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Consumer Research: Examples, Process and Scope

What is Consumer Research?

Consumer research is a part of market research in which inclination, motivation and purchase behavior of the targeted customers are identified. Consumer research helps businesses or organizations understand customer psychology and create detailed purchasing behavior profiles.

It uses research techniques to provide systematic information about what customers need. Using this information brands can make changes in their products and services, making them more customer-centric thereby increasing customer satisfaction. This will in turn help to boost business.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

An organization that has an in-depth understanding about the customer decision-making process, is most likely to design a product, put a certain price tag to it, establish distribution centers and promote a product based on consumer research insights such that it produces increased consumer interest and purchases.

For example, A consumer electronics company wants to understand, thought process of a consumer when purchasing an electronic device, which can help a company to launch new products, manage the supply of the stock, etc. Carrying out a Consumer electronics survey can be useful to understand the market demand, understand the flaws in their product and also find out research problems in the various processes that influence the purchase of their goods. A consumer electronics survey can be helpful to gather information about the shopping experiences of consumers when purchasing electronics. which can enable a company to make well-informed and wise decisions regarding their products and services.

LEARN ABOUT: Test Market Demand

Consumer Research Objectives

When a brand is developing a new product, consumer research is conducted to understand what consumers want or need in a product, what attributes are missing and what are they looking for? An efficient survey software really makes it easy for organizations to conduct efficient research.

Consumer research is conducted to improve brand equity. A brand needs to know what consumers think when buying a product or service offered by a brand. Every good business idea needs efficient consumer research for it to be successful. Consumer insights are essential to determine brand positioning among consumers.

Consumer research is conducted to boost sales. The objective of consumer research is to look into various territories of consumer psychology and understand their buying pattern, what kind of packaging they like and other similar attributes that help brands to sell their products and services better.

LEARN ABOUT: Brand health

Consumer Research Model

According to a study conducted, till a decade ago, researchers thought differently about the consumer psychology, where little or no emphasis was put on emotions, mood or the situation that could influence a customer’s buying decision.

Many believed marketing was applied economics. Consumers always took decisions based on statistics and math and evaluated goods and services rationally and then selected items from those brands that gave them the highest customer satisfaction at the lowest cost.

However, this is no longer the situation. Consumers are very well aware of brands and their competitors. A loyal customer is the one who would not only return to repeatedly purchase from a brand but also, recommend his/her family and friends to buy from the same brand even if the prices are slightly higher but provides an exceptional customer service for products purchased or services offered.

Here is where the Net Promoter Score (NPS) helps brands identify brand loyalty and customer satisfaction with their consumers. Net Promoter Score consumer survey uses a single question that is sent to customers to identify their brand loyalty and level of customer satisfaction. Response to this question is measured on a scale between 0-10 and based on this consumers can be identified as:

Detractors: Who have given a score between 0-6.

Passives: Who have given a score between 7-8.

Promoters: Who have given a score between 9-10.

Consumer market research is based on two types of research method:

1. Qualitative Consumer Research

Qualitative research is descriptive in nature, It’s a method that uses open-ended questions , to gain meaningful insights from respondents and heavily relies on the following market research methods:

Focus Groups: Focus groups as the name suggests is a small group of highly validated subject experts who come together to analyze a product or service. Focus group comprises of 6-10 respondents. A moderator is assigned to the focus group, who helps facilitate discussions among the members to draw meaningful insights

One-to-one Interview: This is a more conversational method, where the researcher asks open-ended questions to collect data from the respondents. This method heavily depends on the expertise of the researcher. How much the researcher is able to probe with relevant questions to get maximum insights. This is a time-consuming method and can take more than one attempt to gain the desired insights.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

Content/ Text Analysis: Text analysis is a qualitative research method where researchers analyze social life by decoding words and images from the documents available. Researchers analyze the context in which the images are used and draw conclusions from them. Social media is an example of text analysis. In the last decade or so, inferences are drawn based on consumer behavior on social media.

Learn More: How to conduct Qualitative Research

2.Quantitative Consumer Research

In the age of technology and information, meaningful data is more precious than platinum. Billion dollar companies have risen and fallen on how well they have been able to collect and analyze data, to draw validated insights.

Quantitative research is all about numbers and statistics. An evolved consumer who purchases regularly can vouch for how customer-centric businesses have become today. It’s all about customer satisfaction , to gain loyal customers. With just one questions companies are able to collect data, that has the power to make or break a company. Net Promoter Score question , “On a scale from 0-10 how likely are you to recommend our brand to your family or friends?”

How organic word-of-mouth is influencing consumer behavior and how they need to spend less on advertising and invest their time and resources to make sure they provide exceptional customer service.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Targeting

Online surveys , questionnaires , and polls are the preferred data collection tools. Data that is obtained from consumers is then statistically, mathematically and numerically evaluated to understand consumer preference.

Learn more: How to carry out Quantitative Research

Consumer Research Process

The process of consumer research started as an extension of the process of market research . As the findings of market research is used to improve the decision-making capacity of an organization or business, similar is with consumer research.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research industry

The consumer research process can be broken down into the following steps:

Develop research objectives: The first step to the consumer research process is to clearly define the research objective, the purpose of research, why is the research being conducted, to understand what? A clear statement of purpose can help emphasize the purpose.
Collect Secondary data: Collect secondary data first, it helps in understanding if research has been conducted earlier and if there are any pieces of evidence related to the subject matter that can be used by an organization to make informed decisions regarding consumers.
Primary Research: In primary research organizations or businesses collect their own data or employ a third party to collect data on their behalf. This research makes use of various data collection methods ( qualitative and quantitative ) that helps researchers collect data first hand.

LEARN ABOUT: Best Data Collection Tools

Collect and analyze data: Data is collected and analyzed and inference is drawn to understand consumer behavior and purchase pattern.
Prepare report: Finally, a report is prepared for all the findings by analyzing data collected so that organizations are able to make informed decisions and think of all probabilities related to consumer behavior. By putting the study into practice, organizations can become customer-centric and manufacture products or render services that will help them achieve excellent customer satisfaction.

LEARN ABOUT: market research trends

After Consumer Research Process

Once you have been able to successfully carry out the consumer research process , investigate and break paradigms. What consumers need should be a part of market research design and should be carried out regularly. Consumer research provides more in-depth information about the needs, wants, expectations and behavior analytics of clients.

By identifying this information successfully, strategies that are used to attract consumers can be made better and businesses can make a profit by knowing what consumers want exactly. It is also important to understand and know thoroughly the buying behavior of consumers to know their attitude towards brands and products.

The identification of consumer needs, as well as their preferences, allows a business to adapt to new business and develop a detailed marketing plan that will surely work. The following pointers can help. Completing this process will help you:

Attract more customers
Set the best price for your products
Create the right marketing message
Increase the quantity that satisfies the demand of its clients
Increase the frequency of visits to their clients
Increase your sales
Reduce costs
Refine your approach to the customer service process .

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research

Consumer Research Methods

Consumers are the reason for a business to run and flourish. Gathering enough information about consumers is never going to hurt any business, in fact, it will only add up to the information a business would need to associate with its consumers and manufacture products that will help their business refine and grow.

Following are consumer research methods that ensure you are in tandem with the consumers and understand their needs:

The studies of customer satisfaction

One can determine the degree of satisfaction of consumers in relation to the quality of products through:

Informal methods such as conversations with staff about products and services according to the dashboards.
Past and present questionnaires/ surveys that consumers might have filled that identify their needs.

T he investigation of the consumer decision process

It is very interesting to know the consumer’s needs, what motivates them to buy, and how is the decision-making process carried out, though:

Deploying relevant surveys and receiving responses from a target intended audience .

Proof of concept

Businesses can test how well accepted their marketing ideas are by:

The use of surveys to find out if current or potential consumer see your products as a rational and useful benefit.
Conducting personal interviews or focus group sessions with clients to understand how they respond to marketing ideas.

Knowing your market position

You can find out how your current and potential consumers see your products, and how they compare it with your competitors by:

Sales figures talk louder than any other aspect, once you get to know the comparison in the sales figures it is easy to understand your market position within the market segment.
Attitudes of consumers while making a purchase also helps in understanding the market hold.

Branding tests and user experience

You can determine how your customers feel with their brands and product names by:

The use of focus groups and surveys designed to assess emotional responses to your products and brands.
The participation of researchers to study the performance of their brand in the market through existing and available brand measurement research.

Price changes

You can investigate how your customers accept or not the price changes by using formulas that measure the revenue – multiplying the number of items you sold, by the price of each item. These tests allow you to calculate if your total income increases or decreases after making the price changes by:

Calculation of changes in the quantities of products demanded by their customers, together with changes in the price of the product.
Measure the impact of the price on the demand of the product according to the needs of the client.

