Articles about our insight tools which shows how we can help businesses tackle certain problems.

Finding the right market for your brand

Market entry and expansion can be challenging for even the biggest and most renowned brands. History is sadly littered with flops and failures, with reasons varying from a poor understanding of the competitive environment to go-to-market plans that miss the main chance.

Although reasons may vary, one of the recurring themes for failure is the lack of insight into the desired market. An in-depth understanding of which target group to aim for or which channel strategy to adopt is the key to much higher rates of return.

There are of course some key elements to consider when entering new markets such as the market size, market growth, consumer demographics, and competitors’ presence. However, there are some other things to consider such as:

  1. Cross-cultural dimension of the market

We can all agree that different markets have different cultures, even among neighbouring countries. Take for example the uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) for a comparison. A lower UAI indicates that the country is more accustomed to ambiguity and usually has fewer regulations.

Countries such as The Netherlands, Denmark, and Singapore with UAI under 55 are more open to try new products and brands compared to countries with UAI above 85 such as Japan, France, and Greece.

It’s crucial to take culture into account when selecting the desired market for your market expansion.

  1. Socio-economic environment in the defined market

Socio-economics is concerned with the factors that influence how a particular group of people behave within society, which also includes their actions and considerations as a consumer.

When selecting the desired market for your brand or product expansion, it’s crucial to understand the consumers’ purchasing behaviour. Knowing the right buying triggers and key decision-making criteria for each target group will make a difference in optimizing your brand and communications strategy.

How can we help?

As an international consumer insight specialist, we explore new markets and scope initial opportunities for your brand with a holistic view. Our specialty in conducting multi-market projects allows us to further compare various market profiles and to tailor differentiated market entry and expansion strategies for your brands. All the insights we generate are compiled into concise ‘market potential’ reports, for our client’s direct use.

Contact Nimrod to know more about our approach to analyzing market potentials.

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How hard is your packaging working?

When you walk into a supermarket and want to buy a product, what is the first thing you look at before deciding which brand to buy? The packaging, right?

Packaging is one of the most important branding elements as it communicates core values to shoppers. We believe great packaging fundamentally influences how consumers view your brand and can covey powerful brand elements.

In the competitive space of the supermarket or the cluttered environment of the retail display, standing out and triggering recall often make all the difference for a brand between heading to the till or staying on the shelf.  However, sometimes creating the right packaging is not always so straightforward, and there are many variable to consider.

So, how can we help?

Our packaging design optimiser helps you identify the impact of your brand’s packaging and point-of-sale collateral within the consumer’s decision-making process. We identify the visual and messaging cues that consumers are looking for and determine the key criteria driving the final brand choice.

illustration on factors of ideal packaging

We evaluate your current product packaging, including exposure, importance, and performance of POS – aiming to offer fresh in-depth insights and practical direction to create optimal packaging that gets your brand noticed and attracts the interest of your consumers.

To find out more on how we can help optimise your packaging, please contact Nimrod.

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Creating the right media mix

As business landscapes are getting more competitive, there has never been a more important time to make your brand stand out. One way to do so is through media touchpoints and mix.

We understand that advertisers have an immediate need to understand the effectiveness of their spending in order to optimize budget allocations.

With our experience-point optimiser tool, we can help create the right media mix for your brand.

We analyze a brand’s consumer experience points and use it to pinpoint the timing when the brand buying decision occurs in the purchase cycle, as well as discover the contact points (the media) which have the greatest influence in the brand’s purchase cycle.

Experience-point optimiser tool illustration

Not only do we analyze the traditional mass media that a brand uses, but we also go through all online and social media channels as well as other information sources – wherever consumers are exposed to your brand. That way, we generate a holistic overview of consumer engagement through the whole purchase journey.

Bottom line, this tool provides insights to optimise communication strategies using the most relevant media at the most suitable stage of a purchase journey.

To find out more about our full methodology on our experience-point optimiser, please contact Nimrod.

