Unlocking the secrets of these preferences when it comes to taste, quality ingredients, brand trust, affordability, and convenience  is not just insightful; it’s the key to winning the hearts and wallets of your target audience. Let’s explore how these attributes shape consumer decisions and discover actionable strategies to leverage these insights in your marketing efforts.

Consumer Preference Factors in Food & Beverage – Tastes Great

First and foremost, flavor isn’t just a sensation on the taste buds; it’s a gateway to consumer loyalty. Flavor preferences are deeply rooted in the interplay between our senses, memories, and emotions. The psychology behind these preferences is a fascinating exploration of the human experience of taste and how it shapes our decision-making process. 

Understanding the personal narrative woven into a consumer’s flavor preferences allows marketers to create products that align with their unique stories, fostering a deeper connection. Whether it’s the comforting warmth of a familiar flavor or the excitement of a new and adventurous taste, the impact on consumer choice is profound. 

Cultural influences can help shape flavors & target diverse consumer segments. Considering that 78% of North American consumers are positive about foods and beverages that have unusual or new flavors, why not introduce limited-edition flavors inspired by various cultures?

Segment your audience and collaborate with foodies and chefs from diverse backgrounds to create a fusion of flavors that target unique segments of your audience, ensuring content that not only promotes these special releases but also becomes a celebration of cultural diversity.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of marketers believe community-building is important to creating emotional loyalty, so encourage your community to share moments of excitement and curiosity sparked by your bold or new flavors. Evoke emotions through adventurous flavors to stimulate excitement and curiosity. User-generated content featuring taste tests, first impressions, or creative uses of your products can turn each bite into a thrilling adventure, creating a shared emotional experience.

Consumer Preference Factors in Food & Beverage – Made from Highest Quality Ingredients

When it comes to the perception of product quality, the journey involves more than just the tangible elements. Evolving standards demand a deeper exploration into the transparency of sourcing, creating a brand perception that resonates with the values of the discerning consumer.

Make your community part of the sourcing narrative. Share insights into your sourcing decisions, whether it’s selecting ethical suppliers, sustainable practices, or the journey from farm to table. Actively involve your community in your quality assurance process. 

Launch a product sampling campaign that invites your community to experience your flavors firsthand. Encourage users to share their tasting experiences through UGC, capturing the genuine reactions and excitement sparked by your products. This not only offers a sensory exploration but also creates authentic content that showcases the real-time connection between your brand and the taste preferences of your audience. UGC from the sampling campaign becomes a dynamic testimony to the delightful journey your flavors take each consumer on, which you can later repurpose across key marketing channels.

This involvement not only builds trust but also elevates your brand perception by showcasing a collaborative commitment to excellence.

Consumer Preference Factors in Food & Beverage – Brand I Trust

In the intricate dance between consumers and brands, trust emerges as the unshakable foundation upon which lasting relationships are built. In fact, 93% of marketers agree that consumers trust content created by real people rather than content created by brands. 

Brand trust is earned through consistent actions and transparent communication. From delivering on promises to cultivating open lines of communication, these tactics contribute to a brand’s reputation as a reliable and trustworthy partner in the consumer journey. 

Take a customer-centric approach. Actively seek and respond to feedback, then share the authentic stories of your community members. Whether it’s a customer’s cooking breakthrough story or a milestone meal shared with family and friends, these narratives contribute to the authenticity of your brand. Actively engaging with your community’s stories demonstrates that your brand is not just about transactions but about genuine connections.

Pacific Coast Producers, an agricultural cooperative in California specializing in canning fruits and tomatoes for private brands for retailers, restaurants, and schools across the USA, launched the Can Fan Community. “The Can Fan Community is a gateway for consumers to unlock a world of culinary possibilities and discover the gems within their pantry,” said Tami Iverson, Director of Marketing. “The community is our way of inviting everyone to join us in celebrating and promoting the benefits and convenience of canned fruits and tomatoes.” 

Consumer Preference Factors in Food & Beverage – Affordability & Value

According to the USDA, “in 2023, food prices increased by 5.8 percent. Food-at-home prices increased by 5.0 percent, while food-away-from-home prices increased by 7.1 percent.”

The price of a product is more than just a numerical figure; it’s a psychological trigger that guides consumer choices and takes center stage. Understanding the role of pricing in decision-making involves recognizing that consumers perceive value not just in absolute terms but in relation to their expectations. Additionally, over 97% of consumers are motivated to be loyal and purchase more frequently when a brand listens to their opinions and feedback.

To improve the perceived value of your brand: 

• Create a community of loyal customers through exclusive discounts, early access to sales, or personalized offers. This not only becomes a testament to the benefits of loyalty and repeat purchases but also serves as a powerful marketing tool to attract new members. Fun fact: From our recent study, nearly 82% of community members identify as brand advocates.
• Signal quality by encouraging your community to share their experiences with your product(s), emphasizing the quality and premium nature. User-generated content featuring testimonials, reviews, and even unboxing experiences is a testament to the perceived value that aligns with price. 
• Showcase the behind-the-scenes efforts that go into creating your products. Invite your community to share UGC that highlights the meticulous processes, premium ingredients and materials, commitment to sustainability, and attention to detail. This not only educates consumers but also strengthens the association between higher prices and superior quality.

Consumer Preference Factors in Food & Beverage – Convenience & Availability

What good is brand preference if a product is not easy to find and easy to buy? Savvy brands leverage distribution strategies to enhance availability, ensuring their products are readily accessible when and where consumers need them. Tapping into your consumers to gather grocery and Big Box shopping habits and preference data can help make the case for increased distribution and shelf space. For many traditional brands, this also means adopting digital strategies from Direct to Consumer (DTC) brands, creating shoppable experiences on their websites and product pages, innovative delivery methods, and blending digital engagement with in-store experiences.

It’s clear that today’s consumers are discerning and actively engaged in shaping the narratives around the products they choose. For marketers, understanding, embracing, and responding to the evolving nature of consumer preferences is essential to stay relevant in the hyper-competitive food & beverage space – and brands that build and leverage their community of consumers have a decided advantage. 

Did you know 78% of consumers say interacting with a brand’s online community makes that brand more “top of mind” when shopping? Start building your own community and product sampling campaigns today. Request a demo

The post Relevance of Consumer Preferences in Food & Bev Marketing appeared first on TINT.

Think of it like trying to go on a road trip without a GPS – you can try and guess which direction you should head in, but if you make one wrong turn, you can quickly become lost. And getting back on track might be no easy task.

That’s why having the right consumer intelligence tools at your fingertips is critical for your brand’s journey. 

Why Tap into an Online Community for Insights?