Social media monitoring

Another way to measure feedback and your customer service is by controlling your commitment to social media and feedback. Social networks (especially Facebook) are becoming a common element of the commercialization of many businesses and are increasingly used by their customers to provide information on customer needs, service experiences, share and file customer complaints . It can also be used to run surveys and test concepts. If handled well, it can be one of the most powerful research tools of the client management . I also recommend reading: How to conduct market research through social networks.

Customer Research Questions

Asking the right question is the most important part of conducting research. Moreover, if it’s consumer research, questions should be asked in a manner to gather maximum insights from consumers. Here are some consumer research questions for your next research:

Who in your household takes purchasing decisions?
Where do you go looking for ______________ (product)?
How long does it take you to make a buying decision?
How far are you willing to travel to buy ___________(product)?
What features do you look for when you purchase ____________ (product)?
What motivates you to buy_____________ (product)?

See more consumer research survey questions:

Customer satisfaction surveys

Voice of customer surveys

Product surveys

Service evaluation surveys

Mortgage Survey Questions

Importance of Consumer Research

Launching a product or offering new services can be quite an exciting time for a brand. However, there are a lot of aspects that need to be taken into consideration while a band has something new to offer to consumers.

LEARN ABOUT: User Experience Research

Here is where consumer research plays a pivotal role. The importance of consumer research cannot be emphasized more. Following points summarizes the importance of consumer research:

To understand market readiness: However good a product or service may be, consumers have to be ready to accept it. Creating a product requires investments which in return expect ROI from product or service purchases. However, if a market is mature enough to accept this utility, it has a low chance of succeeding by tapping into market potential . Therefore, before launching a product or service, organizations need to conduct consumer research, to understand if people are ready to spend on the utility it provides.
Identify target consumers: By conducting consumer research, brands and organizations can understand their target market based on geographic segmentation and know who exactly is interested in buying their products. According to the data or feedback received from the consumer, research brands can even customize their marketing and branding approach to better appeal to the specific consumer segment.

LEARN ABOUT: Marketing Insight

Product/Service updates through feedback: Conducting consumer research, provides valuable feedback from consumers about the attributes and features of products and services. This feedback enables organizations to understand consumer perception and provide a more suitable solution based on actual market needs which helps them tweak their offering to perfection.

Explore more: 300 + FREE survey templates to use for your research

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Consumer Research: Definition, Methods and Benefits (+ Templates)

Nemanja Jovancic

Sep 02 2020

No comments

Launching a new product? Considering whether you should offer new services or tweak the current ones? Such moments can be challenging both for established brands and those just trying to break into the market.

Whenever you have something new to offer to your customers, there are numerous factors to be taken into account if you want to make well-informed decisions that would increase the chances of a successful launch, instead of stumbling in the dark and hoping for the best.

This is where consumer research kicks in.

What is consumer research?

Consumer research is the aspect of market research that focuses on identifying the motivation, preferences, and purchase behavior of (potential) consumers.

Companies rely on consumer research to analyze and better understand consumer psychology so as to improve their products or services, making them more customer-oriented, and ultimately increasing customer satisfaction and the number of sales.

Having a deep understanding of consumer decision-making and purchase behavior allows brands to build products that will find their market fit more easily, put the optimal price tag onto them, and establish the right distribution and promotion channels.

Let’s say a beauty industry company wants to launch a new skincare product. In order to de-risk their production and product placement, they could launch a skincare quiz to find out what it is that their consumers actually need:

And then they could do additional market research to find out more about their ideal customer’s demographics and purchase habits. Conducting this kind of consumer research is expected to facilitate a successful launch for the new product and ensure that there’s actual demand for such a product on the market.

Before we dig any deeper into consumer research, here’s a survey template you could easily use to do your own market research.

Consumer research survey template

Just here for an easy way to conduct your own consumer research? No worries, we’ve got you covered – grab this market research template and learn more about your consumers right now.

If you would like to learn more about how and why you should conduct the research using the template above, keep on reading.

Why you should conduct consumer research

Often, people do research just because they’ve been told to do so. But if you’re looking to better understand your consumers and their needs, you need to know why you should be conducting consumer research in the first place. Even though there are plenty of benefits, here are the top three I’d like to point out:

Understand market readiness

No matter how good you think your products or services are, there’s a fair chance you’re not completely objective nor representative of your ideal target consumer.

When launching a new product, there’s a lot of investments going around and, naturally, you’d expect adequate ROI. However, if there’s not enough market potential, your investment might fail. This is where consumer research kicks in.

Identify target consumers

Another important benefit of conducting consumer research is the ability to identify and analyze your target customers. In other words, this allows you to determine who might be interested in buying your products or using your services.

For example, you can use a demographic survey to obtain various information on your customers such as age, gender, geographic location, employment, marital status, and more. Or you can rely on different types of market segmentation to reach your ideal customer. This would allow you to customize your marketing efforts to better appeal to particular customer sets.

Get feedback on existing products or services

Finally, consumer research can help you obtain valuable feedback on your current business offer. Such feedback can help you update or improve your current products based on the valuable information from the actual consumers.

Getting feedback is important because it helps brands and businesses better understand the consumers’ standing point and come up with an improved product that would help address the challenges they’ve been having and fully meet the actual market needs and requirements.

Main consumer research methods

There are two main types of consumer research – quantitative and qualitative . Both types rely on different research techniques that we’ll explore in more detail down below.

Quantitative consumer research

By 2025, the global data pool is expected to rise up to 175 zettabytes . That’s why meaningful data has become more valuable than ever and the way companies collect data can either make or break their business success.

Quantitative research is a data collection method that revolves around numbers and stats. It’s an essential part of consumer research that can provide businesses with measurable data on their customers. Such data can be mathematically and statistically analyzed in order to gain more insight into consumer behavior.

The most effective and most popular techniques for obtaining quantitative data are different types of online questionnaires such as surveys and polls.

Surveys and polls

Nowadays, the easiest way to obtain consumer data is through online surveys, questionnaires, and polls. Thanks to highly-advanced and intuitive survey tools , it’s now easier than ever to create your own data collectors, either from scratch or using professionally written templates.

All the LeadQuizzes users, for example, gain free access to 78 professionally written and beautifully designed survey, quiz, and form templates. This includes market and consumer research survey templates such as the ones shown in the image below:

To access the LeadQuizzes templates, just log in to your account (or sign up for a free trial if you don’t have an account yet) and select your preferred template from the selection of pre-made templates . You can use the templates as they are or easily customize them to meet your specific needs.

One of the easiest ways to obtain quantitative customer data is by using an NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey . This customer research technique allows you to easily evaluate the satisfaction of your current users and express it through numbers for easy analysis. With just one single question – “How likely are you to refer our business?” – you can easily measure consumer satisfaction and loyalty.

To preview (or use) an NPS survey template, just click on the image below:

Qualitative consumer research

Unlike quantitative research, which relies on numbers, qualitative consumer research is descriptive in nature. To obtain qualitative data, you need to be using open-ended questions with no predefined answer options. While this means that you can still be using online surveys to obtain qualitative data as well, there are a few more options to choose from.

Focus Groups

A focus group is a small group of people who are experts on a particular subject matter and whose job is to analyze a particular aspect of consumer research – e.g. a new update, feature, product, and so on.

Ideally, focus groups contain somewhere between 3-10 people, including an obligatory moderator. Depending on the research topic and goal, the members of a focus group should be brought together around certain common denominators.

For example, if you’re doing research on the use of birth control pills, all the members of your focus group need to be sexually active females. The remaining parameters like age, education, employment, and so on, may or may not be relevant here.

1-to-1 interviews

In most cases, this is a conversational method that presupposes an interviewer and an interviewee. During this type of consumer research, the researcher (the interviewer) asks questions (that are equivalent to the open-ended survey questions) related to products and services.

There are two main limitations to this method. Firstly, it’s very time consuming and might become overwhelming if you have to interview an excessively large number of consumers. And secondly, it very much relies on the researcher’s expertise and ability to extract the relevant information from interviewees.

Social media monitoring

This type of consumer research could also be described as content or text analysis but, in recent years, it primarily refers to the analysis of consumer behavior on social media. Here, the researchers analyze consumers’ social life by decoding their social media posts and interactions to draw inferences related to their consumer behavior and habits.

After the research

Above, we’ve introduced you to consumer research – what it is, why you need to conduct it, and what are some of the best ways to do so. Once you’ve managed to conduct your research, gather the necessary data, analyze it, and come to certain conclusions, you should have a better insight into the exact needs and pain points of your customers.

This will allow you to adapt your business, update, tweak or completely revamp your products and services, and develop a better marketing plan that would allow you to attract more consumers, determine the optimal price, increase the number of sales, and reduce costs.

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Customer Research 101: Definition, Types, and Methods

Pragadeesh Natarajan

Last Updated: 30 May 2024

12 min read

Table Of Contents

What is Customer Research?

Why is customer research important, types of customer research.

