Digital Qualitative Research

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What is the importance of shopper insights?

Insights basically mean interpreting from the information, knowledge gained through different sources about a particular subject. An important thing to ensure the difference between information and insight. Information is simply hard facts and numbers, whereas an insight is what the analyzer interprets from the information. Research and shopper data systems can provide a great amount of information, and when properly analyzed, a lot of vital values can be extracted from the information. Shopper insights are critical for the businesses since they help a company understand the needs and requirements of the shoppers from their point of view so they can make the changes to their products in an efficient manner to deliver a product that suits the customer’s requirements. Shopper insights include observing a shopper’s behavior, the general attitude of the customers. These insights can be used as a powerful tool for understanding the shopper’s point of view. Shopper insights will also look at a shopper’s behavior while examining the attitudes that drive the behaviors.

In order to gain meaningful shopper insights, the research would involve both exploratory and evaluation methods to gain a more holistic view. By making use of these two methods, the conductor of the research can easily understand what the customer says and does. There is a major difference between the two and having the answer to both is typically that provides the key insight into the shopper’s behavior. A deep level of data is required in order to make effective decisions. The decisions cannot be based entirely on focus groups because sometimes the information gathered through these focus groups can be dishonest or irrelevant.

Shopper insights will help in providing a deeper understanding of the consumers attitudes and point of views. Using the data obtained through these methods, a business can learn why a shopper behaves in the certain way they behaved, the reasons behind their purchase, who were they buying the product for and, whether the purchase was important or not. These claimed methodologies include interviews, focus groups, observational studies. To determine which shopper is the most profitable, a company will need to include specific profit related criteria in the shopper survey.

Importance of shopper insights:

A shopper insights research team will be equipped to analyze the collected information, extract insights and generate a story which explains exactly what was going on. Once a team has a surmised explanation, the next step will be to determine what the implications are being produced as a result and develop an action plan. The action plan should entail how to stop unwanted shopper behavior and how to promote the desired shopper behavior. Shopper insights will assist in providing enough information for generating positive results. Developing shopper insights is not a static process. There are generally some common elements among retailers, like the types of shoppers, different types of shopping trips they are on, buying decision type. The retailer’s shopper insights program needs to be unique to formulate more accurate insights about the behaviors of the customers.

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What are shopper insights? Its methods and benefits explained!

Today there is a strong need to improve shopper insights and research in many businesses. The goal is to understand customer habits and shopping behaviour. Although brands are aware of the importance of shopper insights, few understand the scope of the topic and worse; they do not know how to implement the collected information.

The following guide will help businesses understand the concept and how to put the shopper research into action for customers and companies to earn profit.

What is shopper insight?

Before beginning to explain the concept, it is essential to differentiate between information and insight. Data is simply facts and numbers. Insight is what you interpret from the data and the knowledge you gain. For instance, you may notice that customers are not purchasing the same product every time. An insight will tell you the reason behind this information is either because of seasonality or promotion. Shopper behaviour research will offer you a wealth of data. However, you can gain value by unveiling the shopper insights well.

How do shopper research and data help insights?

When you conduct shopper research, you not just concentrate on the behaviour but also their attitude that drives them. The information, on the other hand, only offers you the result

While you cannot use both separately, you can combine them and create meaningful insights. You can further make it compel sby using shopping insight with consumer insights

For many, the difference between consumers and shoppers is blurred. This makes it challenging to collect and isolate data

There is, nevertheless, a vast difference between a shopper and consumer insights. Retailers need to recognise this distinction. This is because the resulting action can serve different purposes

When you use consumer and shopper insights together, they provide the retailer with a deeper understanding of the customers

What are the methods used to get shopper insights?

Shopper research should include both explanatory and evaluation method. It gives you a holistic view. You will learn what the customers say and what they actually do. There is a massive difference between both and finding the answer to them is what offers insight into shopper behaviour research

In-store brief interviews will not provide you with enough data to make effective marketing decisions. You also cannot rely on focus groups because the environment can force customers to provide dishonest or disconnected answers

How do retailers and others benefit from shopper insights?

