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Marketing Research Applications:
Market Positioning Research |
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We offer experienced market positioning and creative branding
research capabilities to define and go-to-market with a high-impact positioning
strategy. First, it requires understanding the market positioning concept, your current and potential
markets, and the process needed to generate brand name impact.
Our positioning research capabilities include:
- Market Positioning
Base Research
Prior to conducting primary market positioning research, we first take time
to gauge the landscape. We evaluate positioning assumptions and prior
market structure studies, market segmentation information, branding research, client and competitive advertising,
and competitive brand name architecture. We build hypotheses
regarding the strength of comparative brands, their brand equity,
acceleration of brand power, and how the market decision-makers -- consumers
and B2B decision-makers -- view the marketplace.
As a part of our Market Positioning Base Research, we conduct far reaching interviews with client management, field
sales, product marketing, product development and customer service staff. We talk to
sales people in the channel about their own brand preferences and their
perception of customers. We cap off Market Positioning Base Research with qualitative
market research where we reach a small sample of
client customers and those competitor-loyal customers. The
purpose here is to refine hypotheses about how customers see and define
the marketplace.
- Market Positioning
Qualitative Research
We employ a unique qualitative methods for market positioning strategy development. Our
typical starting point is a small sample round of depth interviews. In the beginning stages of
a market positioning study, this is an optimum method of qualitative market
research. Here, we use a
non-directive design and style, combined with projective interviewing
techniques to uncover buyer perceptions of the brand choices, and
their differentiation attributes and qualities. We do
not bombard respondents with a laundry list of questions, but rather, let
them talk freely in a wide ranging manner about their buying and use
experience, and market perceptions. The focus here is to uncover the
language about the choice dimensions on which buying decisions are
made. Market positioning relies upon a solid segmentation
and market definition analysis.
- Market Positioning Research continues with qualitative explorations with a larger sample using either depth interviews or an online qualitative time-extended method which combines both qualitative and
quantitative assessments. If certain conditions exist, we may
add focus group discussions to the
qualitative market research work.
- Market Positioning
Quantitative Survey
- Test hypotheses developed from the Positioning
Qualitative Research. These pertain to segmentation, strength of
segment dimensions, and category perceptions and buyer attitudes.
- Screen positioning concepts using concept statements and appeal
ratings to assess qualities of positioning distance, or
differentiation power.
See our Strategy Newsletter article discussion about finding
and owning a market space as the basis of successful brand positioning. The
issue is "How do we find and own a market space and build or rebuild a
brand?"
Once hypotheses about brand and market positioning and market opportunities are
articulated from our initial limited round in our Brand Base Research, and
initial depth interviews, we may expand the qualitative exploration to a
broader set of Time-Extended Online Depth Interviews. This unique method
engages each participating respondent over a period of one week or more
thinking about and reporting their perceptions in a running dialog. We have
successfully used this innovative tool and process with many high profile
clients. While primarily qualitative, our online implementation has some
important quantitative features for segmentation and attitude measurement.
We believe sound qualitative research is a vital component in
decision-oriented marketing research. It is especially useful in developing
hypotheses about consumer motivations. These help us understand from the
consumer's perspective and in the consumer's own language. Qualitative
research, which is characterized by free-ranging, open-ended interviews among
a limited number of respondents, is primarily an exploratory motivational
technique. We use it here to identify important marketing variables and to
suggest the relationships among those variables, to focus the creative process
and lay the design groundwork for the later quantitative screening research
stage.
The main point here is the value of getting in-depth insight into the buyer
belief and attitude structure, and use this insight for business strategy
development. For example, when scanning for strategic opportunities they
can uncover important consumer and business buyer attitudes, beliefs, and
behaviors that may precede an emerging trend. Non-directive
techniques and projective research techniques are especially useful
in defining buyer motivations .
What about focus groups?
Customer discussion groups -- another term for "marketing research
focus groups" -- can be useful in the early stages of positioning strategy
decision-making. For brand positioning research, we tend to prefer
in-person or online time-extended depth interviews, our preferred methods of
getting inside the buyer's mind which may offer equally rich, or better,
marketing information at an overall lower cost. We will recommend
focus groups when the following conditions are important... (see
more...)