With an online brand community, brands get direct access to consumers to gather critical information that helps to map consumer journeys, create accurate and detailed personas, gain validation for investments, and stay ahead of trends. 

In turn, that owned zero party data can then be spun into action by enabling brands to personalize and elevate brand experiences both inside their online brand community and among the greater consumer population. 

To demonstrate the depth of insights that can be gained from an online brand community, we tapped into our Smiley360 community of over 1.1 million consumers to collect real, valuable insights for brands in the rapidly growing Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and Hydration Drink Markets. In doing this, our team of Insights Experts uncovered powerful and compelling consumer intelligence that shone a light on the power of an online community as the ultimate research tool. 

Let’s explore the benefits of leveraging an online community to power greater consumer insights that fuel informed and strategic brand decisions.

Speed and Efficiency

With trends and market shifts moving faster than ever, brands need on-demand access to consumer data and insights to maintain their competitive edge. An online brand community acts as an always-on consumer panel to get you the data you need right when you need it. 

While market research firms will take months to deliver results that will be obsolete by the time they reach you, an online brand community can be tapped into whenever research needs arise, delivering results on a dime and empowering brands to make rapid and informed decisions.

And with engaging activities, offers, and discussions, online brand communities can keep consumers engaged and ensure their accessibility to gather insights on the fly. 

In our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and the Hydration Drinks study, we were able to tap into an online community to gain critical insights and strategy recommendations for brands in the booming industry in just a few short weeks.  

Brands striving for growth in competitive categories can’t wait several months for actionable data and that’s why an online brand community is the most efficient channel for real-time consumer insights.

Robust Audience Segmentation and Targeting

Your consumers are united by little else than their affinity for your brand. Their different motivations, influences, personality types, lifestyles, and shopping habits are all factors that can impact receptivity to your brand, product, messaging, and more. 

Knowing who your consumers are on this level empowers your brand to deliver tailored and personalized messaging that resonates with each consumer. Additionally, it helps identify new growth segments, prioritize investments, drive innovation, and increase conversions. 

When you tap into an online brand community for audience segmentation, you’re able to identify attitudinal traits, demographic characteristics, shared behaviors, and more that allow you to quickly gain a firm understanding of how to best serve your consumers’ needs. 

With our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and the Hydration Drinks study, our insights team segmented our Smiley360 community of 1.1MM+ consumers to those who identified as consumers of these wellness brands – ensuring that we were getting the data we needed from the people we needed it from.

After getting powerful results like these, brands with the right online brand community platform will have the ability to harness the insights gained to power targeted activations, offers, and discussions based on the results of their research, making for a true personalized brand experience. 

Ratings and Reviews

Ratings and Reviews are an integral part of the consumer journey today – consumers are 63% more likely to trust and buy from a company with good reviews. And in our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and Hydration Drinks study, we found that 90% of consumers turn to retail reviews to help with purchases in those product categories – an example of a significant actionable insight gained from an online community study. 

Luckily, with a TINT-powered online brand community, review generation is a piece of cake. 

By identifying and mobilizing targeted consumers with community activations to share their brand experiences, brands secure a steady stream of high-quality, authentic reviews from loyal brand advocates that syndicate to key retail sites. Not only does this help amplify advocacy and user-generated content at scale, it also gives brands another way to gather consumer feedback. By monitoring online reviews, brands can get more information about potential product issues, customer service experiences, or even spark new ideas for messaging or product innovation. 

By having an effective review generation strategy powered by an online brand community, you’ll paint a clear picture of your brand and products that will act as an ongoing feedback loop for your brand.

Sampling Programs

Speaking of product reviews, let’s dive into one of the easiest ways to drive more reviews – product sampling. As a natural way of collecting consumer opinions, it’s also an activity that easily gets consumers excited and eager to participate.

Product sampling allows brands to increase trial and awareness of new and existing products while gathering actionable feedback from targeted supporters to troubleshoot issues, identify strengths, and optimize concepts. 

And with zero party data that gets collected through an online brand community, brands are enabled to hyper-target their sampling, increasing its efficiency and effectiveness. The kind of insights gained from this help brands ensure the success of products, reduce risk, and accelerate new product launches.

In our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and Hydration Drinks study, we found that all generations were interested in the idea of personalized supplements. Imagine the feedback and insights you could gain from delivering targeted samples uniquely tailored to each consumer based on the zero party data that they’ve already supplied within the community. With a TINT-powered online brand community, it’s already possible and brands are actively gaining key competitive intelligence to help ensure product success in this very way.

Discussion Forums

A discussion forum can be an invaluable asset to your brand by offering real-time feedback from consumers while also keeping your brand top of mind. This two-way dialogue is a win-win: brands will develop deeper emotional bonds and gain insights that will help make impactful brand decisions. And community members feel heard and valued, and see their input being taken into account. These conversations enable brands to develop the connections and insights that make brand loyalty flow naturally.   

In our Vitamin, Minerals and Supplements, and Hydration Drinks study, we found that 68% of consumers said that online communities of like-minded consumers are an important source for wellness brand purchases. What better way to foster a sense of community than by having your consumers connect and converse with each other? 

Not only do discussion forums help fuel brand love, the gathering of real-life stories and metrics help brands to crowdsource new ideas, validate R&D plans, and encourage co-creation in a way that builds the trust that ultimately turns brand fans into advocates. 

How TINT can help you achieve greater insights through the power of community 

TINT’s community powered marketing platform was designed to empower brands to gather insights that drive true business impact. Brand partners can utilize TINT to access insights from their own consumer set via an online brand community, or they can gain broad consumer learnings from TINT’s proprietary peer influencer community, Smiley360 –  a group of over 1.1 million socially engaged, connected, and opinionated consumers who share their thoughts and feedback about brands, shopping habits, and much more. 

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post Turning Data Into Action – Why an Online Community is the Ultimate Insights Solution appeared first on TINT.

We’ve seen how seriously consumers take their ice cream – the earth nearly stopped spinning when it was recently announced that the Choco Taco was being discontinued. So we’re advising that brands take on consumer research with just as much passion.

Consumer insights research should be a continuous effort to help you better refine your messaging and maximize your bottom line. It’s the cherry on top of your marketing strategy – it just wouldn’t be complete without it. 

How an Online Community Can Help with Brand Harmony

Brand Harmony is the ultimate goal businesses strive for – to have your brand, product, packaging, and messaging in alignment with each other.​
​
It’s about making sure that the product placed in the hands of consumers meets the expectations set by your marketing.​

And an online community supports this mission by being an always-on source of insights, enabling you to tap into your consumers to stay on top of preferences and trends, collect actionable feedback, optimize creative, and more.