6 Customer Research Methods
How SurveySparrow Can Help

Do you want to improve your marketing or product? Then, customer research can help.

Your customer is at the heart of all your business decisions. In fact, everything revolves around a customer. A business is about having a paying customer, and it wouldn’t exist without one.

The effectiveness of your product or marketing depends on how well you know your customers. When you know your customers better, you can make better product or marketing decisions.

In this article, we break down:

What customer research is
Why it’s valuable for your business
Different types of customer research
Six customer research methods you can use to refine and grow your business

Customer research (or consumer research ) is a set of techniques used to identify the needs, preferences, behaviors, and motivations of your current or potential customers.

Simply put, the consumer research process is a way for businesses to collect information and learn from their customers so they can serve them better.

Businesses typically conduct customer research to uncover new insights on their customers. They then use these newly uncovered insights to improve their product, craft an effective marketing strategy, and more.

Here are 2 key questions customer research helps you answer:

Who are my ideal customers? Who is the best fit (or worst fit) for our product?
What channels can I use to find and communicate with my ideal customers?

Online survey tools like SurveySparrow can help you answer these questions. With omnichannel survey distribution, snazzy data visualization, and 1,500+ integrations with your favorite tools, SurveySparrow simplifies customer research for your GTM and product teams.

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A. How well do you know your customers? Not knowing enough about your customers can cost you time and money.

For example, a recent survey revealed that 46% of customers broke up with a brand because they received irrelevant content pushes.

Successful marketers realize that research is necessary to understand and cater to the ever-changing needs of today’s customers. According to a study by Coschedule:

Successful marketers are 242% more likely to conduct audience research at least once every quarter.
56% of the study’s most elite marketers research at least once a month.

B. You shouldn’t make assumptions about your customers’ preferences or needs. You have to go out there and get opinions from real customers.

C. You need to go beyond your general idea about your customers. The more you understand your customers, the better you’ll be able to serve them with your product or service.

D. If you want to make your product the best in the market, you need to identify any unmet needs and learn how well your product serves the needs of your current customers.

E. Customer research helps you learn more about your customers, both the potential and existing ones. Serving your customers better than the alternatives starts with understanding them better and more deeply.

F. Here are other key reasons why you should research customers:

Know the Why : Your analytics dashboard merely tells you what your customers do. Only research can help you understand why they do that.
Validate Assumptions and Best Practices : In most cases, guesswork leads to terrible decisions. Your customers might not need what you think they need. And what works for most businesses might not work for you. The only real way to know is to talk to your customers.

Customer research can be done in two distinct ways: primary and secondary.

Primary research

Primary research is research you conduct yourself. In other words, in primary research, you collect the data yourself. Some examples of primary research are face-to-face interviews, surveys, and social media interactions.

Secondary research

Secondary research (or desk research ) is done by someone else. In secondary research, you make use of data that’s been collected by other people. A few examples of secondary research are forums or communities, industry reports, and online databases.

Primary and secondary research can be further broken down into two kinds of data: qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative data

Qualitative data is descriptive and conceptual. And the nature of the data makes it subjective and interpretive. Examples of qualitative data include descriptions of certain attributes, such as blue eyes or chocolate-flavored ice cream .

Quantitative data

Quantitative data can be expressed using numbers, which means it can be counted or measured. As opposed to qualitative data, it’s objective and conclusive. Examples of quantitative data include numerical values such as measurements , length , cost , or weight .

Customer Research Methods that Work in 2024 (and Beyond)

Now that you know what customer research is and why it’s important, read on to learn the different consumer research methods you can use to make the most of it.

In a survey, you ask a series of questions to your customers regarding a subject or concept.

You can conduct a survey in person, over the phone, through emails, or online forms.

Here are some advantages of conducting customer research through surveys:

Quickly collect a ton of insightful data without the high costs.
The data you collect using surveys is simple to analyze.
You can ask various questions since you get a wide range of question formats.

When it comes to surveys, it’s all about how you ask. Clear and concise questions can help you get reliable information.

An online survey tool is your best bet for quickly gathering customer information. All you need to do is create a survey with a ready-to-use template and send your customers a link to take it.

If you’re in need of a cost-free and easy-to-use solution for conducting customer research surveys and beyond, consider exploring SurveySparrow . This tool aids in gathering essential data by enabling you to conduct thorough data analysis via its user-friendly and conversational survey format.

Check Out SurveySparrow for Free here!

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In an interview, you speak directly to your customers and ask them open-ended questions.

Interviews allow you to have deep, one-on-one conversations with your customers and explore a topic in-depth.
You can go into the details, obtain data beyond surface-level information, and gather deeper insights.

While interviews allow you to probe deeper into a subject, success depends on the expertise and skills of the researcher (or interviewer) conducting the interviews.

Conducting interviews isn’t easy. It’s time-consuming and costly. However, the information you collect can be invaluable for your company’s growth.

You can meet your customers in person to conduct your interviews. Or you can use video conferencing tools such as Google Meet or Zoom to converse with your customers online.

Your analytics dashboard lets you in on your customers’ actions within your product.

Just a glance at it and you’ll know what your customers do and how they engage with your product.

The irony is that customers don’t know what they want or why. They might think they need something but that might not be the case.

What they say they need doesn’t equate to what they do.

The point is that customer-reported behavior is different from actual behavior. That’s why it pays to track and observe your customers’ behavior.

You can use heatmaps, click tracking, scroll mapping, and user-recorded sessions to gain insights into your users’ actions and behavior.

Focus Groups

In this method, you combine a small group based on certain criteria such as demographic, firmographic, or behavioral attributes.

And you ask this group about whatever topic or concept. It could be about your product, marketing message, or something else that’s related to your customers or business.

The idea is to get them to talk to each other and have meaningful conversations.

A moderator helps facilitate the conversations between the individuals in this group. The moderator will try to draw meaningful insights from these conversations and discussions.

You mainly use this technique to understand a certain topic or subject better.

Competitive Analysis

Studying your competitors’ strategies and tactics is a great way to learn more about the target market and the existing solutions.

You can analyze both your direct and indirect competitors depending on the needs you address and the customers you cater to.

You can conduct a competitive analysis from a marketing or product perspective.

If you conduct your analysis from a marketing perspective, you study your competition’s SEO strategy , landing page copy, blog content, PR coverage, social media presence, etc.

You can also conduct your competitive analysis from a product perspective and analyze your competitors’ user experience, features, pricing structure, etc.

Review Mining

The reviews of you and your competitors are another great way to get inside your customer’s head. This method can be especially valuable if you are a SAAS company.

It helps you better understand your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses as well as your own. This understanding helps you improve your own products and better address the needs of your ideal customers.

This kind of data is easy to acquire as it’s publicly available, and you can get them on:

Review sites such as G2Crowd and Capterra.
Forums and niche communities such as ProductHunt, Reddit, Quora, etc.

Why SurveySparrow is the Best Customer Research Tool

SurveySparrow facilitates comprehensive customer research by enabling businesses to efficiently collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback, leading to better informed and customer-centric decisions.

Collect Feedback Easily : Create simple surveys to find out what customers think about your products or services.
Understand Satisfaction : Use surveys to figure out how happy customers are with what you offer.
Learn Buying Habits : Find out why customers buy certain products, which helps in planning what to sell.
Get Product Opinions : Ask customers what they like or don’t like about your products to make improvements.
See How People View Your Brand : Understand how customers see your brand, which is important for your marketing.
Keep Up with Trends : Regular surveys help you stay updated on what your customers want or need.
Group Customers : Identify different types of customers to target them more effectively with your marketing.
Improve Customer Experience : Learn where you can make the buying process better for your customers.
Test New Ideas : Before launching new products, check if your customers would be interested.
Check Customer Loyalty : Find out if customers would keep using your products or recommend them to others.

Sign up for a free trial.

Final thoughts.

Businesses that deeply understand their customers have a huge advantage over the ones that don’t. Period.

Whatever you’re looking to learn or achieve, it becomes a lot clearer with a little research.

When done right, customer research can be your competitive advantage.

Be sure to pick a method that’s right for your situation. What are you looking to learn and achieve? Think through each research method carefully and pick the one that works best for you.

Have you conducted customer research? What did you learn? And how did it go? Tell us about that in the comment section below.

And if you’re looking to conduct customer research through surveys, feel free to check out SurveySparrow .

I'm a developer turned marketer, working as a Product Marketer at SurveySparrow — A survey tool that lets anyone create beautiful, conversational surveys people love to answer.

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What Is Consumer Research: Methods, Types, Scope & Examples

Jan 19, 2024

Consumer Research Overview:

Consumer research is an essential aspect of any successful business strategy. Understanding your target audience, their preferences, and behaviours is crucial for making informed decisions, developing effective marketing campaigns, and staying ahead in a competitive marketplace. In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the world of consumer research, covering key methods, types, and scope, and providing real-world examples of its practical applications.

