INSIGHT on INSIGHT: Setting the Right Insight Objectives
Just like any journey should start with a destination in mind, any research project must always begin with the end in mind. There has to be a clear purpose. There has to be a problem that the research, and resulting insight, is designed to solve.
Sometimes, these objectives are simple and clear. Other times, it takes a little more thought to arrive at what really needs to be accomplished.
Recognizing I’m on a boat that will eventually sink because it has a hole in the hull isn’t the same as deciding if and how the leak can be sealed or deciding to help the women and children abandon ship.
It is important to remember that how objectives are defined not only provides necessary focus to guide how the project is designed and analyzed, but that guidance also ultimately limits what the project will be able to accomplish. Objectives that are too narrow are just as compromising to the value of a project as objectives that are too broad or vague.
Concluding that the boat really isn’t sinking or deciding actions can be taken to keep the boat afloat each lead to very different paths compared to deciding it is doomed and evacuation needs to begin.
Based on all the projects I’ve done over the past 20 years, here are 16 of the most common objectives which we’ve found consistently address client needs across the 150+ categories we’ve worked on.
Realize that this is certainly not an exhaustive list many projects incorporate more than one of these objectives.
Build an insights-based selling story: Conduct research to produce compelling storylines to answer a buyer’s questions or objections or to present a line review supported with objective data, not conjecture or assumptions.
Identify and profile unique shopper segments within a category: Get beyond the ‘average’ shopper to understand the unique needs of unique groups. Develop comprehensive profiles including demographics, psychographics and behaviors to guide how each group is targeted.
Assess total category dynamics and competitive metrics: Study total category habits and attitudes to get a complete picture that goes beyond your product or brand. Learn more about shopping habits, brand and product variant preferences, and underlying drivers and barriers.
Understand how a category should be treated differently across retailers: Identify how categories differ across retailers, including the buyer profile, shelf execution, product preferences, and shopping habits.
Assess your categories omni-channel utilization and maturity: Study how people utilize mobile devices and online content as a source of information to shape shopping habits.
Model the product selection process: Understand what attributes are considered, in what order, and with what amount of influence as part of the purchase decision.
Discover new opportunities or unmet needs to guide product refinement: Study category expectations and sources of dissatisfaction or confusion to build new solutions around.
Develop design principles to guide new packaging or label improvements: Study how shoppers interact with packaging and how to present appropriate information to stop, hold, and close.
Test and optimize new product or package concepts: Expose shoppers to new concepts, renderings or other stimulus to measure purchase intent and other metrics that can be predictive of in-market success.
Quantify a product’s incremental potential: Test products in the context of competitive benchmarks to measure how well a new product can deliver incremental sales, shift share from competitive products or attract new shoppers to a category.
Test reaction to different price points or model price elasticity: Study how different price points change overall purchase intent, equity perceptions or total sales potential.
Develop and test positioning or marketing materials, platforms or programs: Study the preference for and reaction to different approaches to attracting interest and engagement that leads to purchase.
Understand the nuances of the product consumption experience: Study how shoppers actually consume or use a product relative to how it is supposed to be.
Dive into underlying emotions and attitudes driving behaviors: Spend time face-to-face with shoppers to investigate the emotional (and sometimes irrational) ‘why’ behind beliefs and behaviors.
Model the shopper lifecycle and lifetime value: Study how people evolve from being prospective buyers to new users, how they mature through the products they buy and how those products are used, and how their value changes over time, potentially leading to increased habit/loyalty or eventually exiting the category.
Spend time with shoppers in the larger context of their life: Conduct ethnographic research to gain a bigger and more complete picture of how a category fits (or could fit) into someone’s lifestyle.
Beginning with this clarity will significantly increase the value of the insights your project delivers. If you haven’t done much shopper insight, have limited experience or you’re deeply engrained in your category, be sure to have your external insight partners closely involved in shaping the objectives you set for a project.
At the same time, it might also help to spend time to refresh your perspective on how you can apply quantitative insight or how you can apply qualitative insight.