- idea generation among prospects and customers
- observing group interaction
- little is known about the product or brand category
- observing emotions as brand, products, or ads are revealed
While group discussions are very popular among qualitative techniques,
there are many important "do's and don'ts". It is critical that the
researcher knows how, when and where they can be used, and where they should
be avoided. The January 2001 issue of the StrategyNewsletter
updates the basics and some new issues brought on by the advent of online
focus groups, and other tech offshoots. Content
analysis to understand the brand language
Aside from market research focus group discussions and depth interviews, we
might use other methods to understand customer brand perceptions and screen your
branding options. Content analysis is a process of examining customer diary
entries, articles by observers of behavior, advertising, and other language used
by advertisers, customers and suppliers in the product category. Content
analysis can be applied to marketing research data collected from a range of
sources, open-ended responses to online surveys, phone surveys,
self-administered questionnaires, time-extended qualitative depth interviews,
standard depth interviews, competitive promotional literature, brand
advertising. In content analysis we examine word use, style, meaning,
etymology, and core attitudes reflected. Ethnography
to 'watch' what people do Our
positioning exploration research may involve special observational qualitative
methods such as ethnographic studies. Photo ethnography,
uses various methods, such as self-directed-video to watch what people do in
and around the product category. We make inferences from this data as to
relevant positioning dimensions at play. We watch as customers and prospects
engage in store shopping, using products in their home, and their interactions
with other people when the product category or brand is involved. A pet
food company may employ a video ethnography study and ask pet owners to video
tape their pet.
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November 27, 2006
Brand Scoreboard
News: Power Decisions Group is now offering a brand assessment tool: the Brand Scoreboard(TM). This tool allows either one or many team members to quickly make a detailed judgment assessment of their brand. The first step in understanding and evaluating the strength of your brand is to dissect brand into its core elements. Branding is so much more than the pictures, ads, and message platforms: these are indeed one of the three core elements - the brand picture - there are others equally important. At my firm, Power Decisions Group, we have studied brands extensively. We have come to break down brand into three core elements: 1. Value bundle : the benefits delivered to customers 2. Brand promise: this is the promise the brand makes to customers; it is how it connects to what customers need 3. Brand picture: things we see such as products, logos, and ads Just as humans gain insight by understanding their make-up, when you separate the elements of your brand into these parts, it points the way to assessing how your brand is performing in the marketplace. Qualities of a great person, and a great brand. Consider some of the qualities you might recognize in a successful person. First, a successful person knows how to meet and make contact with others in friendly ways. They’re reliable and consistent: people trust them. They have a well-focused clear vision in life; something vital propels them and outsiders see it. Beyond making contact, they have a knack for truly connecting their world and with others on an intellectual, emotional, or physical plane. Lastly, an effective person picks a spot to demonstrate leadership by motivating, teaching, or coalescing followers in some important way. Any person, regardless of station in life, can demonstrate leadership. The Five Qualities of Great BrandsIt’s these same essential human qualities that make a successful brand. As I’ve looked, researched, and analyzed brands – the great, the good, and the ugly– these five traits appear time and again to distinguish great brands from others. 1. Contact – Great brands make and maintain contact by effectively communicating via advertising and personal selling. 2. Consistency – Great brands create a consistent experience for customers time after time. Consistency builds trust, reliability, and loyalty. 3. Concentration – Great brands concentrate their energy on doing a few things well. Customers clearly know what it’s about. Customers are not confused. 4. Connection – Great brands make connection on a person-to-person level that customers relate to and remember. The connection is made in a way that makes the customer feel they are more than a member of a market segment. Brand advocates appear as the connection grows. 