This presentation explains the importance of understanding your customers and in turn emphasises the need for your business or brand to be well understood by them. It then offers 10 ways in which insights from market research can help you drive your business forward with confidence.
2. 2David Jones, Managing Director, Habit5
• Full Member of the Market Research Society (MMRS)
• Fellow of the Institute of Direct Marketing (FIDM)
• Chartered Marketer (CIM Diploma)
• 15 years in Planning and Strategy roles at leading
regional communications agencies
• 10 years in senior client side roles, including being
Head of Communications at first direct
• Balanced appreciation of research, marketing, brand
and customer needs
• Led research and consulting projects for:
Intercontinental Hotels, first direct, HSBC,
The Open University, Travis Perkins, Budget
Insurance Group, Thompson & Morgan, Bravissimo,
Topps Tiles, Acdoco, Keycamp and many others
Who am I?
3. At Habit5 we believe that the brands that
understand best, demonstrate this
understanding and are in turn understood by
their customers, will do best in their markets.
3
4. We believe the brands that understand
best, demonstrate this understanding and
are in turn understood by their customers,
will do best in their markets.
Humans have a deep
seated desire to be
understood, it is a key
part of the social
construction of the
self.
4
Why
Find out more at: http://www.scoop.it/t/human-understanding
5. Brands need to be
very well understood
by their customers in
order to lead their
markets.
Simon Sinek – Start with why
5
Why
6. There is a growing
imperative on brands
and businesses to
demonstrate
understanding and
deliver value, based
upon the data they
hold on people.
6
Why
7. -
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
6.0
7.0
8.0
Current needs
Future needs
Preferences
Use of information
Pricing
Overall Understanding
Brand Why
Brand Understanding
Comparative
Satisfaction
Recommendation
MUM Score
Mean score
Top score
Lowest score
7
Why
Source: Habit5 - Mutual Understanding Measure 2013
The leading brands get a lot of things right
but they can still make improvements in
understanding.
8. But how to navigate your business
into this advantageous position? 8
How
9. Research serves to make building
stones out of stumbling blocks.
Arthur D. Little
Founder of International Management Consultancy 9
How
What is research, but a blind
date with knowledge.
William Henry
1774-1836, British Chemist
Research is formalized curiosity.
It is poking and prying with a
purpose.
Zora Neale Hurston
American folklorist, anthropologist, and author
Research
10. Research is a
means to an
end.
The end is
insight.
10
How
"A new understanding, probably of
human behaviour or attitude, as a
result of which action may be taken
and an enterprise more efficiently
conducted.“
Jeremy Bullmore
Former President of the Market Research Society (MRS)
11. 10 ways in which
research can help
drive your business
forward.
11
How
12. 1. Predict future needs
Using desk research, horizon scanning,
scenario planning or simply asking the ?
12
How
21. 10. Test for success
Using prototypes, beta & hothousing 21
How
The 2 T’s of Test
The Planning T
The Design T
22. 10 ways in which research can help
Drive your business forward with confidence 22
1. Predict future needs
2. Improve understanding of current needs
3. Learn from life
4. Build upon behaviour
5. Appreciate how customers like to do things
6. Collaborate on product improvements
7. Get the price right
8. Evaluate brand strength & performance
9. Measure customer satisfaction
10. Test for success
23. 23
THANK YOU.
David Jones
Managing Director
T. +44 (0) 1522 519388
M. +44 (0) 7702 596260
david.jones@habit5.co.uk
www.habit5.co.uk
Where
Main Office Location:
Habit5
Unit S15
Sparkhouse
Enterprise@Lincoln Building
Rope Walk
Lincoln LN6 7DQ
UNITED KINGDOM
If you would like a copy
of this presentation.
Please give me your
business card or send
me an email and I will
provide a Dropbox link
to it.
Welcome
Thanks for coming along
Hopefully you’ll get some value from my talk today on….
Do ask any ?s you may have at the end or over a slice of pizza
So, a rather existential ? To start us of ‘Who am I? (to talk, I guess)
I’m not going to blow my own trumpet through this you can have a read for yourselves.
The bottom line is that I’ve got a lot of practical experience to draw upon.
