Brand Research aka Digital Corridor of Innovation | The Value Edit

How do consumers make purchases in the modern world ultimately impacts the way brands engage with their target markets … Appears to sound obvious?

Well, undertaking brand research allows unravelling the wellbeing of brands … it will help to uncover the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities to grow across the marketplace |  

 

Multicultural collaboration is grounded on valuable and well-designed research, it creates an opening gate to opportunities to grow …  {A A Drzewiecka}

  

Brands across the world day by day become even more digitally conscious and steadily build brick by brick a new pathway for consumers’ journeys that is focused on the digitalisation of the increasing number of consumers’ touchpoints | 

 

One of the recent McKinsey’sMcKinsey’s researches says that the shift from the offline environment to online engagement points has risen by 20% and consumers enjoy completing their purchases “fully online” removing the hassle of time spent on real–life searching while allowing the time to be spent on different activities. The industries that are being recognised as fully digital are telecommunications, airline-booking, utilities with a growing number joining industries such as food, insurance, clothing and others | 

 

Knowing that the Internet is the overwhelmingly vast collaboration playground for brands… research becomes the tool for creating, maintaining and excelling the health of brands  | 

 

Why?

First and foremost is to establish the key objectives for the research activities.  On the majority of occasions, the main goal is to find out how to maximise business growth by researching the current wants and at the same time predicting the future goals of a commercial practice…. Assignment of the position, the current status that a business holds across the marketplace makes the key objective for a company due to the fact that the knowledge of own position makes easier to discover the wellbeing of competitors | 

Brand research allows companies discovering their strengths and opportunities in the modern marketplace and at the same time, it allows measuring the levels of competition amongst brands allowing them to create new prevention steps that would save them from failure | 

 

How?

Brand research that allows businesses to create and constantly update their own positioning in order to strengthen their status brings the card of quality to the brands’ growth allowing to discover the new opportunities for sustainability | 

This is the place when brand research shall enter the path of growth…

 

Steps

1 | create a portfolio of objectives

2 | assign the key goal {s} of the research

3 | understand the needs and wants of the research outcomes

4 | design a research launch strategy

5 | style the mar-com planning steps

6 | fashion a report for tracking results

 

Research Application | 

• Brand launch to the marketplace
• Brand assets creation, development and management
• Re-launch of the brand after merges / acquisitions
• Re-positioning after the decision of entering into new geographical audiences
• Tracking of competition steps, industry insights, consumers’ awareness, perceptions and overall experiences.

 

Research methods  | 

 

Surveys – this simple method allows brands to receive the first level of insights into consumers’ views and preferences; methods include telephone, online and in person. This type of research provides quantitative results that allow brands to get a quick snapshot of the consumers’ preferences  |  

 

Focus groups – this method gathers views of various representatives of audiences, allowing brands to get an insight into what the potential target market might think about particular products or services. This method can be implemented online or offline providing emotional and meritorious responses to brands’ real or hypothetical questions usually referred to preferences  | 

 

Social insights – this blended but powerful tool consists of a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods such as online surveys combined with real-time conversations with employees (salespeople, customer service reps), which might provide a good level of understanding from internal and external perspectives – this means that brands are not limited to one type of views but widen their horizons allowing to find answers oftentimes | 

 

Competitive analysis – this particular method is especially useful for brands that are just about to launch their own presence into the world, the main approach is to unravel the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities of the marketplace where the position of competition is being measured, the unique selling points of the company is being assigned and the level of local competition among different markets and demographics is being verified |  

 

When a brand is marketed around the world, the aura of simplicity and quality when injected into its spine … allow a brand to breath and to spread its reach across wider audiences … {A A Drzewiecka}

 

Tips

• Question…question…question…
• Dig deeper… find reasons why someone is favouring your brand over another
• Do not assume that your company will succeed … measure the insights
• Prepare…prepare…prepare… make sure that all the tools that serve the way a brand presents itself to the world are well aligned with the core vision of the brand
• Think clarity and simplicity when it comes to collaboration between a brand and a  marketplace … by presenting the key brand objectives by using the best possible methodology gives brands perspective to establish its own position across the market

 

Recommended Reads |

1 | Gurhan-Canli, Z, Sarial-Abi, G., Hayran, CGurhan-Canli, Z, Sarial-Abi, G., Hayran, C. {2018}. Consumers and brands across the Globe: research synthesis and new directions, Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 96-117.

2 | Allman, Helena F. , Fenik, Anton P. Hewett, Kelly and Morgan, Felicia N.Allman, Helena F. , Fenik, Anton P. Hewett, Kelly and Morgan, Felicia N. {2016}, Brand Image Evaluations: The Interactive Roles of Country of Manufacture, Brand Concept, and Vertical Line Extension Type, Journal of International Marketing, 24 (2), 40–61.

3 | Holt, Douglas B. , Quelch, John A. and Taylor, Earl L.Holt, Douglas B. , Quelch, John A. and Taylor, Earl L. (2004), How Global Brands Compete, Harvard Business Review, 82 (9), 68–75.