When researching your products or services we find out two things: Who is using them and what do they think of them?
When researching your products or services we find out two things: Who is using them and what do they think of them?
We find out what your customers are really thinking and doing through Use & Attitude research (U&A).
This type of research is similar to customer satisfaction research, but the audience is normally much wider than just customers. It includes anyone using a particular product or service.
The research usually involves interviews across a broad cross-section of companies. It will typically be a quantitative study of 30 to 50 questions that may include questions like:
The U&A survey could be carried out by telephone from an acquired sample frame or through an online panel. The questions are designed to screen out companies not using the products, and the interview may be carried out blindly to avoid bias through respondents knowing the sponsor.
Once the results are analyzed there will be opportunities to ‘slice and dice’ the data by industry vertical, and to discover segments that have different uses and attitudes.
Our client makes lubricants, which are packaged in aerosols and sold to DIYers around the world. Historically, its focus has been on consumer markets but the company recognized it was missing a big opportunity in business markets.
Our challenge was to research the market for all types of lubricants used by maintenance teams in manufacturing industries. We needed to find out which maintenance lubricants they used, as well as their attitude to these products, including, of course, the brand sold by our client.
The survey was specific to the US where an online survey would work because there are sufficient numbers of good respondents in business panels. The screening questions located maintenance managers in a variety of manufacturing companies to find out what type of aerosol lubricants they use and their disposition to different brands.
We discovered that there was a huge awareness of our client’s brand amongst industrial maintenance teams. What is more, they believed that the brand would be highly suited to their needs. The reason it wasn’t being purchased in any quantity was because it wasn’t easily available through the merchant channels used by the maintenance crews. The solution: our client built a new channel strategy to take the product into the industrial market.