Top 10 tips for Market Research

One of the events of our month is the arrival of Management Today magazine, within which they never fail to deliver a list of top tips.  On the basis of if you can’t beat them join them, here is a top 10 to do list for marketing research projects:

1. Understand the client’s needs: sounds simple but it is important to recognise the needs of different stakeholders and to be aware of the demands on them. 
2. Play back the brief: the brief may not always be written down, yes really, so it is vital to confirm back to the client and/or budget owner exactly what you will be doing.
3. Clarify deliverables: whilst you may visualise the output, this may not be as clear to all parties, so confirming what everyone will get is vital.
4. Develop a step-by-step plan: all the clichés about planning are true and none more so in research, and there probably can never be too much detail.
5. Remain objective: the purpose of market research is to deliver an independent, expert opinion based on credible, rigorous  questioning and analysis of your customers. 
6. Track the whole process: regular updates are vital to the successful management of the project.
7. Clarify who does what: make sure everyone involved knows exactly what is expected of them.
8. Accept that things can go wrong: stuff goes wrong, don’t be surprised by it, but do ensure that you have alternatives in place.
9. Keep your client informed: we’re all inquisitive, so  make sure there is a mechanism for keeping the brand owner aware of progress.
10. Learn from it: A de-brief at the end of the project is a must to ensure constant improvement.

Qualitative Research Venues

We are often asked “where is the best place to hold Focus Groups?”  This is actually quite straightforward.   Here are some tips.

1. Brand image: As the identity of the client or business under study may be announced it is important that the location used is somewhere which reflects the status of the brand. 
2. Easy access: This means that a location should be chosen with good public transport links and with nearby parking.
3. The basics: The room should be big enough to accommodate your respondents and you sitting comfortably in a circle with some additional sits for observers ‘at the back’, have some natural light, be at a comfortable temperature for up to 15 people (not have a noisy air conditioning or heating unit to disrupt the voice recording) , be totally quiet and closed off from any people wandering in or past,  and tea/coffee/water (but not alcohol) should be available.  Having a separate area to meet and greet the respondents so they can gather until all our present is really helpful.
4. Beware cheap alternatives: Be aware that the brand owner’s own premises may not be ideal, for instance with shopping centre research attendees are less likely to be critical of their experience if groups take place actually in the centre’s management suite.
5. Rented rooms: Most branded hotel chains offer more than adequate facilities for the purposes of holding Focus Groups.  Again the savings to be made in ‘no cost’ alternatives are usually false savings if the facilities are inappropriate (see point 3) since the cost of the venue tends to be less than 10% of the total project cost.
6. Filming: One final point, if clients wish the groups to be filmed they should ideally be held in bespoke studios which are available around the country. These locations are usually fitted with two-way mirrors and an observation room.  If a viewing facility is not available filming can be arranged through a freelance professional service.

Focus Group Respondents

Another question we get asked is how do you determine who to recruit for your Focus Groups? Essentially we will aim to recruit to a given specification which is likely to be defined by criteria such as age, gender, or life stage, but can also be determined by attitudes, values or behaviour.  Where a clear recruitment brief is available that is one thing, but I’ve also been faced with the comment “I want to appeal to everyone from 18 to 80.” It’s a nice concept but essentially flawed, as far as Focus Group research is concerned, unless you are able to stretch your budget to cover all these groups.  Our approach is that in qualitative research we are aiming to talk to a small group who between them may help us uncover those issues relevant to a particular demographic, in other words each group’s composition should be of ‘like-minded’ individuals to maintain relevance. 

 

So it is important that we recruit along certain lines.  A too tightly-defined group, for example ABC1 current users, aged 28, non-working mums and married with 3 children, might be feasible to recruit given enough time and money but is almost certainly one extreme.  At the other end of the scale a group spec of ‘Female shoppers aged 18 to 44 years’ is probably too wide, since the 18 years olds are more likely to be living at with their parents, or possibly students, and the forty-somethings may well have children if not grandchildren of their own.  This means that they will have quite different perspectives on most issues, including your brand or market.  Mixing genders is also something that we try to avoid.  For example, combining young male pub drinkers and young female pub goers in a group could be a complete waste of time and money as each potentially is oppressed by the others expression of their differing motivations and needs from a pub. Female shoppers also have particular views on shopping which males frequently do not begin to comprehend and mixing them is not at all advisable.