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Trade partner insights

Interacting with trade partners, as opposed to simply transacting with them, can be a fruitful and valuable source of intelligence and insight to help grow business.

You might even rely on the high-involvement of your suppliers, retailers and installers for your products to reach your end-consumers effectively. For instance, if you sell heating systems, smart home devices, or other household appliances, consumers who bought your products will mostly need assistance from suppliers or retailers to install it in their house. Clear information, good communication and trust in a reliable partner are key.  All finally influence the consumer’s experience of your brand and products.

Suppliers, retailers, and installers can also provide a valuable source of information for you to better understand your consumers’ pain points and to make product or service improvements that really matter for your end-consumers.

From the suppliers’ or retailers’ point of view, we believe that it is crucial to understand:

  • End-consumers’ purchase motivations and preferred functions of your product
  • End-consumers’ complaints about your current product
  • Retailers‘ levels of satisfaction and barriers in selling your products and services
  • Ways to influence your end-consumers’ purchase decision

Answering the questions allows you to build relationships effectively among your partners and increase your end-consumers’ satisfaction. However, sometimes it can be a challenge to find and reach out to the right party to find the answer.

We propose different solutions to meet (and even exceed) consumers’ service expectations as part of the total brand experience. To find out more about how we can help, please contact Dam.

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Understanding brand rejection

When you go shopping for groceries, clothes or electronic products have you ever decided to avoid a certain brand? As consumers, our choices can be quite rationally driven on the surface, but conceal and more complex and subtle interplay of emotions and drivers.  We manage certain likes and dislikes, express preferences and are influenced even by certain unarticulated pre-conceptions – all have their effect on us as we decide what to buy or what to leave behind on the shelf.

We think it’s crucial to know why some consumers may reject your brand. By doing so, you’ll know precisely the feedback from the rejecters and you’ll understand better your rejecter’s profile. As a result, you can use these insights to fine-tune your marketing activities, possibly find a better way to approach the rejecters or maybe even to focus on a better target group entirely.

Here are the three main questions our brand rejection analyser can answer:

  • At which stage of the buying journey does your consumer reject your brand?
  • Why does your consumer reject your brand?
  • What are the key reasons behind their desires and barriers – the rational and not so rational?

Here’s how we do it:

Our rejection analyser starts by asking screening questions to check product ownership, brand consideration, and whether a purchase occurs or not. For those who decide not to purchase, a list of questions will be asked. Based on the answers, we will then further classify the rejecters into 3 categories: soft rejecter, medium rejecter, and strong rejecter.

This classification will allow you to dig deeper into your rejecter’s mindset and tailor the best strategy moving forward. To find out more, please contact Nimrod.

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How to drive brand loyalty?

Nowadays, customers can exercise more and more power in their purchase journey. Not only because they have greater access to information, but also because there is a rapidly increasing number of brands and fierce competition between them. Customers are presented with more choices than ever before.

Companies are trying their best to attract customers to their brands and products. However, even though many succeed in gaining new customers, retaining these same customers is a different challenge.

So what is the best way to create brand loyalty? Is it enough to have distinctive quality, outstanding customer service, and the will to do whatever it takes?

We believe that there are three fundamental questions to address:

  • What is the ESSENCE of a brand’s offer?
  • What connects / disconnects consumers to this offer?
  • What makes people migrate TO and FROM a brand?

Answering the questions above will give a strong base to build brand loyalty, yet it will not deliver the best results unless it is aligned with the right product mix and the right target group for your brand.

We work together with businesses to identify, attract and engage high potential target groups. To find out more about how we can help develop lasting brand growth, contact Rob.

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Bonding with your customers

How attracted are consumers to your brand?  They might be familiar with your brand, but do they find you unique? And – are they proud to use and own your brand?

Our brand attachment analyser builds on your brand strengths and identifies its weaknesses – all from the consumer’s perspective. By identifying the stage at which brand attachment is stronger and where it is weaker, we can evaluate where you need to focus activity and how you need to refine communication briefings.