Introduction to Consumer Research

Consumer research, also known as market research, is the systematic process of gathering and analyzing data about consumers' attitudes, preferences, and behaviours. It is a vital component of strategic planning for businesses and organizations across various industries. The primary goal of consumer research is to gain insights into consumer needs and desires, enabling businesses to make informed decisions and create products and services that meet those needs effectively.

Key Methods in Consumer Research

To conduct effective consumer research, various methods and techniques are employed. These methods can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: quantitative and qualitative research.

Quantitative Research in Consumer Studies

Quantitative research focuses on gathering numerical data and statistical analysis. It often involves surveys, questionnaires, and structured interviews with a large sample of participants. This method provides numerical insights into consumer behaviors , preferences, and trends. Data collected through quantitative research can be analyzed to identify patterns, correlations, and statistical significance. This approach is particularly useful when a business needs to measure consumer satisfaction, evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, or conduct large-scale market studies.

Qualitative Approaches in Consumer Research

Qualitative research, on the other hand, emphasizes understanding the underlying motivations and emotions behind consumer behaviors. It involves methods like focus groups, in-depth interviews, and observational studies. Qualitative research allows researchers to delve deeper into consumers' thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It helps businesses gain a more nuanced understanding of their target audience, enabling them to develop products and marketing strategies that resonate on a deeper level.

Exploring Types of Consumer Research

Consumer research is a multifaceted field with various types, each serving specific purposes:

Demographic Analysis in Consumer Research

Demographic research involves analyzing data related to consumers' age, gender, income, education, and other demographic factors. This type of research helps businesses identify and target specific consumer groups based on their characteristics and preferences.

Psychographic Research Methods

Psychographic research focuses on consumers' lifestyles, values, interests, and personality traits. By understanding the psychological factors that influence consumer behavior, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies to align with consumers' beliefs and aspirations.

Consumer Insight Generation

Consumer insight research aims to uncover unique and valuable insights about consumer behaviors and preferences. It often involves innovative data collection techniques and advanced analytics to discover hidden trends and opportunities.

Brand Perception Research

Brand perception research assesses how consumers perceive a brand and its products or services. It helps businesses understand the strengths and weaknesses of their brand image and make necessary improvements.

Product Testing in Consumer Studies

Product testing involves gathering consumer feedback on new products or prototypes. This research type helps businesses refine their products based on real-world consumer input, ensuring they meet market demands.

Comparative Consumer Analysis

Comparative research involves evaluating a business's performance relative to its competitors. It helps identify areas where a business can gain a competitive edge and better serve its target audience.

Cross-Cultural Consumer Research

Cross-cultural research examines consumer behaviours and preferences across different cultures and regions. It helps businesses adapt their marketing strategies to diverse consumer demographics.

The Broad Scope of Consumer Research

Consumer research is not limited to the products and services themselves; it encompasses various aspects of consumer behaviour and market dynamics. The scope of consumer research includes:

Technology in Consumer Studies

As technology continues to advance, consumer research methods have also evolved. Businesses now have access to big data analytics, AI-driven insights, and social media sentiment analysis, allowing them to gain a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour in the digital age.

Future Trends in Consumer Research

Consumer research is a dynamic field, constantly evolving to keep up with changing consumer preferences and market dynamics. Staying updated with emerging trends in consumer research is essential for businesses to remain competitive.

Data-Driven Consumer Insights

The advent of big data has revolutionized consumer research. Businesses can now harness vast amounts of data to gain valuable insights into consumer behavior, helping them make data-driven decisions and improve their strategies.

Consumer Decision-Making Models

Understanding how consumers make decisions is crucial for businesses. Consumer research explores the decision-making process, including factors like perception, motivation, and cognitive biases, to help businesses influence consumer choices effectively.

Real-world Examples of Consumer Research

Let's look at some practical applications of consumer research in real-world scenarios:

Case Studies in Consumer Research

A leading smartphone manufacturer conducts consumer research to understand what features and specifications consumers prioritize in their smartphones. Based on the findings, the company designs and markets its products accordingly, staying ahead of competitors.

Consumer Satisfaction Measurement

A restaurant chain regularly collects feedback from its customers through surveys and online reviews. By analyzing this data, they identify areas for improvement, make necessary changes to their menu and service, and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.

Trend Analysis in Consumer Studies

A fashion retailer closely monitors consumer trends and preferences in clothing. They use this information to adapt their inventory, marketing campaigns, and store layouts to align with current fashion trends and consumer preferences.

Retail Environment Studies

A retail giant conducts in-store consumer research to optimize its store layout, product placement, and signage. By creating a more pleasant and efficient shopping experience, they aim to increase customer satisfaction and sales.

Consumer Feedback and Reviews

An e-commerce platform analyzes customer feedback and reviews to identify product issues, improve product descriptions, and enhance customer trust. This research helps them provide a better shopping experience.

Online Consumer Behavior

An online marketplace tracks user behaviour on its website to improve user experience, optimize search algorithms, and personalize product recommendations, ultimately increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

Social Media Impact on Consumer Research

A cosmetics brand monitors social media channels to gauge customer sentiment and feedback. They use this data to adjust marketing strategies and product offerings in real-time, staying responsive to consumer preferences.

Global Consumer Trends

A multinational corporation conducts cross-cultural consumer research to adapt its products and marketing strategies to different regions and cultures, ensuring they resonate with local consumers.

Consumer Preferences and Trends

A food and beverage company studies consumer preferences for healthier options. This research informs their product development and marketing efforts to align with the growing trend of health-conscious consumers.

Lifestyle and Consumer Choices

A fitness equipment manufacturer conducts consumer research to understand how consumers' lifestyles and preferences influence their purchasing decisions. This helps them develop products tailored to specific consumer segments.

Psychological Aspects of Consumer Behavior

A marketing agency delves into the psychological factors that influence consumer decisions. They use this knowledge to create compelling advertisements and marketing campaigns that resonate with consumers on a deeper level.

Cultural Influences in Consumer Research

An international travel agency studies how cultural differences impact travel preferences. They tailor their vacation packages and marketing materials to appeal to diverse cultural groups.

Ethical Considerations in Consumer Research

While consumer research provides valuable insights, it is essential to conduct it ethically and responsibly. Respecting consumers' privacy and ensuring the security of their data should be paramount. Businesses should obtain informed consent, anonymize data when necessary, and adhere to applicable regulations, such as GDPR or CCPA, to protect consumers' rights.

The Evolution of Consumer Research Methods

Consumer research methods have evolved significantly over the years. From traditional face-to-face interviews and paper surveys to online surveys, big data analytics, and AI-driven insights, technology has played a pivotal role in enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of consumer research. Businesses must stay current with the latest research tools and techniques to remain competitive in today's fast-paced market.

The Impact of Technology on Consumer Research

Technology has revolutionized consumer research in several ways:

Faster Data Collection

Online surveys and digital data collection methods allow businesses to gather consumer insights more quickly, enabling faster decision-making.

Enhanced Data Analysis

Advanced analytics tools enable businesses to process and analyze vast amounts of data, uncovering hidden trends and patterns that were previously difficult to identify.

Personalization in Consumer Engagement

Technology allows businesses to personalize their interactions with consumers, offering tailored recommendations and experiences based on individual preferences and behaviors.

Data Privacy in Consumer Studies

As technology has evolved, concerns about data privacy have grown. Ethical consumer research practices involve protecting consumers' personal information and respecting their privacy rights.

Integrating AI in Consumer Insights

Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can analyze consumer data more efficiently, providing businesses with valuable insights and predictive analytics.

Practical Applications: How Businesses Use Consumer Research

Consumer research is not just an academic exercise; it has practical applications that directly impact a business's success. Here are some ways businesses use consumer research to their advantage:

Product Development

Consumer research helps businesses identify gaps in the market and develop products that align with consumer needs and preferences.

Marketing Strategies

By understanding consumer behaviors and preferences, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies to effectively reach and engage their target audience.

Customer Experience Enhancement

Consumer research helps businesses improve customer service, streamline processes, and create a positive and memorable customer experience.

Competitive Advantage

By staying updated with consumer trends and preferences, businesses can gain a competitive edge in the market and position themselves as industry leaders.

Risk Mitigation

Consumer research can help identify potential risks and challenges in the market, allowing businesses to proactively address them.

Innovative businesses use consumer research to identify emerging trends and opportunities, leading to the development of groundbreaking products and services.

In conclusion, consumer research is an indispensable tool for businesses seeking to understand their target audience, make informed decisions, and stay competitive in the ever-evolving marketplace. By employing various research methods, understanding different types of consumer research, and respecting ethical considerations, businesses can harness the power of consumer insights to drive growth, innovation, and success. As technology continues to shape the field of consumer research, businesses that embrace data-driven decision-making and prioritize consumer satisfaction will thrive in the dynamic business landscape of the future.

At Market Xcel, we offer a suite of research services to our clients, leveraging our expertise in consumer research to provide valuable insights and drive success in today's competitive business environment.