They are beneficial to any business which sells goods and services. More importantly, it is advantageous to retailers, consumer goods manufacturers, retail marketing agencies, and other types of business models:

Retailers: They can use shopper insights to understand the shopper’s behaviour in depth, which includes where else they shop and why. Retailers can also gauge the competitive business and gain insights on shopper’s habits throughout the year.

Consumer goods manufacturers: These people know about the shopper trends and changes in the Path to Purchase. This way they can improvise promotional strategies and marketing plans in collaboration with retailers.

Marketing agencies: Shopper research comes handy for marketing agencies to understand how the shopper’s behaviour, expectations, and loyalties differ across different retail channels, including e-commerce websites. This way marketing agencies can tailor their plans and use more channel-targeting strategies based on the findings from in-store and digital influences.

All in all, the action plan should stop unwanted shopping behaviour and promote desired shopping behaviour. Shopper insights will provide your company with enough value and enable positive outcome.

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What are the steps involved in gaining shopper insights?

An insight generally means interpreting the information and knowledge which was acquired through different sources on a particular topic. A lot of shopper systems on data and research will be able to provide a lot of information, and if this information is properly analyzed, a lot of critical information can be extracted from the data that can be helpful. Shopper insights are critical for businesses as they help them understand the needs and requirements of shoppers from their point of view so they will easily make the changes to the products effectively for delivering a product that completely suits a customer’s requirements. Shopper insights include observing a shopper’s behavior and the general approach of a customer. Insights can also be used as a powerful tool for understanding a shopper’s point of view. They refer to the marketing research which is focused on the in-store and near-store behavior and experiences of the customers. It is an in-depth study of the different influential factors within the retail environment which shape a customer’s perception and buying behaviors.

To completely understand shopper insights, the research would involve both evaluation and exploratory methods for understanding a more holistic view. With the help of these methods, a research conductor will understand the mind of a customer. There is a significant difference between the two and having the answer to both is typically what provides a key insight into the shopper’s behavior. A deep level of data is required in order for making effective decisions. All of the decisions cannot be based entirely on focus groups as sometimes the information which was gathered through these focus groups can be dishonest or irrelevant. Shopper insights are helpful for providing a deep understanding of a customer’s attitude and point of views. With the information gathered through these methods help a business understand why a customer behave a certain way, the motivations for their purchase, and the reasons for purchasing the product for and whether or not the purchase of the product was important or not. Some of the methodologies for acquiring information for insights are interviews, focus groups, observational studies. For determining which shopper is profitable, a company will need to include specific profit related criteria in the shopper survey. Some of the steps involved in getting shopper insights are listed below.

Steps shopper insights involve:

Who is the profile of the company’s target shopper?

What a customer will buy right down to product, size, serving, size etc.

When does a shopper generally purchase the product?

Where is the location from where the product will be purchased (Which aisle in store, the online channel)

Why a shopper buys the product, and why they don’t buy any other similar product.

How does a customer make the purchase? What the exact reason was for the purchase of the product, a necessary requirement, impulse shopping or decided after browsing the store.

How often does a customer purchase the product (daily, weekly, monthly, annually)

The number of customers buy the product and from which location and the number of products is purchased.

How much does a customer spend at the store during their visit to the store or over the course of a predetermined period.

How long does a customer spend inside the store or in a particular aisle?

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Brand insights explained through FAQs

When it comes to creating a strong and resonant brand strategy, insight plays a crucial role. We shall discuss in detail about brand insights through some FAQs.

1)      What is an insight?

Insights are tricky to explain. They are data or information. Insights are further divided from data and other inputs, primarily emotions, to arrive at something new. When it comes to branding, they form the base of your brand strategy. They are the foundation on which everything else is built.