Emotional Profiling Survey 

To learn more about consumer perception and purchase behavior surrounding ice cream brands, we ran an emotional profiling survey on targeted members of our Smiley360 Community. 

Conducting an associative exercise among participants known as MaxDiff to emotionally profile each ice cream brand, we were able to gain significant knowledge on brand resonance and actionable insights for four top ice cream brands​: Ben & Jerry’s, Breyers, Halo Top, and Talenti.

Take a look at what we found. 

The Scoop on Brand Harmony for Ice Cream Brands

Ready to tap into key consumer insights to turn data into action for your brand? ​

We can help. With 14+ years of experience, TINT’s Community Powered Marketing platform and team of Insights Experts make gathering key insights easy, fast, and more accurate. Our platform empowers you to deploy data-gathering via an engaged and targeted online brand community to help you make better decisions for your brand. 

Want to see our Insights in action?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post Emotional Profiling Survey Reveals Actionable Insights for Ice Cream Brands appeared first on TINT.

We’re going to tackle what it means to be an insights-driven brand, why it’s important, and examples of brands using consumer insights to grow their business. 

We know what you might think – “I already conduct market research. What is the difference between that and consumer insights?” Let’s talk about it. 

Market research vs. Consumer Insights 

Market research and consumer insights are often used interchangeably, but they serve different purposes, and one often supports the other. If building an insights-driven brand strategy is like a relay race, it’s market research that hands the baton to consumer insights. 

Market research is defined as the study of the requirements of various markets, the acceptability of products, and methods of developing or exploiting new markets. 

When a company is conducting market research, they are looking to cast a wide net on factual information to gauge marketplace traits, attitudes, wants, and needs. It is also used to explore new markets and offer comparisons with competitors and industry standards.  

Consumer insights is the dedicated and organized strategy of analyzing consumer data and feedback to make actionable recommendations that will impact your brand and business. 

Analyzing consumer insights beyond just market trends is essential. After all, “the market” is just a fancy word for people’s behavior. We can’t forget the human element. 

Consumer insights aim to take the guesswork out of important business decisions. It allows marketers to dive deeper into how consumers think and understand how they can create the best possible customer experience. 

Ultimately, organizations need both market research and consumer insights. Market research tends to offer a macro perspective for brands, while consumer insights offer a micro-level “street view” of what consumers are looking for and how you can capitalize on it. 

For example, a food brand might do market research to see if there’s a declining movement of young adult women eating breakfast cereal. Consumer insights will aim to understand what motivates this particular group to abandon this morning staple. Maybe they are reluctant because of processed sugar, or there are generational differences in what they consider a nutritious breakfast. Consumer insights can help fill in the holes and guide decision-makers on how to fulfill a particular need correctly. 

Consumer insights can be collected in various ways, and innovative consumer research techniques are discovered every day – from artificial intelligence to market research online communities (MROC) to biometrics to geolocation or applied consumer neuroscience.

What actionable steps can you take after collecting consumer insights?

The rewards of tapping into consumer insights are endless, from optimizing your marketing strategy to improving your product development. 

1. Accurately map the customer journey
In conjunction with data amassed from market research, collecting consumer insights can help you delineate answers with regards to the who, what, where, when, and why of a customer’s purchase journey. It can help answer what channels are most influential and the barriers to conversion. 

2. Create accurate and detailed personas
Discovering consumer insights about your audience helps you determine your ideal customer set and has a tangible impact on your marketing spend. Speaking to the right people in the right way can save thousands of dollars (or sometimes millions) in advertising costs. 

3. Deliver more personalized experiences
When you solicit opinions from your consumers directly, you can use that data to create a positive feedback loop of marketing messages. Seventy-eight percent of consumers are more likely to recommend companies that personalize. 

4. Improve brand equity and consumer relationships
Sometimes, marketers think of consumer insights as a behind-the-scene practice, but people notice when you’re paying attention to them. 77% of consumers say they favor brands that ask for and accept customer feedback. 

5. Gaining validation for investments in new products and services, packaging, and creative
If you’re looking to convince decision-makers in the c-suite, verifying interest and analyzing consumer opinions and attitudes is often the silver bullet to securing support for new initiatives. 

6. Anticipate consumer trends to stay ahead of the curve
Market research can be great for identifying gaps in the marketplace, but many times it is described as looking in the rearview mirror of a speeding car. Consumer insights will expose unfulfilled needs and trends that might not be on your radar. 

Brands getting it right: Consumer insights examples 

Metholatum Secures New Retail Distribution with the Help of Consumer Insights 

As a brand that’s been around for 125 years, Mentholatum understands the need to innovate to preserve the trust it has built with families for generations. 

Mentholatum is the manufacturer behind the VaporDuo brand, and they turned to a virtual focus group to understand more about brand and category users. 

Mentholatum’s team gained more than 100+ actionable insights and used them to deepen its relationship with existing and new retail partners. With the help of consumer insights on buying behavior and consumer preferences, they secured new distribution at Dollar General stores, which they had been struggling to break into.  

Sir Kensington’s “Elevated Eater” Audience Profiling 

Unilever’s fast-growing condiment brand, Sir Kensington’s, uses its online brand community, the Taste Buds, as a valuable channel to cultivate consumer insights. 

Challenger brands like Sir Kensington’s face unique, well, challenges. When trying to steal market share from established brands, they knew they had to focus, with laser-sharp accuracy, on identifying consumer needs to succeed.

Through their online brand community, they had direct access to consumers to run surveys, polls, and discussions. A 7-week dedicated Market Research Online Community (MROC) study was used to identify four key eater segments within their audience. Within each segment, they could understand different taste preferences, brand perceptions, and shopping habits. They then delivered insights to their team on messaging, content ideas, and targeting for various product SKUs.

DSE Healthcare Fuels Predictive Insights for Go-To-Market Strategies   

DSE Healthcare Solutions manages a portfolio of specialty health brands and aims to stay on top of the latest trends.

One of the fastest and easiest ways to gain insights was starting the Upside Community, a valuable online destination for health-conscious consumers to connect, exchange tips, and access new and exciting opportunities and content from DSE Healthcare.

DSE’s supplement product, Fergon Iron Restore, was developed entirely with the help of their community. They identified consumer needs for product development, aided in naming the product, and then helped seed reviews and samples to drive immediate sales impact at launch. 