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Exploring consumer research: strategies for informed marketing

Director, Growth & Strategy

If you want to understand what makes your target audience tick, consumer research is a must. But how do you go about gathering insights about consumer behaviour, preferences, and values? In this article, we discuss just that, exploring strategies and best practices for effectively collecting and interpreting consumer data in a digital landscape.

What is consumer research?

Consumer research, also known as market research, is the process of aggregating information about consumers and their behaviours. The insights gleaned from this process allow you to better understand consumer preferences, needs, and expectations. As a result, your brand can make data-driven decisions about everything from product development to marketing strategies.

The exact means of conducting consumer research vary from company to company. However, this research is typically conducted through methods like surveys, focus groups, and data analytics. These tools garner various types of information, including:

Demographic data

Demographic data encompasses information such as age, gender, income, education level, marital status, and location. Demographics help your brand identify its target audience and develop products and services that appeal to that respective group of individuals.

Psychographic data

Psychographic data refers to any information about consumers’ attitudes, values, interests, and lifestyle. This helps companies understand the emotional and psychological aspects that affect purchasing decisions.

Attitudinal data

Similarly, market researchers may attempt to collect information about consumers’ perceptions of and attitudes towards specific products, brands, or industries. A cleaning product brand may, for instance, measure consumers’ loyalty to a competing brand.

Behavioural data

Behavioural data refers to consumer actions, such as purchase history, product usage, and shopping habits. The more you know about how consumers have acted in the past, the more accurately you can predict future behaviour.

Purchase intent data

Purchase intent data allows you to understand consumers’ purchase intentions and the factors affecting whether or not they buy a product or service. This information is key to product development as well as marketing.

Product and service feedback

Collecting feedback from consumers about their experiences with products or services—from complaints to overall satisfaction—can drive product improvements. This type of information can also enhance customer service.

Consumer research methods

To yield meaningful insights, your brand must adopt a systematic approach to consumer research. It should begin with a clear definition of research objectives, including what specific questions need to be answered and what outcomes are desired. From there, you should determine the most appropriate research tool.

A consumer research survey is a structured data collection method that gathers information from a sample of respondents. This information may be related to the respondents’ behaviours, opinions, attitudes, or preferences. Surveys may be conducted online, via telephone, or in-person.

Efficiency: A well-designed survey can collect a large volume of data quickly, making this tool a cost-effective choice.
Standardisation: Surveys offer consistency in question structure and response options, reducing potential bias and ensuring that all respondents receive the same set of questions.
Quantifiable data: Surveys generate quantitative data, allowing market researchers to garner insights through statistical analysis. Even open-ended survey questions can be quantified using text analysis tools.

Collect online survey data more efficiently and effectively with Kantar

When you partner with Kantar to conduct consumer research, you benefit from our agile data collection approach. This includes longitudinal studies with bespoke methodologies, quick-turn tests, and other ad hoc projects. We also provide clients with easy-to-use dashboards for in-house analytics and insights.

Focus groups

A focus group is a qualitative research method in which a small group of selected participants engage in a structured, facilitated discussion about a specific product, service, brand, or other related topic. The goal of a focus group is to gather deeper, more nuanced insights regarding consumer attitudes and perceptions.

Richer data: Focus groups allow for a deeper understanding of participants’ thoughts, feelings, and experiences. This helps market researchers understand the “why” behind consumer behaviours.
Real-time clarification: When survey takers are completing an online questionnaire, they may provide misleading information if they don’t quite understand a question. But in a real-life scenario, moderators can provide clarification.
Group dynamics: Interaction among participants can generate additional insights that might not emerge in one-on-one interviews or surveys. This group setting also allows market researchers to obtain more information faster compared to interviewing individuals one by one.

Syndicated research

Syndicated research refers to data that is aggregated by market research companies, consulting firms, or other organisations. This data is then sold to multiple clients or subscribers who are interested in understanding the dynamics of a specific industry.

Cost-effectiveness: Purchasing syndicated research can be cheaper than generating first-party data. This makes consumer research available to companies with limited marketing resources.
Efficiency: Conducting extensive consumer research studies can take time. But with syndicated research, market researchers can access the information they need when they need it.
Benchmarking: Brands can use syndicated research to benchmark their performance against industry standards and competitors.

Purchase behaviour

At Kantar, we believe the best way to understand consumer behaviour is to witness it firsthand. That is why we aggregate high-quality consumer data through tracking the buying behaviour of 750,000 consenting consumers. This allows our clients to understand the values and beliefs of real shoppers.

Deeper insights: By analysing consumer purchase behaviour, companies can identify trends, preferences, and patterns and distil meaningful insights that inform everything from marketing campaigns to product development.
Competitive advantage: Understanding consumer behaviour can provide a competitive advantage, allowing brands to stay ahead of market trends and pivot in the face of shifting consumer preferences.
Market segmentation: Tracking purchase behaviour helps companies segment consumers based on preferences, frequency of purchases, and spending habits. In return, brands can tailor messaging in ways that appeal to each respective market segment.

Ensuring your consumer research data is high quality

In today’s competitive marketplace, consumer research data collected from real people who are who they say they are is essential. Without it, your data may not match reality and you risk making misinformed business decisions. In return, you may waste resources and even risk damaging brand reputation.

At Kantar, we understand the value of data quality . We meticulously follow best practices and set the industry standard for fraud-secured, quality data collection. When you partner with us for your custom research, or use our syndicated research, you can rest easy knowing that our survey respondent panels are:

Fraud-secured

Unfortunately, survey fraud can taint entire datasets. The good news is that Kantar has developed an advanced anti-fraud solution called Qubed . Using cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence, this state-of-the-art software detects fraudulent activities where humans or other standard measures cannot.

Diverse and representative

Through the Kantar Profiles Audience Network , we connect you with more than 170 million global panellists and 2 billion data points around habits, characteristics, and behaviours. This ensures that the resulting data is diverse and representative of your target audience.

Highly-engaged respondents

Survey fatigue can have grave consequences, from incomplete responses to survey dropout. Fortunately, our proprietary survey programming tools are best-in-class. They're designed and tested to deliver the engaged answers from respondents on any device. In addition, our experts in survey design can help you craft questionnaires that evoke thoughtful responses and authentic insights.

Learn more about how Kantar can increase the accuracy and reliability of your consumer research data

Consumer research can be a helpful tool for understanding the preferences, values, and behaviours of your target audience. However, only high-quality consumer research data can help your organisation make well-informed decisions that truly satisfy consumer wants and needs. Learn more about the survey fraud the industry is seeing today and how Kantar can boost the quality of your consumer data quality in the State of Online Research Panels .

Want more like this?

Read: 11 survey design best practices to increase effectiveness

Read: How do you create a questionnaire for consumer insights?

Read: 3 ways to improve the quality of your research data

Watch: Everything you need to know about collecting high quality data

The State of Online Research Panels

Library of Congress
Research Guides

Doing Consumer Research: A Resource Guide

Introduction.

Generations
Books and Journals
Government Data Sources
Subscription Sources
Internet Sources
Primary Market Research
Using the Library of Congress

Business Reference : Ask a Librarian

Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.

Author: Natalie Burclaff, Business Reference Specialist, Science, Technology & Business Division

Note: Based on an earlier guide titled Market Segmentation January 2005 by Ellen Terrell, Business Reference Specialist, Science, Technology & Business Division

Created: February 1, 2020

Last Updated: February 23, 2024

Owl above door to center reading room on fifth floor. Library of Congress John Adams Building, Washington, D.C.

Get connected to the Library’s large and diverse collections related to science, technology, and business through our Inside Adams Blog. This blog also features upcoming events and collection displays, classes and orientations, new research guides, and more.

Consumer research is done with the intention of understanding the needs or behaviors of a particular group in order to define who to best market a product or service to, also known as identifying a target market.

Customer segments can be grouped by different variables, such as demographic, geographic, psychographic (values and lifestyle), or behavioral. This guide specifically focuses on resources useful for the business to consumer (B2C) industry, where individuals are the end users of a product or service. While this guide does not cover every resource, it does highlight commonly used sources and publishers of population and consumer data.

“There is only one winning strategy. It is to carefully define the target market and direct a superior offering to that target market.” - Philip Kotler, "Father of Modern Marketing" 1

Consumer attitudes, values, habits, and preferences are often collected via interviews, surveys, and focus groups. Businesses also collect data about their customers and sales in order to make decisions about pricing, inventory, and advertising. As technology becomes more ubiquitous, the amount, speed and type of data collected by businesses and third parties has increased. This flood of information, also known as big data, is tracked, analyzed and used for business intelligence. However, there are major concerns from consumers' rights and privacy rights groups as to what information is collected, how it is obtained, what is done with the information, such as if it is shared with other organizations, and how transparent the data collection is to the consumer.