 

The key issues to consider when creating groups, therefore, are:-

 

1. Gender: the ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ cliché is true in most markets.
2. Age/life-stage: Pre-family respondents probably don’t have any interest in nappies, and many retired have no need for a mortgage!
3. Social class: Although this has fallen out of fashion it is still in vogue in the popular press and a number of brand owners still target using social grade or class.
4. Income: students, unless they are independently wealthy, are probably not in the market for Ferraris and many of the better off are not likely to be motivated by a lot of promotional offers.
5. Usage/behaviour: This is possibly the most important issue when?, how often? and have they ever used your brand? - if recruiting for ‘regular’ users what is your definition of ‘regular’? Lest not forget the all important lapsed user or the non user group where it is vital to ensure they fit your criteria of ‘non’ or ‘lapsed’ customers.
6. Values, beliefs and motivations: These are the deep-seated drivers that influence behaviour, and that help to explain the reasons behind the behaviours that take place.

Discount off next visit

The other Friday evening my wife and a group of her friends went out for a meal. The restaurant has had a good reputation, they had all been there before and there was no reason to doubt that they would not get great food and service. When the meals arrived however the food tasted bland, and most of the dishes were not sufficiently heated through. It got to the point where they did actually complain to the waiter. The response they received was that they could “get a discount off their next visit” – not a particularly good one since the whole party has vowed never to go back again anyway.

We know that a complaint properly handled can actually increase customer satisfaction and even go so far as to create a real brand advocate. On the other hand in the current climate this was probably not the best way to respond to customer feedback.

Valentine’s Day

I heard on the radio over the weekend that, according to research by Asda, 39% of respondents were looking to ‘cut the cost of Valentine’s day’.  It’s an interesting statistic, but is this something that any normal person would actually think about doing; I mean totally unprompted. Sure we look to cut the cost of our groceries, manage the cost of Christmas, or try to budget our summer holiday. But Valentine’s day? Believe me, I’m all for market research, but I’m not sure what this really tells us other than that thankfully the media still lap up ‘research’ statistics and brand owners will continue to source them.

Tweet tweet

It seems at the moment you can’t open a newspaper or turn on the radio without hearing about Twitter – so I thought if you can’t beat ‘em.  Here in the office we’ve been trying to figure it out as well for a couple of weeks now. I think we fall into two broad camps, one just can’t figure out what it is all about at all, the other, albeit a much smaller group, and the one that I am in, is intent on trying to understand more about it and its potential business applications.

Hearing about what Wossy is getting up to or hearing about Stephen Fry stuck in a lift is of course one thing, however what I was interested in last week was how Fresh & Easy the US grocery chain owned by Tesco was using Twitter to communicate to its customers promotional offers, recipe ideas or new store openings.

However what is also interesting is that despite 4.4 million users, of which 220,000 are in the UK alone it seems as though the founders have not got a clear idea about how they will actually make any money – not the first time we’ve heard this about an internet start up.  This means they are now thinking about charging brands to use Twitter, so I’m fascinated to see how this develops since I’m sure there is a way to harness this technology for our own particular business use

The other thing I’d really like to know though is how Twitter researched before launch, if indeed it ever went into research at all, my guess would be they skipped that bit in the business plan.  Apparently the fastest growing demographic group are the 35-44 year olds – I wonder if this was predicted.  And did anyone foresee its application for political candidates to ‘tweet’ tens of thousands of  voters? As I say I have to believe there are some interesting applications but maybe ones we have yet to invent.

I guess it doesn’t need a particularly powerful crystal ball to predict that we will see a degree of convergence and /or consolidation in what are defined as these social networking services.  If I’m regularly going to check Facebook, get off my latest ‘tweet’, log into LinkedIn to see what my professional network are up to, check my office emails, and also those who I prefer to contact via my personal email account it figures that whether in the office or at home the whole process becomes a bit of a chore and doesn’t allow much time for…living! 

What’s in a name?

As we at Business Blueprints debate our own possible name change I’m reminded of the current campaign for Norwich Union. One of the things we do is measure awareness, be it specific brand awareness, advertising awareness or individual media recall. So perhaps it is interesting to see a company spending heavily on TV using such cultural icons as Ringo, Bruce Willis, Alice Cooper and Dame Edna to highlight their name change to Aviva.

Interesting perhaps but maybe also a little misplaced. I’m sorry, but didn’t they change the name to Aviva some years ago or as a customer am I imagining it? I’m all for getting a news story across which clearly they feel they are doing but where is the benefit? Where are the brand or product messages? Are they targeting current or new customers? Or is it in fact a very expensive b2b campaign for the city? How many people can you see saying ‘Honey, I must change our insurance cover to those nice Aviva people now they’ve got a new name!’

Which brings us back to research, and I hope they’ve done theirs properly. I worked in a sector a few years back where company and brand changes seemed to come around every three months. The only people who seemed to gain anything from it were the design companies who were paid to re-logo anything that moved and a few things that didn’t. I can’t remember a single change doing anything other than further confuse the very people they should have been considering most – their customers.