2)      What is the goal of a brand strategist in making insights?

The critical role of any brand strategist is to figure out which insight is essential for the brand and what the stakeholders can resonate with. Good brand insight is useful intellectually and emotionally. Once you have found the right insight, you are playing in the rich territory for the brand.

3)      How to arrive at the brand insight?

To achieve brand success, the powerful insights are the one that reflects the brand itself, its target audience, reveals the competitors, and the broader cultural context. For this purpose, the strategist has to immerse themselves in the brand. To understand the brand itself, strategist has to investigate its origin, history, products and services, its people, and culture. For understanding the target audience, it is essential to uncover their aspirations, challenges, their likes and dislikes, their perception towards the brand, and its competitors.

4)      How do insights change the business?

When you present a brand story to the client, it is like you have represented something raw and not been expressed. The raw idea gives clarity about the brands and the business. This clarity allows the strategist to inspire action, excitement, a vision, and power the brand forward.

5)      What are the characteristics required to unearth brand insights?

Empathy: The business must emotionally connect with people and the situation. If there is no emotional tuning, there will never be a psychological insight.

Truth-teller: Brands connect with their audience on the basis of trust. Put aside your egos and ideas. Prioritise on finding the truth from the customers. This does not require any filters and biases too.

Analytical: Be cautious at the same time. Unless you do not receive meaningful brand insight, you cannot build a successful brand strategy.

Ensure to strike the perfect balance between empathy and analysis. This combination will lead to a rich and compelling brand strategy. Brand insights can lead to a game-changing strategy for their brands.

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Digital qualitative research vs in-person research – which is better?

When it comes to qualitative research there are two main methods employed by brands – digital research and in-person research. Often brands try both methods until they find that one suits their requirements better than the other. Choosing the research method often depends, not so much on which method is better but the context in which it should be used. When it comes to choosing between digital qualitative research methods and in-person research, the former seems to have more advantages than the later, especially in today’s day and age of technological advancements. Let’s compare the advantages of digital vs in person qualitative research.

The advantages of opting for digital research over in-person research

The digital qualitative research method is one of the two main methods for conducting market research. It is a cost-effective method of conducting research and it has the following advantages.

It makes logistical sense:

While conducting research in person, logistics plays a very important role. Sometimes it gets logistically difficult to get a focus group together or to conduct one-on-one interviews. With people being too busy to show up for in-person research, it is much easier to conduct surveys and create a focus group in the digital space to get people to contribute. Information can simply be sent digitally and you can simply review the inputs centrally.

It becomes easier to process complex information:

Another advantage of digital qualitative research is that companies can process complex information in a rather easy way. Opting for digital research makes sense when one is conducting a long survey featuring several in-depth questions about a particular product or when they wish to see people’s reaction to a product that has been used and continues to remain in use over a period of time. Conducting a mass digital survey allows you to process this complex information centrally, learn from customer feedback and adapt new strategies to improve customer experience.

It helps maintain anonymity:

There are times when people are more comfortable voicing their opinions about brands and products anonymously. People find it much easier to say thing on digital portals and online forums under pseudonyms and aliases, especially when they are dishing out personal information regarding certain services. Especially in cases of high value industries such as big pharmaceuticals and health care, people are more comfortable voicing their opinions anonymously, which is not possible with in-person research.

You can get immediate feedback:

The method of digital qualitative research also comes in handy to get immediate customer feedback, which is “in context”. There is an entire category of people who use digital forums and film videos “unboxing” and “testing” products. For instance, while unboxing a new phone, one can share immediate reactions regarding the quality of the phone – the sound, camera effects, features etc. Products are sent by companies to a targeted group of individuals, as a PR exercise to conduct this research and share findings on digital platforms before a brand is launched. This helps companies get immediate perspectives and renders the in-person research method obsolete.