What it does for you:

  • Identifies where in the customer experience brand attachment is strongest and where weaknesses exist.
  • Highlights where the brand needs to focus to fulfill customers’ expectations.
  • Enables you to refine action plans and communication briefings.

The brand attachment analyser starts with the design of a questionnaire to measure the consumer’s perception based on 5-level of attachment towards brands (awareness, reliability, quality, advantage and bonding). Afterwards, gaps between each stage are identified and we define which marketing communication activity should be improved.

In addition, we also compare your brand attachment journey against other category brands to determine strong and weak points based on a rational – emotional scale. We develop a tailored response to build on your brand’s strengths, whilst exploiting the weak points of competitors. Complete competitive sets of 10 or more brands can be compared and tracked in this way.

In the example above, Brand X on first view seems to be the much stronger brand – after all it has higher awareness compared to Brand Y.  However, even though many more people have heard of Brand X, its strength in terms of reliability shows a steep drop off. Brand Y – although known by fewer people – is much better evaluated by those who do know it. If Brand Y can focus energies on awareness building, it’s in good shape to mount a serious challenge to Brand X.

If you’d like to find out more about our experience in brand attachment analysis, contact Rob.

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Creating rich consumer segments

Customer segmentation is the art and science of creating clearly identifiable clusters of people who share similar beliefs, needs, motivations or other characteristics. Why is it so important?

Our insight driven segmentation enables brands to define a more accurate marketing mix and refine messaging that resonates more powerfully with their most influential or valuable customers. This means more focus, better use of resources by intelligent targeting and ultimately real competitive advantage.

We use segmentation to make sense of the complexity of markets and consumer behaviours. We generate rich and actionable insights to speak directly to the issues that matter most to high potential consumers and customers.

Our approach to segmentation takes into account important factors such as:

  • Identifying clear statements about attitudes, personal preferences, problem solving approaches and self-perception
  • Enriching the context with preferences, interests, lifestyle, hobbies and culture
  • Avoiding statements that result in too much consensus (polarisation is key!)
  • Communicating with language that is accessible and familiar to consumers (no manufacturers’ jargons)
  • Validating respondents’ profiles & cleaning data comprehensively.

We bring the clusters to life through well-articulated profile portraits and work with clients to translate these ideas into the marketing communications planning cycle.

If you’d like to find out more about our experience in segmentation, contact Rob.

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What is on your mind? Engaging consumers

Engaging consumers through new technology.

Consumers are not afraid to voice their views and demand change from brands, but collecting this valuable consumer opinion, especially among younger age groups and through traditional techniques, has become a challenge.  Put simply, the threshold to filling questionnaires has never been higher.

We have developed several tools to engage consumers using the language they speak and in the places they are present – whether that is the shopping mall, concert hall, theme park or transport hub, we are able to reach large numbers of consumers in a short time frame and get their thoughts and ideas – direct, fresh and unfiltered.

Participants get the satisfaction of airing their views and we collect valuable data to generate new insights.  The interaction is engaging and fast, building positive associations for brands, who are actively listening and inviting their consumers to comment.  We call this tool ‘Mind Touch’.

Our mobile application ‘Mind Shot’ integrates research into consumers’ daily lives. Consumers are offered a variety of tasks to perform.  They decide which tasks they take and are then rewarded based on the tasks completed. The tool is designed primarily for on the ground and in the field checks of how brands are presenting themselves and the network of ‘consumer researchers’ enables fast validation at scale.

By harnessing consumers’ direct participation, we are able to generate fresh and compelling new insights based on first hand evidence of what consumers are buying, using and experiencing in the world around them.

We also deploy tools using QR codes, which means that instant customer satisfaction and feedback can be gathered – perfect for evaluating retail, hospitality and entertainment experiences.

If you’d like to find out more about these tools or other innovative approaches to research,contact Rob.

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