5. Leadership – A great brand establishes leadership somewhere, somehow. It becomes recognized for this leadership by having followers. Its recognition may come from a unique product design, the way it talks to the market, or some other quality of its name, voice, or message. The Brand ScoreboardThe Brand Scoreboard(TM) is a method of quickly yet rigorously calculating an effectiveness score for your brand. First, the Scoreboard is calculated from an internal assessment by one or more individuals involved in your organization. We call this internal assessment the Brand Scoreboard-I, for internal. Likewise, we map these same qualities and elements of brand in an external assessment, or Brand Scoreboard-E, to calculate the brand equity among external audiences. Since brand is at play in the marketplace, and other audiences, we take a broad view that goes beyond customers. The net result is a Brand Scoreboard(TM) scoring process that shows much more than a single score. Rather, just as a scoreboard at a baseball game, it shows the details and the source of the scores and player statistics. Further, it's strength is that the internal Brand Scoreboard-I can be calculated quickly: in less than a day if all relevant team members are focused on the relatively simple task using our scoring tools. Scoreboard-I is a great start, as managers, executives and team members quickly dig down into the core components and qualities of their brand. They assess the details of what makes a brand tick. Score differences between team members point out differences and direct efforts where more investigation and research is needed. These differences also prompt important debate about their brand equity. The external Brand Scoreboard-E checks in with customers, stockholders, and other relevant stake-holders with a comparable survey-based calculation. Both the internal and external Brand Scoreboard scores measure the same constructs, albeit differently, thus a comparison of the two identifies gaps between internal views and the reality of the marketplace. For more information, contact Thomas Brown, Senior Consultant, Power Decisions Group, EMAIL: Tom@PowerDecisions.com or call 415.339.0498
November 21, 2006
Ten market research tips and tools for strategy decisions
Do you want to increase sales, refine pricing, or boost your brand name awareness or branding position in a target audience? Can you quickly use marketing research tools to achieve that singular goal? You sure can, and here’s how.
1. Clarify the marketing strategy decisions you must make.
Before you start, make sure you are clear about the marketing strategy and and tactical decisions you face. Market research for decision-making won’t pay unless you take this important first step.
2. Think first about your marketing decisions.
Think creatively; key decisions are at play. List the possible decisions, problems, and opportunities. These could involve pricing, product development, advertising, branding, brand image, or channels. Work with each. Hold off on the filters and judgment—accept all ideas. Allow incubation time.
3. Target the ‘right’ problem or opportunity.
Take time to ‘explode the marketing problem or opportunity’. Reframe. Take a fresh view. Rarely is the surface problem the real marketing strategy issue or opportunity. For example, “we’re losing market share,” might be only a symptom. It could mean creeping product lag, a weak sales engine, undifferentiated branding or positioning, uncompetitive advertising copy or ad reach, or something even worse.
4. Begin now with a simple process that moves toward enhanced decisions, and eventually to market share growth.
I use the decision pathway approach. Opportunity scanning is the first of four stages.  | | Decision Pathway | 5. Ask four key questions.
Start with what you know right now. Use these simple questions:
What do we know now about our markets, our market opportunities, and our own strategic and marketing goals?
What are the best marketing and operational opportunities as we understand them now?
How can we frame our marketing and strategic options based on what we know now?
What do we need to know that we do not know now -- about strengths, weaknesses, our products, our markets, and our customers?
6. Adopt a broad view of Marketing Intelligence.
At Power Decisions Group we use the Intelligence Platform with three components: data, ideas, and management drivers. Harvest each.
7. Pinpoint your decision-making stage to drive market research objectives and design.
At each stage, ask, Do we have solid marketing information, or is more market research needed? Use the Decision-Research Matrix. This matrix links likely research tools to each of the four stages in the Decision Pathway. 8. Do not fall in love with a market research technique, e.g. focus groups.
A strong method for one decision stage may be wrong for another.
9. Know your marketing target attitudes, behaviors, and their product or service use system.
The key to building loyalty is knowledge of your marketing target attitudes and behaviors, the drivers of brand choice and the doorway to segmentation and targeting. Define your prospects’ use system, upstream and downstream.
