Marketing research interventions at appropriate time
How proactive is your organization in conducting marketing research?
Is your marketing research interventions timely or without forethought?
This article delves into the practices in marketing research intervention.
Some surveys are scheduled on-time while some happen after a considerable gap. Let’s understand this better
Marketing Research
Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services.
It is important to conduct marketing research as it plays a very significant role in identifying the customers’ needs and addressing them in the best possible way.
The main task of marketing research is systematic gathering and analysis of information
But to do this the marketing research should happen in a timely manner.
Customer memory of activities demises due to the other influencing factors.
Hence, it is important to gauge consumer response at the right time.
Popular marketing research interventions for a brand
A brand is a perception in its consumers’ minds.
To have a 360-degree brand evaluation we measure:
- Brand Health Evaluation
- Customer Satisfaction
These studies are majorly conducted separately but some studies combine some aspects to have an assessment in one study.
Marketing research interventions for brand health studies
Brand Health focusses on the following aspects:
- Brand Awareness: Spontaneous and aided awareness
- Advertisement Awareness: Spontaneous and aided awareness
- Brand Familiarity
- Future Consideration
- Usage parameters – Ever tried, usage in recent past, current usage
- Brand perception evaluation
- Campaign Evaluation
- Media Habits, etc
Marketing research interventions for Customer Satisfaction
Customer Satisfaction is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectations.
It evaluates the satisfaction levels on various parameters among the brand customers.
Customer satisfaction has some primary attributes and within the primary attributes – secondary attributes.
The evaluation is conducted at the brand level, primary attribute level, and secondary attribute level.
When do you conduct market research interventions?
The most ideal way to conduct market research is continuous – every day / every week, etc.
But who should be conducting market research is continuous?
It is the companies that are having almost advertisements every day / every week, dynamic sectors, etc.
Campaign/Advertisements play an important role in creating awareness, increasing familiarity, providing product information/USP, stimulating demand, etc.
The question is if you are not conducting a tracking study – When do you conduct market research for Brand Health and Customer Satisfaction?
The companies not conducting brand health evaluations on a continuous basis do so in the following manner:
- Baseline study – To understand the brand standing at ‘a’ point of time. This is generally called a pre-phase (before a campaign/marketing intervention
- Post-marketing intervention ie. post a campaign. This enables us to understand the uplift in the brand KPI and the impact of the marketing effort.
Post campaign primary data-collection is conducted immediately/ in close proximity to the marketing activity
Some example is:
- Newspaper Ad primary data-collection is conducted on the next day
- Primary data-collection for Event-based marketing activity is conducted on the same day after they exit from the premises
- TV campaign evaluation data collection is after a few days/weeks, etc
Hence, data collection for Campaign evaluation is based upon the schedule of marketing activities.
Brand Health Evaluation is led by the marketing team.
The marketing team ensures a substantial cost on marketing activities – Engaging media agency, buying slots for various TV channels/serials, print ads, digital ads, etc
Market research is conducted to understand the impact of each of the marketing activities and realigning investments if required.
Customer satisfaction studies are conducted once a year/half-yearly/quarterly, etc. depending upon the category (if not conducted daily/weekly)
Customers are at various stages during the company engagement. Some may be:
- Pre-purchase stage
- Purchase stage
- Post-purchase stage, etc.
Customer satisfaction is conducted among customers – some may be recent customers, some a few years old, others more than a year.
It is conducted at a point in time but tries to obtain responses of pre-purchase and purchase stage also.
This mean – there is likely to be a gap of few months to more than 6 months ( in the case of half-yearly study)
Based upon the recency factor the customer is more likely to recall the post-purchase experience.
If you are trying to obtain all information from one person – you are most likely to lose insights about pre-purchase / purchase. Hence, no actionable on this front
Marketing research interventions for B2B customer satisfaction studies
For a B2C product, the customer interacts with all the company departments.
In the B2B scenario – there is a change in the customer personnel as well as sellers personnel during the process.
From the seller – the marketing/sales team is involved at the initial stage.
Post-purchase – the technical / support team is involved.
Also, from the buyer’s perspective, there are technical, service, procurement teams, etc involved.
Hence, if we conduct a customer satisfaction study among the buyers – we have multiple stakeholders – not one.
What are the best practices for primary data-collection in customer satisfaction studies?
While conducting the customer satisfaction study, we need to keep the following thing in mind:
- Customer feedback needs to be obtained after the activity happens ie. Upon purchase for the pre-purchase and purchase evaluation. This can be done within a few weeks so that customer can recall the discussions/interactions and thereby responds appropriately.
- Similarly, evaluation should happen post usage of few months/maintenance activity (for automobile, air-conditioners, other engineering products, etc)
- Wherever we have multiple stakeholders, we should take feedback from each of them at the appropriate time.
Summary
The customer is able to articulate the most recent experiences during the interaction/feedback. In order to have valuable insights, one should be connecting with the customer during the most appropriate time period. This is relevant not only for brand health evaluation but also for customer satisfaction studies.
Do plan your market research activities timely and with the right audience.