How Vesta can help take your consumer insights to the next level 

Vesta purpose-built its online community platform with insights in mind. Brand partners can utilize Vesta to access insights from their own consumer set via an online brand community, or they can gain broader consumer learnings from Vesta’s proprietary peer influencer community, Smiley360 –  a group of socially engaged, connected, and opinionate consumers who share their thoughts and feedback about brands, shopping habits and much more. Check out some of our latest consumer insight studies:

• Consumers Seek Personalized Wellness in 2023 
• 3 Perception Challenges Facing Clean Beauty Brands & How to Overcome
• Incentives Made Easy: 5 Personas to Enhance Online Community Building 
• 2022 Back-to-School Marketing Recommendations 

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post How Consumer Insights Goes Beyond Market Research appeared first on TINT.

As we head towards the second half of the year, many marketing plans will launch early to increase awareness, drive new customer acquisition, and build remarketing pools. 

The global Vitamins, Minerals, and Supplements market is anticipated to grow from $129 billion in 2021 to $196 billion by 2028. It is one of the few categories that saw significant positive movement during the pandemic, mostly due to consumers wanting to support immune health and boost overall well-being. And the Hydration Drink market is expanding as well, growing by an anticipated 7.8% by 2027. 

Vesta recently conducted a wellness study of more than 5,567 consumers to understand what they will be looking for from brands in this category. Here is what we found…

How important are wellness brands to consumers? 

Our study found considerable appeal for the category, with 60% of consumers saying they are particularly interested in Vitamins, Minerals, and Supplements brands, as well as one in three consumers interested in Hydration Drinks. 

Even with increased interest in wellness, consumers struggle to meet their goals, with only one in ten saying they feel they get enough nutrients in their diet and only one in three saying they feel they stay hydrated well enough throughout the day. This presents a strong market opportunity for brands to fuel long-term relationships that service consumer needs. 

What do consumers look for from wellness brands?

A big theme from the study was the new trend of personalized supplements. A substantial 58% are “very interested” in personalized supplements made just for them, with younger generations like Gen Z and Millennials being most interested (71%). 

Furthermore, consumers are not seeking wellness brands for help with one or two concerns but for a multitude of areas of their health. Two-thirds (66%) of consumers say they seek help for seven or more health needs. 

Younger generations like Gen Z seek help the most in Brain, Memory & Support (82%) and Hair, Skin & Nails (82%), while Millennials seek help with Everyday Health (72%) and Energy & Concentration (76%). 

Gen X and Baby Boomers sought help the most in Bones, Muscles & Joints (84%), Heart Health (60%) and Eye Health (57%). 

Regarding Hydration Drinks, 70%+ consumers are interested in Energy, Immune Support, and Vitamins. 

Our study found men and women behave slightly differently in their consumption and purchase of Hydration Drinks. Women are more likely than men to drink Hydration Drinks to start their day (50% vs. 43%) or as a midday pick-me-up (61% vs. 53%), and men are more likely than women to drink Hydration Drinks after working out (70% vs. 62%).

Beyond personalization, younger consumers especially look for brands that prioritize transparency and sustainability. 54% of Gen Z want to know the science behind their Supplement, and 57% say sustainability, community, and giving back are important. 

Millennials especially want Supplements with high-quality ingredients, including Supplements from real food sources (72%) and superfood ingredients (69%).

It’s clear that the brands that showcase personalization AND strong brand values will win out with consumers. 

What influences purchase for wellness brands? 

Our study found word-of-mouth advocacy played a big role with purchase decisions, with 86% saying recommendations from friends and family are important sources of information for Hydration Drink purchases. 90% of consumers turn to online reviews for Vitamin, Mineral, and Supplement purchases. 

Close to 7 in 10 (68%) of consumers look to online communities of like-minded people as an important source of information for wellness brand purchases. 

For these purchases, “influencers” are not influencing. Athlete endorsements and influencers/celebrities ranked last as important sources of information (32%, 25%). 

What can you do now to prepare your brand for success? 

Right now is the time to put in place strategic initiatives that address consumers’ specific needs of the moment. Here are three things you should do:

• Foster education and lifestyle conversation to create connection and accountability with like-minded people. Consumers are interested and excited about wellness brands. Maximize demand by boosting knowledge exchange and education. 
• Build an online brand community rooted in elevated values that offers tailored experiences fueled by zero-party data. Consumers want wellness brands that have strong values AND create a personalized experience just for them.  
• Cultivate brand advocates to build a pipeline of always-on reviews and user-generated content. Consumers will turn to their digital neighbors. Online reviews and social advocacy are key.  

Questions about how to maximize sales in 2023? 

The Vesta team are experts in the unique needs of wellness brands, from UGC and review generation to building brand equity and more. Reach out to us. We’re here to help.

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post Consumers Seek Personalized Wellness in 2023 [EXCLUSIVE RESEARCH] appeared first on TINT.

Through an engaging discussion, the expert panelists from a variety of backgrounds explored the dynamic challenges and opportunities faced by brands chasing brand harmony. 

What is Brand Harmony? 

Brand Harmony encompasses the ultimate goal that most businesses strive for – to have your brand, products, messaging, and consumer perception in alignment with each other. As HCD Research says, it’s about “ensuring that your product meets its promise”. It comes down to making sure that the product that is placed in the hands of consumers is meeting the expectations set in marketing. 

How Do You Achieve Brand Harmony?

As you might expect, there are a lot of moving pieces when it comes to working towards brand alignment. It’s an all-team effort that requires having a strong vision and a determination to bring your brand to life. And while this might sound like a heavy lift, it certainly does not have to be. 

HCD’s panel revealed three tasks that brands should include on their path to achieving brand harmony. Let’s explore them. 

1. Integrate Marketing and R&D

We’ve all been there. You’re working on a project with your head down just to find out that your progress and goals are not in alignment with another department’s goals. Not only are these team silos a big headache for you, they’re also a major roadblock in creating brand harmony. When Marketing and R&D are not on the same page, the product delivered to consumers is doomed to fall below expectations. 

Linda Flammer, PhD, a speaker on the panel and Senior Research Associate at Monell Chemical Senses Center, shared an anecdote of product launch failure from her past that she attributed to ineffective communication across departments. “The product failed miserably because there was no communication at all. It was a complete mismatch of the sensory and the messaging, so the product did not live up to the promise” she stated. 

Often brands rely too heavily on one area of expertise over another, leading to dissatisfaction in the consumer experience. TINT’s Christoph Knudsen stated, “…a big mistake a lot of companies make is they decide for themselves what they feel like their brand means to their consumers and they don’t feel like they need to do the research.” This approach blindly leads brands down the road to fragmented messaging and consumers who can’t grasp what your brand is about- a far cry from brand harmony.

When teams work alongside each other – when the intelligence and innovation of R&D meets the creativity and strategic mindset of marketing –  that is where the magic of brand alignment happens. 