10. Get an edge and tap your target with a research panel.
It is tougher than ever to gain respondent cooperation in consumer and business-to-business markets. Consider a research panel to reduce research cost and enhance data quality. You can quickly tap it to guide strategy and execution decisions.
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Time-extended online focused discussion groups deliver to decision makers and market researchers research information that keeps pace with consumer and B2B buyers' "research accessibility lifestyle," and yield a qualitative research process usually far more robust, insightful, and productive than earlier-generation methods.
Online Time-extended Discussion Research: Factors and Trends
Here are the factors and trends that make
time-extended online interviews so attractive:
Expanding Marketing Research Technology
As marketing research technology expands - we are able to connect with buyer influencers and decision-makers to capture more and better information. Online interviewing is exploding for both quantitative and qualitative research. Online tools surely increase speed and data collection management. Yet, they offer something far more important: simply, we are able to do more by using this technology.
Buyer Accessibility for Real Research
We must use new research technologies because technology itself is changing the way people move through life and transact their work. Part of the change involves privacy, mobility, and communications modes. People are harder to connect with, period: less use of land lines, heavy phone screening, growing perceived value of time, and more. In a word, people are more reachable and open if the marketing research technique fits with their lifestyle. If they participate in a study, they want that connection convenient, flexible, and on their terms. The
online time-extended focus group delivers that.
Time-Extended Depth Interviews: Single or Group Discussions for Qualitative Research
The online time-extended discussion methodology essentially is a hybrid between a group discussion and individual depth interviews. That is, the interviews are moderated by presenting questions and topics with participants seeing or not seeing the responses of others as we determine during the moderation of of the group. We also are able to reveal appropriate visual exhibits for participants to view as they address each topic. As participants respond, the moderator may individually probe answers to retrieve the maximum thoughts and information from each respondent. As respondents come in and we see and assess the information, this methodology allows us to formulate additional related questions, or probes, that dig deeper into the stream of thoughts and ideas that are surfacing from the initial topic presented.
In this way the time-extended methodology gives respondents to think about the topic over several days. This incubation process is valuable and one unique to the time-extended design.
Traditional focus groups, and online focus groups, are time limited and do not offer this important advantage.
Here are other advantages to this method...
- Time flexibility: participants enter and respond to questions and participate in the discussion at times during the day that are convenient to them
- Participation and the quality of response does not depend on how fast someone can type.
- Allows easy flowing modifications to the original moderation plan responding to the content raised by participants. New issues and questions seamlessly formulated and priorities reset.
- Unlimited display of exhibits and graphics, again, which can be modified according to what we are hearing in the early sessions.
- The problem of dominant participants who influence the views of other participants is eliminated.
By Thomas R. Brown, Senior Consultant, Power Decisions Group, Inc., San Francisco, USA.
I offer here a fresh outlook to those who create, and nurture brands to success. I challenge you here to become a more astute brand-thinker and decision-maker. By thinking about your brand more critically, you’ll see your brand more clearly, and by so doing better understand your market, targets and strategic choices.
To expand your views about building and growing a brand, think of it as a person. Not human, but clearly a person. When you, as a brand decision-maker, take this viewpoint, you will begin to think differently about your brand. You will think more about nurturing it, rather than managing it. You will think more about having it fulfill its potential and finding its unique place rather than beating the competition. When you think of your brand as a person, you’ll think more about letting your brand be itself and finding a community of loyal friends, rather than showing off and spending money to ‘buy friends.’ You want it to grow up, become educated, learn how to move in the world and have character. Of course, if all goes well, like a fond Aunt or Uncle, you want it to be successful, be prosperous financially and, maybe, have a family.
What are the core elements of a person?
A very short course in human experience boils down three dimensions: mind, emotions, and physical.
1. Mind: to learn, think, create, decide, discern, act, negotiate, allocate resources, give-and-receive, and perform.
2. Emotions: every person has a "heart" place -- either cold or warm – that is the center of and defines a quality of spirit, affinity and action that, if positive, leads to sincerity, joyfulness, commitment, and promise-keeping.