To find statistics on a specific topic or consumer group:

Brainstorm who might collect the information, such as government agencies, trade organizations, academic researchers, or market research firms
Consider broader variables or broader markets, especially in search terms (for example "gender" instead of "women")
Recognize that while some data is free to access, others may require a one-time or subscription fee. The Library subscribes to many resources, which are available on-site; for other sources, check with your local public or university library. Look for freely available press releases, articles or abstracts that will summarize findings from a market research report.
Search books and journal articles, which include statistics in the introduction to a topic or original research on consumer behavior; track any citations for further leads on data sources.

You may be interested in extremely niche information that is not collected or published by an existing source. In that case, you would need to conduct your own market research; resources on conducting primary market research or identifying firms that specialize in primary market research are included in this guide.

About the Business Section

Part of the Science & Business Reading Room at the Library of Congress, the Business Section is the starting point for conducting research at the Library of Congress in the subject areas of business and economics. Here, reference specialists in specific subject areas of business assist patrons in formulating search strategies and gaining access to the information and materials contained in the Library's rich collections of business and economics materials.

Philip Kotler, interview, The Events & Awards Managers of Asia and Hamlin-Iturralde Corporation, 1999. As cited in QFinance: The Ultimate Resource (Bloomberg, 2014). Back to text
Next: Market Segments >>
Last Updated: Jul 3, 2024 11:51 AM
URL: https://guides.loc.gov/consumer-research

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Consumer Research - Definitions, Examples and Benefits

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When it comes to how market research is perceived by those outside of the insights industry, most stakeholders see market research as simply a way to create the best products and services for their own customers. And while that is a part of it, there is a lot more to market and consumer research than that.

Consumer research is the path to take when businesses wish to better themselves and direct their endeavours towards success. Whether that is creating new or refining current business strategies, finding the pain points in their customer experience, or even creating new internal policies and processes to become more efficient than ever before. All of these use cases contribute to building the best version of the brand and business as long as stakeholders are relying on quality insights.

In this guide, we’ll discuss:

1. The definition of consumer research 2. The power of consumer research 3. The benefits of consumer research 4. How behaviour influences innovation 5. How to spot behavioural trends and patterns 6. How to conduct consumer research 7. The tools and types of consumer research 8. Best practices for consumer research 9. Examples of good consumer research

This is one of our longer articles, so if you’re looking for something specific then you can use the quick navigation links above to jump to each section of the guide.

What is Consumer Research?

Consumer research has cultivated a very unique reputation for being the way to gain information about a brand’s consumers. With dedicated consumer insights, brands and stakeholders can make sure that they are creating not only the right products but also the right business strategies and communicating in the right way to immerse consumers in their brand experience. And because of this success, the term consumer research has become synonymous with market research. Consumer research is the first thing that typically comes to mind when stakeholders are asked to think about market research and its popular use cases.

The phrase ‘consumer research’ is typically used interchangeably with ‘customer research’ across all industries, with the term ‘consumer’ here taken to mean ‘those who consume the brand’s experience, product and services'. So in this context, consumers and customers are one and the same.

Definition, Reputation and Importance

Based on the above concept, consumer research is market research that is specifically focussed on exploring the attitudes, opinions and experiences of a business’ current customers and/or potential future customers.

This reputation has come around for a reason, because market researchers are very good at what they do. We have made sure that we can recruit and engage participants with the best of them, with our efforts leading to unique research experiences that generate high-quality insights that influence key decisions across entire industries.

The Power of Consumer Research

Consumer research is incredibly powerful. Conducting consumer research in the right way can save struggling businesses from abject failure, and drive moderately successful businesses into the history books under the definition of ‘success’.

Consumer research was one of the first use cases of early market research. In a review of early consumer research, Helgeson et al. states that, “In 1950, seven percent of the articles reviewed were consumer research articles. By 1981, 34 percent of the articles were consumer research articles.” This accelerated growth of articles and information gathering about the topic of consumer behaviour so early on in the evolution of consumer and market research can be attributed to the creation of the journals of Consumer Research and Advances in Consumer Research in the 1970s.

The increase in interest and development in consumer behaviour indicates that many businesses started feeling the power of consumer research from the very beginning. For example, in the 1950s, Ford Motor Company conducted a ten-year-long consumer research project that resulted in the ‘Edsel’, a completely customisable car that truly served the customers’ needs and was supposed to revolutionise the industry. Ford used focus groups, in-depth interviews and ‘motivational research’ to help design the perfect car for the consumer, and with his results it’s fair to assume that at some point in that 10 year-long project, Ford and his insight team cam not the revelation that he could not satisfy every consumer’s need in one single car, which is how the ‘customisable’ option came into being.

While this car never ended up coming to market (due to cost and an underperformance issue), Ford still learnt about a concept that most businesses still struggle with now - the power of consumer insights can transform a business when given the chance, but insights are nothing without the ability and resources to act on them.

Since then, consumer research has undergone significant evolution since Ford attempted to use it to revolutionise the automotive industry, with technological advancements especially in the past decade allowing insight experts to innovate creatively and come up with ways to overcome traditional challenges and reap many of the benefits in one fell swoop.

Benefits of Consumer Research

With the power, importance and reputation of consumer research outlined for all to see, it’s time to explore the impacts and benefits. The power of consumer research impacts two very specific areas and audiences:

1. Understanding Customer Behaviour for Innovation

Now that businesses are in the practice of discovering the next new thing and understand the evolution they will have to undertake in order to stay relevant to their target audience, they are on the right track to truly understand the power of consumer research and insights. Innovation happens every day, but successful innovation happens only when fuelled with the right insights at the right time.

Those insights are gathered directly from the mouths of consumers. Conducting consumer research to gain insights directly from the source allows for no mistakes and helps insight teams to form a complete picture of the brand’s consumers - their likes, dislikes, their demographic information, their common experiences and most obnoxious pain points, all at the very least.

Each insight gained is like a puzzle piece that, when all put together in the right way, paints the picture of the consumer’s experience, opinions and needs, and how the brand is working to serve those needs.

There are numerous ways to act on the insights gathered. Some brand stakeholders take these consumer insights and use them to create customer personas - a character that represents a segment of their consumer base - which can then be used in storytelling efforts as return characters. The more these personas are used, the more they’re recognised by stakeholders across the business and kept in mind when key decisions arise. This is one example of how relevant innovation can occur organically on a daily basis. However, it’s important that when using these personas that the persona itself is kept up to date and accurate when representing their particular segment . Use continuous insight generation to help the persona evolve as the segment does. Ultimately, as long as the method used helps the insights reach more stakeholders across the business efficiently, and influences those daily decision-making processes, insight teams and board members can use any tactic to communicate insights.

‘‘With our customer panel, we are able to amplify the voice of our customers across the organisation to make sure all teams are staying customer-focused.” - Lisa Hulme-Vickerstaff, Head of Insight at Lowell

2. Spotting Trends, Patterns and Needs

Understanding present and past consumer backgrounds, needs, experiences and opinions are one thing, but their behavioural patterns and what incites their actions is typically quite another.

Conducting consumer research to monitor and track consumer behaviour is crucial to stakeholders who need authentic insights to use in their decision-making processes both present and future. Since the very beginning, insight teams have relied on traditional methods such as surveys and focus groups to generate the right data and hunt the ‘why’ behind consumer actions and perceptions, but there is one fundamental issue that most insight experts struggle to overcome - the common gap present between what consumers say they do and what they would actually do in any given scenario.

Consumers typically think they would act in a logical way when imagining a scenario, but when placed in that scenario itself, faced with the real pressures, they would act more emotionally and instinctually, which is hard to communicate in a written or spoken response based in theory.

Tracking to understand a consumer’s actual behaviour will bolster the business’ insight generation efforts, almost eradicating that gap altogether and helping them track those behaviours more effectively. If it doesn’t eradicate the gap, then those insights will at least provide some insight into why that gap is there so insight experts can account for it in the future. This type of research is typically conducted in a long-term research experience that insight teams take on can use to generate continuous insights and observations on consumers’ actions over their words. Using documentary qualitative data, stakeholders have access to a previously under-utilised resource that better informs key decisions.

How to Conduct Consumer Research

When thinking about the best way to conduct consumer research, the eternal dilemma of the consumer perception-action gap mentioned before is one that will plague all insight experts until we discover a way to account for that gap.

This is something that insight professionals have wrestled with for decades after the initial discovery, and while there have been advancements (such as the development of system 1 and system 2 behavioural theories), there has never been a definite answer or path to follow in order to navigate this particular challenge. However, there is a multitude of tools and methods at insight teams’ disposal, and picking the right one for their research experience will determine their success.

Tools and Types of Consumer Research

Qualitative and Quantitative Research is the first obvious answer to how to conduct consumer research. Since the inception of data and insights, market research professionals have created a myriad of tools, methods and tactics to help create the insights industry, home to the insight experts who are here to help businesses and stakeholders understand themselves, their consumers and their future. Through this, we have developed numerous research methods, from the humble survey and in-depth interview to the more modern online methods such as mobile ethnography that help deeply connect consumers, researchers and stakeholders from around the world in mere seconds.