The bottom line: internal communication is key. Without it, your brand is risking its chance to deliver an optimal product to consumers. As Flammer said, “If companies don’t align those silos, they’ll be weeded out and will ultimately fail in the future”

2. Let Consumers Craft Your Identity

Consumers are keen on calling the shots these days. And since consumers are often the ones telling your story and advocating for you, it’s important to be in tune with their brand perception.

Panelist William Childs, Creative Director at Kitchen Magic, stated, “The old paradigm of marketing or branding used to be that advertisers would tell consumers what they are. Now, that’s totally reversed – the customers tell the brands what they are. And if that’s out of alignment, you’re going to have problems.” He added, “I don’t think a lot of companies even know what they’re selling.”  

Childs honed in on this idea, stating that brands need to position themselves in a way that highlights the promise of their product in conjunction with its actual features. It’s about projecting that Harley Davidson does not just sell motorcycles, they sell freedom. Mattress Firm does not just sell mattresses, they sell a good night’s sleep. Hello Fresh does not just sell a meal-delivery kit, they sell practicality.

It’s about knowing the lifestyles your consumers live, understanding their pain points and expectations, and letting that guide brand decision-making. 

TINT’s Christoph Knudsen stated, “It’s going to be all the more important to drill down on what experience you’re providing to consumers that they’re not going to get somewhere else. Get that to a succinct core message and make sure that it’s in every chance you get to grab attention and continually reinforce it with every decision that you make.” 

The main takeaway is that when brands zoom out and consider what their product really means to consumers, it becomes easier to land the right messaging to develop a brand identity that rings harmoniously. 

3. Take a Chance

ABBA may have sung it first, but brands should make taking chances the mantra of their brand plans. When it comes to creating brand harmony, the panelists agreed across the board that it’s important to be bold and take a chance sometimes. 

Many of the thriving brands that we know today exist as the result of a leap of faith launched by brands that were teetering on the edge of brand alignment. 

Childs recalled how all research pointed to the highly successful sitcom Seinfeld being a massive failure. Panelist Stacie Miller, PhD, Sr. Manager of Strategic Communications at Motif Food Works, touched on how the Aeron chair was rejected countless times before becoming the unofficial desk chair of the corporate world. 

These unexpected successes are a stark reminder that even when all signs point one way, sometimes the world turns in another. Refined data points and snazzy marketing copy are only half the battle – the rest plays out in the willingness to believe that your brand can deliver what you’re claiming it can. After all, if you don’t believe in your product, consumers never will. 

The point is, that while the quest for brand harmony might take your brand out of its comfort zone, it may also be the very thing that defines your competitive advantage and sets your brand on the fast track toward growth. As panelist Yulia Strizhakova said, “You just need to make sure you have consistency and alignment” adding, “It will make it or break it for startups or smaller companies”. 

Setting the Stage for Brand Alignment

Orchestrating brand harmony is like one big performance. You’ll have moments where you feel like your brand is the star of the show, and times when you wish you had rehearsed your strategy more. But when it all comes together, you’ll have a compelling and integrated brand story to enhance brand equity and win consumers over.

To watch HCD Research’s Brand Harmony webinar on-demand, click here.

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post Three Tips for Securing Brand Harmony appeared first on TINT.

The tried and true methods of performing consumer market research are established. From brand sentiment studies to Net Promoter Scores tracking consumers’ likelihood to recommend, there’s no shortage of techniques used to gather consumer insights. 

But what about some of the new consumer market research techniques that aren’t as well-known?

Let’s explore five of the most innovative consumer research techniques and how you can use them to fuel your market research strategy.

AI (Artificial Intelligence)

With mobile technology, the internet, and social media, the scale of data being generated on a daily basis is exponentially larger than ever before.

In fact, in 2020 alone, we created 2.5 quintillion data bytes daily. 

Traditional market research tends to be both costly and slow. By taking advantage of the data created on a daily basis, we can use more efficient methods for gathering insights.

Enter artificial intelligence.

AI is designed to take some of the load off by handling more of the “grunt work” involved in consumer market research.  AI can quickly scan and organize massive amounts of data, including open-ended responses to survey questions. 

AI can also use algorithms to make the flow of survey questions more conversational, with follow-up questions that learn from the previous responses. 

This process can increase efficiency, from screening your pool of potential respondents to mining responses to inform better business decisions.

Predictive modeling within AI can also predict which community members may churn, allowing you to get ahead of the curve and incentivize them to stay. 

It’s also “democratizing” market research—smaller brands that don’t have the ability to contract a large market research study are able to reap the rewards of consumer research with AI. 

In short, AI allows market researchers to focus on more rewarding tasks, such as making recommendations and crafting surveys, and enables brands to make more informed decisions, tapping into the wealth of data available to them. 

Biometrics

Biometrics is a technique within the field of applied consumer neuroscience that involves using technology to understand consumers’ unconscious thoughts and emotions. It generates an undiluted response—meaning that it’s not filtered through the consumers’ conscious mind. 

When consumers use their conscious minds to answer questions, they may not always be entirely honest, whether because they aren’t sure of an answer or they’re worried about how it will be perceived. But it is harder for your body to lie – that’s the science behind lie detector tests. 

The process for collecting consumer insights through biometrics typically involves presenting consumers with a stimulus, such as a product image or advertisement, and then measuring their biometric response.

Examples of Biometrics in use in market research include:

• Heart rate monitoring – This method measures the consumer’s heart rate to determine response. For example, a consumer could wear a small camera and an Apple Watch (or other heart rate monitor) in a store. The two devices would work in tandem to track and measure the consumer’s heart rate as they encounter products. An increased heart rate would signal a product that catches the consumer’s interest. A similar exercise could also be done via Virtual Reality. 

• Facial coding – In facial coding, a camera captures the consumers’ facial expressions as they encounter a stimulus, such as watching a TV commercial,  and codes them into key emotions, including joy, sadness, surprise, disgust, puzzlement, anger, and more. 

• fMRI – fMRI is the process of monitoring brain activity to see what parts of the brain are activated when a consumer encounters a stimulus. For example, monitoring the brain to see if a particular product activates the “pleasure center” of the consumer’s brain. This procedure is still relatively cutting-edge and the results can be hard to interpret. 

Geolocation

Mobile technology has created a wealth of new information for marketers to tap into, including contextual data like geolocation data. Geolocation allows brands to track which consumers are visiting their brick and mortar retail locations via their mobile phones. Combined with other data, brands can build persona profiles and deliver hyper-targeted messaging to reach them.

Geotargeting also allows you to capture “in the moment” insights, such as pushing a survey to consumers after they just left a retail location (or while they’re still there). This process is known as “geofenced surveys”. 

