“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.”
Gone are the days when clients conducted research on the general population seeking to introduce “one-size-fits-all” products. Today clients understand the importance and market clout of their retail partners and they seek research addressed specifically to the consumers that each retailer serves. We offer our clients two mechanisms for such research. For products and programs designed for single retailers, we employ extensive screening to ascertain that we are interviewing the right consumers – those who are steady shoppers of that retailer and who have recently or will soon purchase goods in our client’s product category in that store. Results such as these enable our clients to present their retail partners with data specific of their consumers – a competitive advantage that often helps our clients to obtain and gain shelf space, sometimes at the expense of competitors who haven’t done their homework.
But what about products that aren’t designed for just one retailer? We have solutions for that situation as well. In addition to targeting the correct consumers, we often differentiate those who shop in multiple stores by identifying the single store they most recently purchase in and are most likely to next purchase in. We also work with the client to develop product options to run by multiple consumer groups in order to minimize product crossover between stores while maximizing product acceptance within stores. In one recent project, we helped a client to identify a set of colors that all stores should carry, as well as additional colors uniquely desired by each store’s consumers. Thus our client was able to offer different retailers differentiated assortments – a win for the client and their retail partners.