It is a challenge that follows marketing and consumer research for many years: How to get not only the interest of business decision-makers in the findings from research but also their readiness to implement their lessons from the research? More than being intrigued and interested in the details of analytic findings, business decision-makers (e.g., owners,… Read More
Conjoint and MaxDiff: Choice-Based Methods for Measuring Consumer Preferences
Choice-Based Conjoint and MaxDiff (i.e., Maximum Difference, also known as Best-Worst scaling) are advanced methods for measuring and estimating consumer preferences by means of choice experiments and discrete choice models. Conjoint Analysis is a veteran methodology, initiated in the early 1970s, for measuring multi-attribute consumer preferences, based on ranking order or rating evaluations of product… Read More
Let Segmentation Go Deeper
Consumers may differ in their demographics, lifestyles and personality, tastes and preferences, attitudes and behaviour. Consequently, a couple of consumers who differ on any of these characteristics may experience differently the same event or activity, service episode or product usage (e.g., by the thoughts and conclusions, feelings and emotions the experience evokes in each consumer).… Read More
Marketing-Driven Financial Valuation of Brands
Assessments of the monetary value of brands has long interested and motivated the management of firms, and their investors. From a business perspective, the financial value is a preferred measure of brand equity or return-on-investment in brands. But a brand is a marketing-driven and consumer-based entity, and hence one cannot detach the financial value of… Read More
Shopping in Social Media Platforms
Next to socialising activities in online social media networks for leisure or work, in business or politics, users also engage in shopping activities on these platforms. In particular, consumers search and check information there on their prospective purchases. Moreover, consumers tend to spend more time in social media websites, especially the younger ones (i.e., Generations… Read More
Understanding Consumer Approach to Transformational Vehicle Technologies
Two important technological developments with transformational power in vehicles are taking place side-by-side: electric vehicles (EV) and autonomous vehicles (AV). They have the power of transforming consumers’ experiences of driving their cars, or travelling as passengers, and maintaining them, possibly changing the way consumers perceive passenger vehicles in whole. The purposes and functionalities of the… Read More
A Road Map to Customer Insights
In the crossroads of marketing research and customer research, a field of customer insights is flourishing. Instead of talking merely about research findings and conclusions, practitioners (managers and professionals) are developing and discussing customer insights. The term ‘insight’ does sound deeper and more clever, with potentially more ingenuine and farther-reaching meanings and implications. Especially when… Read More
A Combined Impact of Sight and Touch on Product Choice
There is ample research and articles on the roles and effects of each of the five human senses (vision, auditory-hearing, olfactory-smell, taste and touch) on perception and higher-level cognition, emotions, decision making etc. But the senses very often do not operate in isolation from each other — two or more senses can be activated together… Read More
Mapping Semantic and Visual Brand Associates
Brand associates are often conceived in verbal terms, as concrete descriptions and more abstract concepts; they may be captured by single words or longer phrases that express thoughts and emotions. But brands may be linked with visual images (pictures, drawings, photos) that capture the same brand ideas, sometimes even more efficiently than verbal expressions. The… Read More
Designing Customer Experiences Around Personas
When mapping customer journeys, it would help to design and direct them with regard to personas of customers, ‘profile’ concepts of plausible types of customers that seem real and approachable. Having the image of a customer before one’s eyes with human traits, background, attitudes and preferences, can make it easier to plan and prepare for… Read More
Consumer / Shopper / Customer Behaviour 