Geotargeted surveys are highly valuable because they address one of the biggest challenges in market research:  screening and finding the right target consumer to interview. What is their opinion of their shopping experience? Did they make a purchase? Why or why not? Geolocation allows you to capture this data while it’s still fresh in the consumer’s mind. 

The traditional method used for geotargeting was to station people on-site with clipboards or to mount an iPad at physical locations. However, this can be very expensive and resource-intensive. Today geotargeting is much more efficient with the use of mobile technology.

One example of geolocation in the real world is Macy’s. They use in-store “beacons” and Bluetooth technology so that users who opt-in can receive targeted offers and promotions based on the store aisle they are currently browsing.

Content Analytics

Content analytics involves sifting through the huge amount of publicly available data online, from social media posts to discussion forums and product reviews, and finding the meaning within by uncovering hidden trends and patterns.  

Content Analytics incorporates AI tools with Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract meaningful information. NLP is a computer program’s ability to understand how people talk. By harnessing a wealth of publicly available data that has already been generated, content analytics can potentially save you the trouble of having to conduct a study. 

Through Content Analytics you can capture consumer sentiment, understanding whether consumer comments are positive or negative across channels. There might be an issue with your product hurting your performance or sales that you are unaware of that can emerge after analyzing online content. Or you can use content analytics to identify emerging trends that are popular with your target consumer demographic. 

Content analytics can also offer competitive insights, helping brands determine what people are saying about their biggest competitors.

Virtual Reality

Consumer market research often involves presenting consumers with a stimulus and having the consumer react. Virtual reality is an immersive way of replicating or simulating that scenario for the consumer. 

Virtual reality usually involves a headset with a screen that the virtual environment is projected onto, as well as gloves that can relay the consumers’ hand movements into the virtual environment for interactivity. 

For example, let’s say you are designing a theme park. The actual theme park does not exist yet, but you can present the park’s planned layout to a consumer in a virtual reality environment and have the consumer do a “virtual tour” of the park and provide feedback. 

Similarly, you can simulate a retail store experience. A consumer could walk through the virtual store via VR and determine which products they would buy. What store aisles does the consumer go down? What items catch their eye? 

VR allows you to test consumer experiences with a product or service, saving time and money over building physical mockups or transporting consumers to a physical location. 

Innovative Consumer Research Techniques Continue to Advance

Tech and software continue to take leaps and bounds forward in complexity and ability. With these advancements, innovation in consumer research and insights grows as well. 

While many of the traditional methods for gathering consumer insights and researching your market remain effective, these five innovative consumer research techniques offer the opportunity to tap into new sources of robust and meaningful insights. 

Questions About Innovative Consumer Research?

At TINT, we pride ourselves on helping brands access the predictive insights they need to enhance decision-making and accelerate their growth. Reach out to us with any questions—we’re more than happy to help. 

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post 5 Innovative Consumer Research Techniques for 2022 (And Beyond) appeared first on TINT.

Today’s consumers, especially parents, demand that brands not only accommodate their preferences but also make efforts to understand their values and beliefs. One of the ways marketers understand consumer preferences is through consumer insights, specifically audience segmentation. 

Your brand might cater to a general target audience, but there are rich complexities and subgroups within your consumer set – each with its own purchase motivations, shopping behavior, and lifestyles. Performing audience segmentation empowers you to identify these cohorts. 

What is Audience Segmentation Analysis and Why Do You Need It?  

Audience segmentation is the process of identifying and characterizing subgroups among your target consumer base so you can better understand them and market to them, in your community and other channels. 

Segments can be categorized by attitudinal traits, demographic characteristics, or shared behaviors. 

Audience segmentation helps you identify: 

• New growth segments and understand how to talk to them, what they care about, and where to find them.  For example, it can save you from spending $$ on TV ads and then realizing your target segment are cord-cutters.
• The “Size of the Prize” for each segment, helping you to prioritize your investments.

Once you determine the profile of your best consumers, you can laser-focus your targeting efforts to fit the criteria. Having a firm understanding of your audience segmentation can ensure you know how to best serve your consumer’s needs. 

When you employ audience segmentation in your marketing, you’ll be better armed to:

• Drive revenue and brand advocacy by knowing who your best consumers are and where to find them
• Generate higher conversion rates and more relevant messaging
• Find new market opportunities and drive innovation

Why Use an Online Brand Community for Audience Segmentation? 

Trends evolve too fast for audience research to be done sporadically. If you often feel like you’re playing catchup with what your audience thinks about or how they behave, or you worry your consumers are catching feels for another brand, an online brand community enables fast, efficient, connected, and continuous insights.  

The bottom line is that rapid change in consumer behavior is the norm now. Seismic changes have made previous insights obsolete. If your consumer research isn’t always-on and done in real-time, your brand is at risk. 

An online brand community is an efficient channel for always-on audience research that you own. They deliver insights more quickly, easily, and efficiently, with the ability to achieve richer learnings by following your audience and connecting your data over time.  

The Proof is in the Pudding: Using Audience Segmentation to Win Back-to-School Messaging 

While the words “Back-to-School” won’t be uttered by consumers for many more months, marketers are already abuzz with planning creative strategies to capture market share and reinforce brand loyalty during this massive spending period. 

The projected amount for 2021 Back-to-School spending was +16% YOY, and with many classrooms officially going “Back-to-Normal,” 2022 is shaping up to be a big year. It’s critical to understand the complex audience of parents who will be leading the back-to-school spending charge. 

We tapped into a TINT-powered online community to conduct an Audience Segmentation Analysis study surveying 5,300+ consumers. We designed a questionnaire on parenting values and behavior for consumers and then we ran the data through our proprietary insights process to identify and segment similar cohorts. 

We identified 5 key parenting segments and how brands can cater marketing messages to achieve the greatest awareness and conversion. Our recommendations leverage these insights to guide you in how to build trust and market share this back-to-school season. 

• Discover research-based Back-to-School messaging that caters to specific parenting styles and values including social/emotional connection, academic performance, heritage, tradition, and independence
• Learn the Do’s and Don’ts: what mistakes you might be making with parents and how to avoid them
• Empower your brand with how to maximize your agile marketing efforts through audience segmentation and other online community-powered insights tools

Here’s an example of a parenting segment you’ll learn about: 

Attentive Parents 

Representing a little more than a quarter (26%) of parenting styles, Attentive Parents are highly invested in their children’s interests, education, and emotions. This cohort wants the most up-to-date childcare products. They closely monitor and regulate their children’s use of screens and video games, and out of all parenting segments, they are the most concerned about COVID-19’s impact on both their child’s education and social/emotional state.