There are numerous market research methods that fall into the category of quantitative or qualitative research, and many more insight platforms on the market dedicated to hosting more traditional research experiences for stakeholders who want to use this traditional line of research to better understand their customers in a formal research setting.

Motivational research is the second consumer research technique to mention, mainly because it was one of the first dedicated market research techniques developed that incorporated psychoanalytical tactics to help insight teams better understand consumer behaviour. Developed by Ernest Dichter in the 1940s, this method was designed with the core belief that individuals don’t always behave in a way that reflects their views, so researchers could use this method to expose their true, unconscious beliefs. The tools used to conduct this research initially were in-depth interviews, but now we can expand this to include other tools such as video focus groups (with break out options for individual questioning), question boards, and more creative qualitative tools that allow insight teams to connect with participants on both an individual and a group level for comparison.

One of the ways that insight experts can conduct motivational research or more traditional research experiences in a formal, structured environment is to create an online dedicated customer community. These are crucial to the success of businesses, whether they are looking to create a positively impactful customer experience, future-proof their primary products and services, benchmark themselves against their direct competitors, or even innovate processes and policies internally to help them become a more efficient and reliable version of themselves. Online customer communities have been called a brand’s secret weapon when building up brand loyalty and skyrocketing themselves to the forefront of their industry.

Market research has taken a lot of tactics and advice from the field of behaviour , whether that’s from behavioural science , behavioural economics , psychology, sociology, or anthropology. These studies of human behaviour in many aspects of life can be directly implemented into market research studies. With insight professionals struggling to understand the unconscious biases impacting consumers’ everyday lives, it’s no wonder that we have turned to these traditionally academic pursuits to help light the way. Insight teams are now using actions to de-bias research data or mitigate the presence of bias during data collection whether that’s from the consumers or researchers.

Behavioural science methods have stretched into most modern forms of market research, including social media intelligence and passive data collection methods such as geolocation and biometric wearable research, with this data being sent to insight teams to analyse and better understand consumer actions over perceptions.

Social media intelligence allows stakeholders to understand how consumers behave in a more informal setting than online customer communities, where consumers can communicate with each other on topics of their own devising without the sense of being observed by insight professionals. Social media platforms can be used similar to dedicated online customer research communities, with insight experts using the brand’s channel to spark topics if they do desire and to communicate with consumers through their comments section and direct messaging, but these platforms are already recruited with a significant amount of consumers that have already started sharing their opinions and experiences with the brand. Social media teams will be able to work well with research teams on this as they will have been dealing with both complaints and recommendations from consumers across the globe.

But, however comfortable digital natives find themselves discussing and connecting with each other online, this is a far from a natural setting. The anonymity or customisability provided by this online setting means that consumers can pretend to be who they’re not. While most of them will have a profile on one website that is completely authentic, they can also create alter egos or different personas to help fulfil or explore a different aspect of themselves or who they want to be. So with this danger outlined from the beginning, insight teams can still take good advantage of this platform of already recruited consumers to understand more about their behaviour, needs opinions and experiences with the brand.

Passive data collection methods are worth considering when it comes to consumer research, geolocation and biometric data as stated before are easily available now with the commercialisation of smartphones and smart watches. Geolocation data can be obtained through brand apps on smartphones, and then used to understand when a consumer interacts with a brand, how frequently they interact, and what they are focussed on when interacting with the brand (e.g. the products/services they buy can be gained from the receipts or documented on the consumer’s profile in their order history).

Biometric data has been historically a little difficult to gain access to since it's been categorised as more personal data than consumer data. But now with smart watches acting as trackers for fitness apps and recording data such as pulse rate, certain insight professionals who have access to that data can cross-examine the geolocation data from the tracker with the pulse rate data to understand how their consumers feel when they come across their store, their products, etc. and this unconscious reaction could help them build better customer experiences that get their heart rate pumping.

Best Practices: Tactics and Techniques

So, once the tools and types of consumer research have been picked, it’s time to look at the best practices that help steer insight experts and stakeholders towards success. There are a number of tactics and techniques needed to help conduct quality consumer research:

1. Recruit and Segment

Should insight teams recruit their participants and then segment them? Or segment to understand their target audience better and then recruit the right people into their research project? Both can be done and lead to success, but when it comes to consumer research, insight teams should segment their consumer base first to make sure they only recruit the right people for their research project.

Consumer segmentation is the first step to understanding your customer base and identifying the right research participants. The research conducted off the back of this sequence will help insight teams improve the research relevance and focus, create research tasks that better engage the research participants based on their segmented characteristics, and build deeper connections between customers and stakeholders, all of which provide a better foundation to build on and engage those research respondents and stakeholders in the research experience. It will also lead to better quality and truly relevant consumer insights.

2. Participant Engagement

After the foundation has been laid, there are ways to capitalise on it and create more ways for participants to engage with the research.

One way we can encourage participant engagement is through the building of trust. Participants won’t want to hand over their personal data or opinions on a platform or to researchers and stakeholders that they don’t trust. This can manifest in two different ways: firstly, on a fundamental level, participants need to trust the technology and the researchers that brands are using to generate these insights. With many issues nowadays with sensitive data being leaked or used against them to extort something out of them, consumers are becoming very careful with the websites that they’re inputting personal data into. Secondly, if they don’t trust the researchers gathering that data, consumers won’t want to hand over their data to people who they believe might misuse it or misplace it. Being transparent with data handling and privacy, or partnering with a research agency that is transparent with data handling and privacy is critical for a successful consumer research experience.

Another way to engage participants once they’ve been mollified in their data security concerns is through moderation and communication throughout the research project. Skilled researchers can get a lot out of even the most stingy of participants. There are a number of communication tools such as emails for task and incentive reminders, comments on research tasks, and then newsletters at the end to provide updates on how the insights have been used or feedback on what strategies have been impacted by the data consumers share. Closing the feedback loop in this way doesn’t just directly impact the growth and evolution of the brand, it also positively impacts the level of consumer trust in the brand, the relationship between brand and consumer, the marketing and sales processes and the research success rates at the very least.

3. Design Human-centric Research

Whether insight teams subscribe to the ‘human experience’ or ‘participant experience’ research concepts, there’s no getting away from the fact that designing research projects with your participants in mind will increase the number of engagement researchers get out of their consumers.

“Creating research experiences for real people is integral to enhancing the value of research for businesses.” - Maria Twigge, Research Director at FlexMR

Designing research experiences takes a lot of work, but it’s worth it for the benefits insight teams can reap - such as an expanded understanding of what questions stakeholders actually need to ask consumers, accounting for the context in which they are posed, and a building a way to bridge the gap to full consumer behaviour understanding. Consumer segmentation at the start of the research experience to help identify the research sample is one of the best ways to understand which consumers will be populating the project, and then insight teams can think about which tools and platforms to use to make sure those consumers are able to navigate through to the end the experience.

Choosing the right tools will also help to encourage and stimulate the right conversations and insight generation opportunities outside of scheduled tasks, which is extremely useful in dedicated customer communities that have areas on the platform where consumers can converse with each other about the brand, the tasks, the questions posed, etc. in downtimes whenever they feel they have the time and inclination.

Understanding the right tools to use also means knowing which secondary methods to employ. While research panels and communities are great platforms for primary research, researchers can also use data mining techniques for social media to gain secondary data, or even gain access to similar research studies so they have data to use in hypotheses that primary data could confirm or deny.

4. Engage Stakeholders

Motivate stakeholders to engage and closely connect brand and customer - that’s the aim of most consumer research attempts, but it can be tricky when stakeholders have numerous other priorities and responsibilities to attend to.

Engaging stakeholders in the research experience has been proven to aid the chances of insights activation both during and at the end of the research project, but getting stakeholders to do more than observe the research report has been a core challenge that we have yet to overcome. Each stakeholder is unique, and as such requires different motivations to engage in the research experience. But educating them on market research, the techniques being used, the consumers being surveyed, etc. and building up their knowledge of the project does help our chances of capturing and keeping their attention.

Stakeholders hold valuable contextual information about the business and the research objectives, which can help insight experts maintain the research project’s relevance throughout any evolution or obstacles that may occur. Allowing them to divulge and see exactly how they can shape a research experience encourages an attachment to the project, questions about how it’s going and maybe even an appearance in an observational sense as research tasks take place.

Connecting stakeholders to the project itself motivate them to better understand the insights that are the result of the project and connect it easier to the business objectives, strategies and other contexts that might be influenced by the insights. This then sparks valuable change that consumers actually want and need, and this, in turn, fuels a connection and closeness between the brand (stakeholders) and consumers that might not have previously been possible. All because of properly conducted and immersive consumer research experiences.

