“Anyone who launches new products will immediately appreciate the power of this resource to influence design direction, target appropriate price points, and select materials with high consumer appeal. What I love most is that it facilitates open and powerful discussions across the marketing, design and business teams. It minimizes reliance on “the gut feel” of just one individual in an organization and helps create a unified vision for success.”
AA&U’s are among the fundamental studies researchers do. Their purpose is to understand how consumers understand a product category by exploring product usage, brand and product awareness and attitudes toward goods in the category. Often such studies compare the importance of product attributes with how various brands/products are perceived to deliver on those same attributes, thus delivering a “gap” analysis that portrays differing sized gaps between the ideal and the perceived. Brands can use such gap information to develop products that fill the gaps and thus enhance their share in the category.