One assumes that an established company such as Norwich Union knows what it is doing. That is has weighed up the values in the existing brand name and evaluated the potential benefits of the shift to Aviva. But as we know but for every good name change there is a not so good name change, for every 02 success there is a corresponding Consignia.

Last orders?

With reportedly nearly four pubs closing down every day is there now a need for the traditional pub to redefine itself? How can a pub maximise its sales opportunities? Does it even know what they are?

The factors behind the current problems are well documented. Cheap supermarket booze, the smoking ban, an ageing population, drink drive awareness campaigns, all now combined with the current economic environment. In these conditions pub operators probably need to think beyond cost reduction initiatives and explore initiatives that will both keep those customers they already have happy and find ways to tempt others back into their locals. With a raft of restaurant deals out there of which 2-for-1 offers are becoming the norm one local pub has gone even further and introduced the £1 meal. Apparently customers have been queuing up to try the home-cooked pub grub at The Piltdown Man near Uckfield in East Sussex. I hope they have done their sums on this one since it seems like a fantastic offer which I must surely try myself.

There are other ideas around, but not necessarily linked with pubs but that seem to make some sense include a dropping off point for goods bought on the internet or a place to recharge electronic equipment such as laptops, ipods and phones. Whatever the solution might be, the pub along with the post office, and even the church, now more than ever needs to define its place in our lives. According to The Guardian there are now 350 village pubs that are also shops, or post offices, cook school meals, or provide IT training.

It’s the sizes, stupid!

We conduct around 50 focus groups each year with British shoppers, and lack of sizes is still one of the top gripes we find. Personally I’ve lost count in the last 12 months of how many times I’ve failed to make a purchase just because the shop does not have the right size, footwear retailers seem to be the worst.

A recent shopping trip looking for a pair of walking boots was again appearing unsuccessful. Things looked up when the assistant offered to phone the warehouse to check out availability of sizes. Unfortunately this led to nothing and we returned home ‘bootless’. A visit to their web site using their postcode look up let me identify the three stores closest to me. A call to the second one on the list revealed a pair in the correct size available only 12 miles away. The boots were put aside for us and we duly drove over to make the purchase that afternoon.

My conclusions are this. Firstly I need to do more of my own research before leaving the house, and second should we not expect that sort of service from my local branch in the first place? How about giving stores the technology to easily contact local stores to make stock checks on behalf of customers? How about stores arranging for deliveries from other branches for customer collection in that store? The opportunity must be for retailers to explore ways to add real value for their customers, making a sale on the day and demonstrating real customer service.

We know the times are tough on the high street, but having at first got people into the stores it seems crazy that an opportunity to make a sale is lost through poor stocking keeping or a lack of understanding of the profile of shoppers. Can this sizing challenge really be that difficult to fix?

Whose tips are they anyway?

The Government has published ‘Service Charges, Tips, Gratuities and Cover Charges: A Consultation’ which seeks views on how the law should be changed to prevent employers using tips or service charges to bring employees’ pay up to the level of the national minimum wage.

I have no doubt that they will receive plenty of views on this as it is a highly emotive subject as you will know if you have any involvement in the operation of a restaurant.  Through staff surveys Business Blueprints discovered 90% of a typical front of house team believe that the tips are entirely theirs as a personal affirmation of their excellent work from their customers.

The most important perspective on this I believe is that of the customer and their intention when they left the additional sum of money over and above the bill for their meal.  At Business Blueprints on a number of occasions we have gained insight through research with regular restaurant users in both focus groups and quantitative studies as to the reasons why they leave a tip and who they intend to receive it.   30% of customers do not leave a tip because the food and/or the service was not good enough.  85% who leave a tip intend for the money to be left equally for the team that created a great experience including attentive service, a caring atmosphere and delicious food.    All the aspects that Business Blueprints seeks to measure in a mystery visit to reflect the likelihood of a person returning to and recommending a restaurant.

And then there is the employers’ or restauranteurs’ perspective – they build a typical high street restaurant at today’s rates for anywhere between £400k and £1,000,000, pay the rent or mortgage, they hand pick the staff, train them, buy all the food, create a ambience that guests appreciate and want to come back to, provide the equipment to cook the food on, provide the recipes and the motivation to do all the above consistently!

What other business or industry is there an external influence on how any income generated by the business is distributed amongst the people who work there – other than ensuring that the statutory and good employee regulations are maintained?

The “restaurant” that creates a memorable experience that can be relished, recommended and repeated will always be rewarded with a good tip!  Surely it is therefore up to the “restaurant” to decide the best way to distribute the “restaurant ” income in order to encourage and reward the team just like any other business – If they decide to in an unjust manner then the business will suffer just like any other.