I’ve got to an age where it would be great to have a little less experience to draw upon. Get a few years back.
That said Habit5 itself is only one year old so – new beginnings…
To kick us off with a hypothesis of sorts, if you like…where all good research should start from…
“At Habit5 we believe that the brands that understand best, demonstrate this understanding and are in turn understood by their customers, will do best in their markets.”
It sounds like common sense in many ways. But very few brands and businesses achieve this.
Mainly because it takes, expertise, time and effort.
So why do it? Why bother?
First and most importantly because…
Humans have a deep seated desire to be understood, it is a key part of the social construction of the self.
I want you to understand me because what you say to me and your behaviour around me, helps me understand myself.
Social media has created a new platform for understanding, misunderstanding and being understood in multiple ways.
You can find out more on human understanding on my Scoop.it curated topic that starts with John Locke’s ‘Essay on Human Understanding’ from 1690 and goes right up to today.
Perhaps less obvious, is that brands need to be well understood by their customers in order to lead their markets.
Ted Talk guru Simon Sinek has written a compelling book and delivered an equally compelling talk on the importance of starting with ‘Why’ your brand or business exists.
His very simple Golden Circles model illustrates that market leading brands most of their time communicating ‘Why’ they exist. Their purpose. Their mission. What they stand for or against. Some time communicating about how they do things and a small amount of time communicating about what they do.
Follow and also ran brands do the opposite.
Thirdly, there is a growing imperative on brands and businesses to demonstrate understanding and deliver value back, based upon the data they hold on people.
The EC Commissioners are threatening to introduce legislation in 2015 enabling consumers to compel a brand to digitally forget them.
This is already hitting search engines following an EU Court of Justice ruling in May this year.
The brands and businesses that get this right will outperform their competitors.
The leading brands get a lot of things right but they can still make improvements in understanding.
We ran some research back in the autumn of last year that looked at how well 20 leading UK brands understood their customers and in turn how well they were understood by their customers, across a sample of 1,128 UK Adults.
We call this the Mutual Understanding Measure.
What we found amongst other things was that:-
Whilst Amazon does lead on ‘Use of information’ performance on this dimension lags that in all other areas
Very few brands are doing a good job at explaining in a memorable and compelling way ‘Why they exist’
There was a big performance gap between the best and worst performing brand on every dimension, even though we only researched household name brands
The market leaders on understanding in every industry sector researched had the most satisfied customers and the customers most prepared to recommend them
Customer understanding goes deeper than satisfaction and recommendation (because there is more at stake – they really know me, what I like, the way I like to do things) and understanding is likely to be a stronger indicator of long term customer loyalty
But how to navigate your business into this advantageous position?
Research can help. It isn’t the full answer but it can help a lot.
In research we like to use verbatim quotes.
Here are a few good ones on research itself….
I should stress that research is a means to an end.
The end is insight.
What do I mean by insight…
"A new understanding, probably of human behaviour or attitude, as a result of which action may be taken and an enterprise more efficiently conducted.“Jeremy Bullmore is a highly quotable chap…he also said…
“Why is a Good Insight Like a Refrigerator?
Because the moment you look into it, a light comes on.”
Hopefully, I have convinced you of the importance and business benefits of understanding your customers better.
What follow are 10 ways in which market research can help you do that…
Habit5 is currently working with Best Western hotels on a brand strategy out to 2020.
Putting this in place has involved lots of desk research on all published sources looking at future trends and industry projections.
Scanning the horizon for ‘adjacent’ opportunities – new indirectly related digital technologies that could enhance the hotel guest stay experience.
If you don’t do this already, subscribe to emails from the likes of springwise, trendwatching and trendhunter, look out for things that could positively or negatively impact your sector or category.
Mashable, Wired and KickStarter can give you a different take on the near or now future. As author William Gibson said “The future is here, it is just not evenly distributed yet”.
Why not ask your customers about how they see the medium to long term future? We encouraged HSBC to do that in order to support its marketing of ‘financial planning’.
Back to the here and now.
How to get a better handle on your customers or clients - current needs?
Asking them in research can make a lot of sense.
Consumer concerns around being sold to are largely removed, particularly if the research is done independently.