Do’s 

• Employ messaging that helps to connect parents with their child’s interests and emotional state
• Use a reassuring tone, confidently offer valuable parenting advice and expertise
• Engage with a brand-owned Online Community where they can connect with other Parents, provide educational tools, tips & tricks

Dont’s

• Assert parents’ or children’s independence too strongly
• Minimize the challenges that parents and children have faced due to COVID
• Encourage extended screen time for children

Talking Back-to-School

• These parents are concerned with their children’s socialization and emotional state as well as their education. Highlight how back-to-school (BTS) is a critical socialization opportunity, and how your brand can ease this transition and place them in the best position for social/emotional success
• Since these parents want the latest & greatest products for their children, BTS represents an opportunity to remind these parents that reusing products from last year will not be sufficient and they need to upgrade

Find out more ways to use a community for audience insights with our latest article on Market Research Online Communities (MROC) or talk to our experts about your brand’s insight needs. 

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post How to Optimize Audience Segmentation with an Online Brand Community appeared first on TINT.

While QUANTITATIVE research helps you answer questions, QUALITATIVE research helps you know what questions you should even be asking. 

Unfortunately, qualitative research is often viewed as a complicated project of organizing people, conducting interviews, and filtering through a lot of commentaries to delineate actionable insights. It’s expensive, it’s time-consuming and with the endless amounts of rich behavioral data at a marketer’s fingertips, many marketers say “all set” on the data front and put qualitative research on the back burner. 

Brands invest millions of dollars in data technology and analytics to better predict how consumers will behave. However, marketers still need to understand WHY consumers feel or behave a certain way. We humans make a majority of our decisions from a web of complex feelings and the only way you can understand them is…to talk about it. 

Without these intangible insights, there will always be a missing piece to your brand puzzle. The good news is that modern marketers like you have innovative channels and tools to make qualitative research more accessible, accurate, faster, and less expensive. Using these insights, you can make quick adjustments, gut-check market decisions, and optimize overall strategy. Enter Market Research Online Communities (MROC).  

What is an MROC (Market Research Online Community)? 

MROC is a term used to describe a coordinated research effort to mobilize consumers who share a common interest with the purpose of conducting always-on qualitative research and harvesting ongoing insights.  

In the past, focus groups were typically conducted ad hoc as a one-off project, while a MROC is a cultivated group of people you can tap into at varying times or for extended periods of time. MROCs also incorporate other data gathering methods in addition to its intensive virtual focus group atmosphere. 

Put simply, MROCs help solve a critical business challenge: the need for agile methodologies to improve the speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of marketing. 

Why Use an Online Brand Community as a MROC? 

Online brand communities can be used by many business functions. They can help:  

• Digital teams amplify online marketing initiatives
• Ecommerce teams get more customer reviews
• Customer relationship teams foster emotional loyalty 
• Experiential and shopper teams drive trial and retail sell-through

The consumer insights team can absolutely utilize an online brand community as a continuous source for research. 

One of the biggest challenges marketers face when launching an MROC is finding respondents and keeping them engaged and participating. An online brand community attracts consumers organically because they are fans of the brand and with a platform like Vesta, the dozens of engagement activities available keep these consumers “warm” and prime them to answer your market research questions whenever they arise. 

How to Use an Online Brand Community as a MROC: Clean Beauty Industry Study 

To help illustrate how a brand can use a MROC through an online brand community, we created one for the clean beauty industry. Let’s see how it worked…

As consumers become more conscientious about personal health and overall environmental impact, the clean beauty market is set to dominate the beauty and skincare industry, reaching an estimated $22 billion by 2024. 

We surveyed more than 1,200 beauty product consumers from our online community of 1.2MM consumers and found that 63% have incorporated some clean/natural beauty products into their daily routine and 1 in 3 beauty product consumers started using clean beauty products within the last 12 months. 

To understand more, we invited a targeted group who identified as clean beauty purchasers to join a MROC (Market Research Online Community) and engaged them in a 7-week series of activities and discussions to dive deeper and understand the challenges and opportunities these brands face. 

Like any research study, each MROC should start with study objectives and what you are looking to learn more about. In this example, our goal was to help marketers understand the consumer perception challenges clean beauty brands face when compared to traditional beauty products and how to stand out in this burgeoning market. 

Participants were prompted to discuss questions such as: Which beauty products do you use every day? What makes them special? How does your beauty routine fit into your schedule? What are the essential components or attributes of a clean beauty product? What was the moment they discovered clean beauty brands? How and why did they switch? How does it make you feel? What does the future of clean beauty look like to you? 

To answer these questions, the small group of 60 participants did various activities including creating a photo collage, writing a poem, sharing their habits, and more. The MROC allowed consumers to express creativity and the closed group forum allowed for a more intimate and personal feel. This is important so consumers feel like they can speak freely and express themselves, speak their opinions without censoring themselves.

Through this MROC, we gathered over 100 actionable insights for brands to use in their marketing strategies. These insights included how to overcome the perception of clean beauty brands being more expensive and less effective than traditional beauty brands, messaging points of increasing household penetration, how to use peer recommendations and community mission to drive trust and education, and much more. 

If you’d like to learn more about the full results of this study, check out our infographic detailing key takeaways. 

Getting Started 

Among the data deluge you may be accustomed to, it is still critical to bring your consumers’ stories “to life” and to make sure your messaging creates connection, and relatability and is empathy-driven. Using a MROC is the modern way to take advantage of qualitative research methods and to give you actionable recommendations that go beyond data sets from your CRM or data management platforms. 

Vesta’s all-in-one online community software for brands is a ready-to-go platform to enhance consumer relationships and helps you nurture and mobilize consumers to drive advocacy, loyalty, and insights. We help you create a pipeline of consumer respondents to tackle your biggest marketing and CX challenges, securing audience insights, first-party data, and lasting emotional loyalty in addition to delivering ratings & reviews, authentic UGC, eCommerce, and retail sell-through. 

Want more tips on ways to up your insights game? Check out our post on what you need to know about consumer insights or our 2022 guide to consumer market research.

Interested in more?

Sign up for a demo today.

The post Why You Should be Using Your Online Brand Community as a Market Research Online Community (MROC) appeared first on TINT.

Their products and services are customer-centric. Their customer experience is seamless and top-notch. And they develop marketing strategies around the trends of their audiences. 

How are these companies able to do all of this effectively at the speed of the market?

They use consumer insights to gather data and develop actionable steps to deliver safety from changing market trends. 

So let’s dive in and explore the what, why and how of achieving business impact through consumer insights, including the ways our Vesta Community Platform has been designed to help you tap into them. 

What Are Consumer Insights?

