performance
• Make comparisons
• Testing strategies
• Discover new opportunities
• Keep an eye on your competitors

Continuously monitoring your brand also allows you to assess (and report on) its performance over time: is it performing better or worse than before? A real-time tracking process can identify issues before they become a problem and highlight where things are going well.

By continuously collecting qualitative and quantitative data from your customers, you can continuously assess brand health and adjust your marketing and branding strategies accordingly.

Customer/Consumer Journey

If you want to improve your customer experience, you need to be able to understand and customize the customer journey (or customer journey) you offer when someone interacts with your organization. Whether their journey is completely online, offline or a combination of both, there are multiple journeys a customer can undergo.

By deeply understanding the customer journey, you can identify and take action on customer pain points, and iterate on what works. By doing this, you will improve your customers' overall experience, which will yield better results for your business.

Mapping the potential customer journeys that your target group can go through requires a process called 'customer journey mapping'.

What is 'customer journey mapping'?
Creating a customer journey map is the process of creating a visual representation of customers' processes, needs, and perceptions during their interactions and relationships with an organization. It helps you understand the steps customers take (the steps you see and don't see) when they interact with your business.

This allows you to assess:

• Insights – from your existing customer journey, how you can understand it better
• Impact – how we can optimize budgets and efforts for changes we want to make to customer experiences
• Bottlenecks/opportunities – Diagnosis of the existing customer journey
• Innovation – where you may want to completely change the existing customer experience

>>>Read more about the implementation of a customer journey project: here

Marketsegmentation

What is market segmentation?
Market segmentation is the practice of dividing your target audience into approachable groups. Market segmentation creates subgroups of a market based on demographics, needs, priorities, common interests, and other psychographic or behavioral criteria used to better understand the target market.

By understanding your market segments, you can leverage this targeting in product, sales and marketing strategies. Market segments can drive your product development cycles by informing how you create product offerings for different segments, such as men versus women or high-income versus low-income.

Types of market segmentation:

Demographic segmentation sorts a market based on elements such as age, education, household income, marital status, family size, gender, occupation and nationality. The demographic approach is one of the simplest and most commonly used forms of market segmentation because the products and services we buy, the way we use those products, and how much we want to spend on them are usually based on demographic factors. It is also seen as a simple method to predict future behavior, because audiences with similar characteristics often behave in similar ways.

Geographic segmentation can be a subset of demographic segmentation, but it can also be a unique type of market segmentation in its own right. As the name suggests, it creates different target groups of customers based on geographical boundaries. Because potential customers have needs, preferences, and interests that differ depending on their geographic location, understanding the climate and geographic regions of customer groups can help determine where to sell, advertise, and expand your business.

Behavioral segmentation divides markets based on behavior and decision-making patterns such as purchasing, consumption, lifestyle and usage. For example, younger buyers may tend to purchase bottled body washes, while older consumer groups may lean toward bar soaps. Segmenting markets based on purchasing behavior allows marketers to develop a more targeted approach because you can focus on what you know they are looking for and therefore more likely to buy.

Psychographic segmentation takes into account the psychological aspects of consumer behavior by dividing markets based on consumer lifestyles, personality traits, values, opinions and interests. Large markets such as the fitness market use psychographic segmentation when they divide their customers into categories of people who find healthy living and exercise important.

Client-satisfaction survey

Knowing and understanding how satisfied your customers are with your brand can help you determine their likelihood to return, their future spending, and their willingness to recommend your products and brand to others. Improving it will result in a higher number of repeat customers, greater customer loyalty and a greater likelihood of higher spend. With this in mind, it is in every company's best interest to create meaningful experiences that meet the needs of their customers.

Pricing study

The right pricing strategy affects every part of your business.

From sales to profits to market position, the retail price of your product or service is not something to take lightly – and can ultimately make or break your success.

But how do you develop a pricing strategy in a highly competitive market that results in a positive profit margin and that does not put you out of reach of your target group?

How to price a product?
There's a lot that goes into a pricing strategy, from business goals and competitor pricing analysis to your marketing strategy and reaching new customer segments. There are also unpredictable elements, such as the economy and the health of your target market.

But before you consider these factors, you need to look at your processes and the costs associated with your service or product. After all, without knowing these details, you will never make as much profit as you could.

Would you like to discuss your research needs in more detail?

We are available to discuss your needs and which research and approach will best suit your project objectives!