3. Physical: a physical form, a body, a look that creates a physical presence.
Considering these elements that define a person, can stimulate our thinking about our brand, its potential, and how to manage your brand. At Power Decisions Group, we think about and define the elements of brand in three levels that parallel the human make-up I’ve described so far. These elements are:
1. Value bundle ,
2. Brand promise , and
3. Brand picture The comparison looks like this:
Qualities of a great person, and a great brand.
Turn now to think about some of the qualities you might recognize in a successful person. First, a successful person knows how to meet and make contact with others in friendly ways. They're reliable and consistent: people trust them. They have a well-focused clear vision in life; something vital propels them and outsiders see it. Beyond making contact, they have a knack for truly connecting their world and with others on an intellectual, emotional, or physical plane. Lastly, an effective person picks a spot to demonstrate leadership by motivating, teaching, or coalescing followers in some important way. Any person, regardless of station in life, can demonstrate leadership.
The Five Qualities of Great Brands
1. Contact: Great brands make and maintain contact by effectively communicating via advertising and personal selling.
2. Consistency: Great brands create a consistent experience for customers time after time. Consistency builds trust, reliability, and loyalty.
3. Concentration: Great brands concentrate their energy. Customers clearly know what the brand is about. Customers are not confused.
4. Connection: Great brands make connection on a person-to-person level that customers relate to and remember. The connection is made in a way that makes the customer feel they are more than a member of a market segment. Brand advocates appear as the connection grows.
5. Leadership: A great brand establishes leadership somewhere, somehow. It becomes recognized for this leadership by having followers. Its recognition may come from a unique product design, the way it talks to the market, or some other quality of its name, voice, or message.
Knowing and Guiding Your Brand
How does this view, "brand as person", help managers who are in charge of a brand? Here are some tips for using this analogy to think about and manage your brand:
1. While the mind of the brand – executives and managers – guide and nurture the value proposition of the brand, and its tangible delivery to customers; it is a much larger team, perhaps your entire organization, that delivers the heart of the brand, and keeps the brand promise. In your efforts to manage your brand, then, recognize that you may have hundreds or thousands of people on your “brand team”.
2. Just as the health of a person has three dimensions and is examined on each: mind, emotions, physical; so too for a brand: all three dimensions must be monitored when assessing brand health, or brand equity. This means focusing separately on 1. The Value Bundle, 2. The Brand Promise, and 3. The Brand Picture. How is the brand performing, maintaining, and growing in each?
3. To measure its performance, use the Five Qualities of a Great Brand as the core barometers of how your brand is doing. Use internal and external brand equity research metrics to gauge how your brand makes contact, its consistency from product quality to its message; the quality of its connection to people in the marketplace; its concentration of purpose and focus; and its perceived and tangible leadership.
In the day-to-day work of building and nurturing your brand, seek out new ways to think and see your brand. Try on the idea of seeing your brand as a person and how it relates to its world.
Marketing conversations are dominated by 'branding': building the brand, defending the brand, brand essence, brand equity, et,al. The brand focus usually has the premise of an existing category, a known battlefield where your brand is fighting it out with a slew of others. What if, instead of fighting for existing "market space" you are able to establish in the minds of customers a new category -- perhaps a re-positioned variation of a sub-class of your existing line -- where you can create a brand position of leadership?
See our Power Decisions Strategy Newsletter, where we discuss this strategic approach.
Branding, as an idea, seems to be the hot new thing in marketing. But really, it's the oldest of old marketing concepts.
> Branding began with trademarks and physical "brands" on craftsman products and animals. All this to identify the maker. So first, a brand is an identification of the maker or producer. That's where it all began. The question then today is whether customers or prospects can identify the "brand". Are they aware of the mark or name? Do they know where it came from?
> There are three main components of brand. When we take away all the fancy thinking, books by professors and gurus, what do we have? We have three fundamental components of a brand.
1. the "Value bundle" -- the essence of the features and benefits delivered by the brand.
2. the "promise" or contract with the customer about what will be delivered.
3. the "brand picture" which is the physical identifiers
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