Consumer insights stem from effective market research work. It is information gathered from your customers that can help further develop your marketing strategy, customer experience, or product development. Consumer insights can take the form of consumer behaviors, analytical data, and feedback. 

Why Are Consumer Insights Important?

Overall, the purpose of consumer insights is to allow businesses to dive deeper into how consumers think and understand how they can create the best possible customer experience. 

The power of collecting consumer insights can provide benefits to nearly every aspect of your business, including:

• Gaining validation for investments in new products or services, packaging, and creative
• Enhancing and improving existing products or services
• Developing your marketing strategy 
• Creating accurate and detailed customer personas 
• Delivering more personalized customer experiences
• Accurately mapping the customer journey
• Anticipating consumer trends to stay ahead of the curve

Consumer insights help remove a lot of the guesswork involved in the decisions you make. What better way to improve your products, consumer experiences, and marketing than gathering the data directly from the source?

How Can You Gather the Most Effective Consumer Insights?

Knowing the importance of gathering consumer insights is nice and all, but how do you actually collect the data? 

First, it helps to understand that there are two types of consumer insights: primary and secondary.

Primary consumer insights involves actively collecting information and data and can be defined as quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative includes research activities such as surveys, charts, and statistics. Qualitative comes from ideas, feelings, focus groups, and in-depth interviews.

Secondary consumer insights are acquired by working with data and information that is already collected and available, such as trade publications, media sources, or product reviews. Secondary data can be quantitative or qualitative.

There are numerous methods and channels you can use to gather consumer insights. Larger companies with internal research teams can choose to handle this in-house, while smaller companies may outsource to a research agency or firm. Consumer insights companies like TINT offer a built-in survey feature in our online community platform for brands to quickly gather primary consumer insights from their online community of consumers.

PRIMARY CONSUMER RESEARCH

Behavioral Data 

Analyzing how customers interact with your product, service, or website can help gather consumer insights. There are several tools you can use to collect and analyze customer behavioral data, including:

• Sampling programs
• Social media dashboards
• Your CRM 
• Keyword research tools

For brands offering an online service, you have even more options at your disposal, with the ability to analyze how consumers are using specific parts of your service such as analytics tools like Google Analytics and heat mapping software. 

Customer Feedback Surveys 

Feedback is one of the more commonly used methods for collecting insights. After all, if you want more information on what customers think, why not ask them directly? 

You can deliver surveys using several different channels, including:

• Social media platforms
• Email marketing
• On your website
• In-person 
• Your online brand community

Be careful, though. Customer feedback surveys shouldn’t be the only tool you use to collect consumer insights. Customers may not give you the truth, or they may not be willing to provide enough relevant information for accurate data. 

Customer Sentiment Surveys

Instead of the in-depth nature of a customer feedback survey, sentiment surveys offer more broad consumer insights. Running a sentiment survey, such as a quick rating system or even an NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey, allows you to see how your customers feel about your brand overall. 

Shopper Research

Shopper research is focused on the in-store and near-store behavior and experiences of consumers. In particular, it studies the influences and factors within the retail environment that shape your consumers’ perceptions and buying behaviors.

A/B Testing

A/B testing can help gather consumer insights based on how consumers react to certain aspects of the brand experience, such as your website creative or ad copy. 

Using your website as an example, you can optimize by testing different elements and see which element choice yields the best success (lower bounce rate).

Social Media Listening

You can gather a ton of valuable insights from social media, where consumers love to bring their complaints (and praises) about brands. 

Social media listening gathers data across social media posts to monitor things like brand sentiment.

Applied Consumer Neuroscience

Applied consumer neuroscience uses methods such as eye-tracking and facial coding to reveal their non-conscious decision-making. In other words, it provides insights into sentiments and behaviors that consumers aren’t aware of that have a major influence on their choices. 

SECONDARY CONSUMER INSIGHTS CHANNELS

Reviews 

Brand reviews are incredibly helpful for consumers, with the majority of customers choosing to read reviews before making a purchase.

Brands can use reviews to gather consumer insights as well. By monitoring online reviews, brands can get more information about potential product issues or customer service experiences. 

However, like feedback surveys, reviews can be difficult to use on their own since not all consumers will leave honest reviews. Supplementing your findings with insights from other channels will greatly increase their effectiveness. 

Third-Party Data

It can be helpful for newer brands in particular to analyze market research conducted by larger brands. By understanding the pain points of these consumers, you’ll be better equipped to create effective marketing campaigns and develop products that your customers will want to purchase. 

How TINT Can Help With Consumer Insights

All of the above methods are effective ways to gather consumer insights. 

But what if you could collect primary consumer insights using a single platform for greater speed, ease, and value?

With TINT, this scenario is not only possible, but it’s easier than ever. TINT’s online brand community platform gives you all of the tools you need to gather consumer insights and reap the rewards of collecting actionable data, with engaging insights activities your audience will want to participate in. 

Where TINT really shines is the speed and efficiency of gathering data. Brands can’t wait several months for actionable data. TINT gives them the opportunity to collect data quickly and act on insights in record time.

Let’s look at an example: DSE Healthcare.

DSE Healthcare uses TINT’s robust research-gathering capabilities to capture important consumer insights to further their product innovation and marketing strategies through surveys, discussion boards, and more. 

When they were developing a new product, DSE Healthcare was able to leverage their community to confirm the naming of their new product in just one week’s time. Not only did they save time, but they also saved big on immediate spend for research, and in longer-term product viability with the validation of their new product name before launch.

Sir Kensington’s, a Unilever brand, is another example of a brand using their TINT community to gain insights from their consumers. 

Using TINT’s platform, Sir Kensington’s has tapped into zero-party data insights using surveys, polls, and other engagement activities. They’ve conducted focus groups to better understand their consumers’ needs to direct product development efforts. And they’ve elevated their customer knowledge through brand sentiment and loyalty surveys. With this data, Sir Kensington’s better understands what resonates most with their audience. 

Sir Kensington’s collected over 5,000 responses for their Eater Segmentation Insights Study and over 638,000 total survey responses in less than one year. 

Consumer Insights Fuel Your Marketing Strategy, Product Development, And Customer Experience Improvements

Today’s business is all about the customer. To find success, you need to tap into what makes customers want to shop from you. 

Gathering and analyzing consumer insights takes a lot of the guesswork out of this process. 

From dialing in your marketing strategy to improving your product development, the rewards of tapping into consumer insights are nearly endless. With so many different channels to gather these consumer insights, you’ll be able to reap the rewards yourself. 

Questions about Consumer Insights?

For more information on consumer insights or how TINT’s Community Platform can help, reach out to us. We’re always here to help. 

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