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Do's and don'ts of social media insights

In today’s day and age, social media insight and research is a powerful tool. It is understood that using social media as marketplace insight ranked third most valuable benefit of social media. Almost 72 per cent spent at least 11 hours per week on social media for research purposes, ultimately that benefits them.

This has resulted in several digital research companies turning to social media for better insights. How is social media insight useful for marketing purpose? They offer insights on:

Brand analysis

Campaign tracking

Category analysis

Competitive analysis

Custom care

Owned/earned media analysis

Partner monitoring

Product innovation

Product launch

Purchase intent

Risk management

How to maximize social media insights?

Keep the goals and objectives prepared

Do not enter the social media market with the mindset, ‘let us see what we find’

Allocate enough time to clean the collected data from social media insight

Avoid measuring every information. Social media offers a plethora of data

Use social media insight as one of the digital research methods. Social media may not always represent your target audience

Keep an open mind. It is always advantageous to have access to the audience’s thoughts and opinions

Do not be dependent on your gut-feelings. Goals must be data-driven

How does social media insight impact market research?

It narrow downs the number of questions in the survey, lessens the respondent's fatigue, and leads to increased responses

Social media insights complement other conventional methods by offering demographic data which can be quickly organized to acquire better clarity  

Social media insight fills the loopholes that traditional methods cannot reach out to

What is the kind of insights you receive from social media?

They are great for identifying and quantifying the social media trends in real-time

Social media insight is the most cost-efficient tool and improves customer targeting

It is a great tool to track competitors and contributes to the conventional mode of research

How to gain consumer insights from social media?

Opt for the right social listening and analytics tool

Research the primary audience. Understand their views about your brand. For this purpose, monitor your brand across the social media channels  

Understand the context of the conversation pertaining to your brand. Businesses should know when and what the consumers are talking about the product

Find out the platforms where people are discussing your brand

Gain social media insight from competitors regarding which brands are mentioned most, which brand gets the most engagement, and which touches the chords with the audience

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What is digital qualitative research?

Qualitative research methods are used for generating insights which are always subjective and an interpretation of the person who will be conducting the research. The results are not replicable and generally not statistically correct, but they can provide valuable insights for a human-centred design process. Qualitative research is an important process of naturalistic inquiry which seeks an in-depth understanding. It focuses on the “why” instead of the “what” of a certain phenomenon and rely on the direct experiences of human beings in their every day lives. Qualitative researchers use a lot of multiple systems of inquiry for the study of a human phenomenon which includes biography, case study, historical analysis and phenomenology.

The three areas that are majorly focused are individuals, societies, cultures, languages and communication. Although there are a lot of methods of inquiry in qualitative research, the common assumptions are that knowledge is subjective rather than objective and that the researcher learns from participants in order to understand more about the customer’s lives. Qualitative research methods allow researchers to study the issues in depth and detail without being constrained by pre-determined categories of analysis.

Since social life has been increasingly meditate by technology sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit are becoming great sources of information on consumer behavior. Analyzing the data gathered through social media sites is known as digital qualitative research. Researchers are also exposed to data as they are in the process of collecting it, which will allow them to conduct analysis as an iterative process which starts during the data collection process.

Digital qualitative research presents a different kind of challenge for qualitative researchers since they are not deeply familiarized with the data during the process of gathering the data. The amount of digital data which is available can be really extensive and is mostly unstructured.

Through digital qualitative research methods, the advancements in technologies can be used and adopted by qualitative researchers. These methods will enhance the process of qualitative inquiries for stimulating further thinking among researchers about how to use new technologies. These digital tools can be helpful for not only conducting interviews but also for collecting data through different online focus groups, social media and online communities. Despite the growing availability of access to the internet and mobile technology, some research participants may not have the resources or access to the equipment and the services which are necessary for some of the tools.

Digital qualitative research is an essential way of gathering information through social media sites. The information that is gathered through these methods will be helpful for the companies so they will have a better understanding of the customer’s perception and make the changes to their products accordingly for the betterment of the businesses.