True Consumer Insights

Most consumer research is flawed!

If you are relying on focus groups and traditional research to understand your customers, the information you are getting seems like insight, but it probably isn’t. Most companies make major decisions in strategic direction based on the comments of a handful of consumers in focus groups. All it takes is one strong personality and your results are skewed and you loose insight you need to win in the marketplace. Even more dangerously, your organization may falsely believe many of your customers feel like that one “squeaky wheel.”

Quantitative surveys can offer a more accurate reflection of your customer base, but they rarely capture the motivators that drive your behavior. It is simply unrealistic to anticipate every question you should ask. What’s needed is a new approach that leverages the exploration possible in focus groups with the accuracy of a quantitative survey. This innovative approach, and the competitive advantage it offers, is now delivered in  cmsolutions' True Consumer Insights.

True Consumer Insights process

True Consumer Insights begin with clear objectives.  We will lead your team in refining your goals and establishing two to three clear study questions.  Based on these objectives, we then build an integrated plan to deliver accurate and comprehensive insight. 

The foundation of True Consumer Insights is the in-depth interview at the point of the purchase decision.  Consumers don’t always know why they buy and they certainly are less likely to remember from the comfort of their home.  We interact with customers while the decisions are fresh and their perspective is accurate.  We work with your team to develop surveys that are used by our highly skilled interviewers to guide the discussion and to gather statistical data. 

Throughout all interviews respondents are encouraged to expand on responses and discuss related topics, offering incomparable insight into what is really going on inside your consumers head.  After approximately one-third of the interviews are complete, we review the preliminary results and determine if adjustments need to be made. This value-added approach ensures the study objectives are met and allows for additional learning on important topics that may have emerged in the initial interviews.

Better people = More insight

Let’s face it, the dirty little secret of consumer research is that most surveys and interviews are conducted by unskilled, untrained labor. It’s cheaper and easier to put a survey in the hands of a $10 an hour grandmother than to invest in expensive business professionals. That may be OK for some companies, but not us. If the data input is lousy, how can the resulting analysis possibly be valuable? It can’t! That’s why our True Consumer Insights is implemented exclusively by interviewers with business educations who are native speakers of the dominant language of your consumer group. You don’t get interviewers, you get Consumer Insight Specialists. And you get more than just answers to your questions; you get the dramatic insight that only comes from putting a smart person that understands your objectives in front of your customer.

Better questions = better input = better output. We won’t do it any other way. Why should you?