This can help them open up and reveal more, safe in the knowledge that their input is anonymised.
You can use qualitative research – semi-structured flexible 121 depth interviews or focus groups informed by how personal or social the purchase tends to be
Alternatively….
Quantitative research – online or offline surveys, questionnaires and sampling, etc can yield a lot of insights here.
To investigate the degree of fit between what the customer needs and what your product or service delivers.
You may want to work your way up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to see which higher order needs your product is, or could meet – how aspirational is it? how readily can it be personalised, customised or individualised?
A research investigation of customer needs could inform a segmentation of your base, into clusters that share the same motivating needs.
Just studying where people live, the environments they inhabit can tell us a lot – formally this is called ethnography.
Whilst often used in relation to tribal cultures it can just as readily be applied to the UK:-
- We investigated how hotel rooms were left by guests for a leading hotel chain to inform room design.
- Recent experience in conducting research for the Woodland Trust the presence of sunrooms full of toys were a recurring theme – all spoke of creating more space and valuing a middle space between outside and inside, also a strong desire on the part of parents to keep their children positively occupied and engaged
- Mystery Shopping the customer experience can be illuminating too – for First Buses we left cuddly toys on board to test out the Lost Property Customer Service standards
Exploring how people behave can deliver great insights too through…
Personal observation
Accompanied shopping online or instore
Mechanical observation
- eye-tracking analysis of web pages, a technique we’ve used in testing prototype software for HSBC business managers across Europe
Data analysis
- We are currently examining patterns in ‘out of catchment’ ticket bookings for Lincoln arts venues
Understanding how patterns of thought influence behaviour are key too
I imagine that you’ve heard of ‘Behavioural Economics’ a field popularised by Noble Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman, that amongst other things investigates cognitive biases like: anchoring effect and the optimism bias that illustrate we are all a long way from the highly rational ‘Economic Man’ of classical theory.
Practical ‘Nudge’ applications of Behavioural Economics have emerged ‘Pension Opt Outs’ rather than ‘Pension Opt Ins’ being a current topical example.
Have you mapped out the touchpoints or contacts in your current customer or client journey?
Doing so can often reveal significant weaknesses..
Points were customer expectations are not being met or set
Badly worded procedural or administrative letters and emails
Hard to navigate process steps
We’ve got lots of experience in mapping each step in the journey, examining: data held, customer feedback, communications used, opportunities missed, etc
And providing practical recommendations on how to improve things.
Your customers or clients probably already know, from being on the receiving end, how to make significant improvements to your product or service.
Why not engage their help.
We’ve recently devised and run both online and offline co-creation sessions with teenagers for the Woodland Trust, to inform the development of new ways of engaging with the charity.
Research has proven approaches to product and service pricing optimisation that don’t rely on Brucie…
Westendorp’s Pricing Sensitivity Model (PSM) on the right, might not be as much fun but it gets the job done, when applied in quantitative research.
You may decide to invest in marketing your brand but how to evaluate the performance of that investment, over time, given that the sales impact might be deferred or hard to pinpoint.
Market research can apply tried and proven models to track the performance of a brand through time and compare performance against key competitor brands.
Different brand health or brand dynamics models can be applied to reflect the kind of industry or sector being researched.
Monitoring how your business, product or service is performing for customers on an ongoing basis can be vitally important.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) as illustrated here, is one way to track the positive or negative impact of experiencing a particular touchpoint upon a customer.
NPS score or Customer Satisfaction Indexes can be a useful and necessary counterbalance to profit targets.
This form of research is a good predictor of the future sustainability of profits and the trajectory of the business.
Research can help you learn fast about how to achieve new things successfully.
That might involve running prototype research – as we did for Optima Graphic Design on be
half of BHF and UEFA for a new healthy eating app they were developing.
Or
In designing test marketing or hothousing in such a way that the results will be robust and repeatable upon rollout.
That’s at about a 95% Confidence Level with a +/- 3% Confidence Interval.
Hopefully either now or in the future your business will benefit from the insights that research can reveal.
Are there any easy questions?
Are there any questions you would like to put into research?
I have a question for you..to leave you with.