Examples of Consumer Research

The following examples are applications of consumer research taken from FlexMR's library of case studies. In each example, we detail the role that data played in informing key business decisions and the relationship between commercial results & consumer understanding.

Isagenix is a great example of consumer research done well. Founded in 2002, Isagenix is a multinational direct sales company that manufactures and distributes a range of science-based health and wellbeing products. The company seeks to inspire and empower their customers to live their best life through a journey of nutrition, health, and overall wellness.

They created their IsaInsights panel on FlexMR’s InsightHub to achieve a rather ambitious goal: to evolve into the largest health and wellness company in the world. This panel, populated with customers and advocates, was well-used by their in-house insights team, who conducted a rather demanding research schedule that generated continuous insights to inform key decisions about their products, customer experience strategies and future opportunities.

These future opportunities were gathered by continuously recording customer habits, their likes and dislikes and which products they used, how and when. One particular success from this panel was the creation of their popular essential oils range, which was developed step by step in close accordance to the customer insights provided from a number of successive research projects.

To find out more about Isagenix’s research experience read our case study here .

Specsavers adverts are considered by some a national treasure, with their “Should’ve Gone to Specsavers” tagline one of the most recognisable and easily identifiable of most businesses in the United Kingdom. But Specsavers have a difficult job and balancing act when it comes to their carefully-cultivated reputation of being both a commercial brand AND a prominent healthcare professional.

Because of this, Specsavers need to make sure they’re hitting the right tone with every piece of communication and branding they create, and this can’t be achieved without some input from their customers. So Specsavers created a central hub of insights through their panel on the InsightHub so they could run their marketing campaigns, branded communications, product and service concept testing, etc. passed a sample of customers who provided their insights that would influence the final result.

“This [customer research] panel has been essential in balancing creative with clinical messaging in our Glaucoma marketing campaign. We are continuously getting clear answers to take to senior stakeholders and inform final decisions.” - Sarah Marquis, Customer Insights Manager at Specsavers

One memorable campaign that was created in accordance to customer insights was their “Don’t Lose the Picture” Glaucoma awareness campaign. To balance clinical and creative in a way that captured the audience’s attention as well as delivering vital public health information was crucial to getting the word out about the previously relatively unknown eye health disease, but thought thorough concept testing and retesting, Specsavers managed to create a well-received advert that rivalled the original “Should’ve Gone to Specsavers” campaign.

Find out more about Specsavers and their fantastic use of consumer research in our case study here .

About FlexMR

We are The Insights Empowerment Company. We help research, product and marketing teams drive informed decisions with efficient, scalable & impactful insight.

About Emily James

As a professional copywriter, Emily brings our global vision to life through a broad range of industry-leading content.

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Consumer research guide: best process and examples

What is consumer research, when is customer research useful 3 examples, how to conduct consumer research: the best process, the benefits of consumer research, tips and best practices for conducting customer research, final thoughts on customer & consumer research.

Consumer research is all about genuine curiosity. You’re not trying confirm your hopes and assumptions, or find insights that match your product or service. You’re going in with an open mind, ready to learn about how your target customers feel, think, and behave—and then shaping your actions around that.

The goal of consumer research can be finding fresh angles for your next marketing campaign or pinpointing specific features your products need. Essentially, whatever steps your business plans to take next, consumer research helps you make sure your actions are grounded in real, actionable insights about consumer behavior.

There are two main paths to take in consumer research—qualitative and quantitative. Mixing both gives you the clearest picture of what your audience needs and wants. In this guide, we’ll explore the ins and outs of consumer research, covering the when, what, why, and how.

Conducting consumer market research the right way will help you to get to know your present and future customers on a deeper level. It’s a step beyond creating buyer personas—you’ll be engaging with real people to understand their thoughts, needs, and feedback.

This kind of market research will give you valuable insights that can guide your decisions on product development, marketing strategies, and beyond. By focusing on what your target market truly wants and how people behave, you can tailor your offerings to better meet their expectations, give customer satisfaction a big boost and turn customers or users into loyal fans.

Conducting consumer research is worthwhile in countless scenarios. Here are three real-life examples where consumer research plays a great role in the success of different brands:

Bloom & Wild wanted to rethink the Valentine’s Day cliché of red roses, so they turned to consumer research. Consumer research studies revealed that a significant majority of people preferred thoughtful gifts to traditional ones, leading Bloom & Wild to launch a “No Red Roses” campaign. The result? A surge in sales, buzz, and brand recognition, proving the power of aligning with consumer sentiments.
StudentUniverse is a travel booking platform for students that used consumer research to tap into the minds of young travelers. The findings allowed them to tailor marketing efforts and underscore their authority on student travel needs and preferences, which ended up boosting brand credibility and engagement.
The stroller company Bugaboo used consumer research to fine-tune the propositions for three new models. Through direct feedback from parents and expectant parents, Bugaboo could distinctively position each stroller, catering to specific consumer needs and lifestyles, and enhancing their product development process.

Can’t get enough? Here are more consumer insights examples.

See more consumer research examples

Check out this breakdown of how some awesome brands saw big wins from their consumer research.

If these examples make you want to get started with your own market research, then these tips will help you collect data that can blossom into impactful decisions.

Set customer research goals in line with your business KPIs

The consumer research process isn’t about seeking out data to back up what you already believe (although it can be super helpful for that too!). It’s about exploring your target market with open mind, but it does help to be guided by a purpose.

Reflect on your company’s pressing needs or pinpoint which KPI is screaming for insights. Then, reverse-engineer your consumer research to address these areas directly and find what types of consumer profiling your research needs. This way you end up with insights that are more than just interesting—they directly impact and improve your business.

Identify your focus areas: What’s really keeping you up at night? Is it customer loyalty, acquisition costs, or something else? Which area of your business could benefit most from a deeper understanding of your customers?
KPI alignment: Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most to your brand. Decide this early on to shape your research with precision.
Design backwards: with your goals as your North Star, craft your research. Every question, every method, should be chosen for its direct line to lighting up those KPIs.

Choose a consumer research method

When you have your goals in mind, it’s time to start thinking of the right way to reach them. There are obvious research methods, like interviews and focus groups, but especially when combining quantitative data and qualitative research, surveys can be extremely valuable.

Here’s a list of methods to work into your research plan

Surveys are versatile, allowing you to mix quantitative questions for those easy-to-measure insights with open-ended questions that dive deeper. They’re especially great when you’re looking to balance scale with depth, and numbers with nuances.
Interviews are your go-to when you need to explain certain consumer behaviors, decisions, or feelings. They are also great for exploring new areas or when you’re looking for detailed feedback on specific aspects of your product or service.
Focus groups help you get real reactions to concepts or campaigns and can provide a wealth of qualitative data. The group dynamic can also spark new ideas or discussions that wouldn’t come up in one-on-one sessions or written research interactions.

And don’t forget about secondary methods. These can be incredibly useful to get an unprompted view of what people think about your brand:

Review mining: Sometimes, unsolicited feedback is more than welcome. Digging into online reviews offers you an unfiltered view into what people really think about your products or those of your competitors.
Social listening: Keeping an ear to the ground on social media can help you catch real-time consumer sentiments, emerging trends, or issues that need addressing.

Select the right consumer segment to research

The quality of your data depends on talking to the right audience, not just how many people you speak to. Surveys come in handy here because they let you connect with a large group of people all at once, while also giving you the flexibility to slice the data by different customer segments.

Here’s what to keep in mind when picking your audience:

Relevance to your goals: Make sure the people you’re surveying are the ones who can provide insights relevant to your objectives.
Diversity of views: Include a range of demographics or user types to get a full picture.
Behavior and usage: Consider how different segments interact with your category or product for more tailored insights.

Conduct consumer research for primary and secondary data

When conducting consumer research, it’s smart to blend both primary and secondary data to get a complete picture. Secondary research gives you an overview of what’s already known. By tapping into existing studies, market reports, and industry insights, you can inform your research direction. This can save you time and resources by identifying gaps your primary research needs to fill, and what is already known.

Primary research, on the other hand, is your first-hand exploration. You’ll be directly engaging with your audience through surveys, interviews, and focus groups to gather fresh, specific insights relevant to your brand and objectives. Primary consumer research methods allow you to get fresh insights into consumer opinions, behaviors, and preferences that are directly applicable to your products or services.

Here’s a rundown of effective market research methods for both:

Surveys: Quick and efficient, reaching a wide audience to gather fresh insights.
Interviews: Deep-dive conversations for nuanced understanding.
Focus groups: Group dynamics can reveal new insights through discussion.
Industry reports: Broad trends and benchmarks.
Competitor analysis: See where you stand in the market.
Social listening: Understand public sentiment and topics of conversation.

By starting with secondary research to set the stage, you ensure that your primary research is well-targeted, making your findings both relevant and actionable.

Analyze the data to identify patterns and trends

When you’ve collected both quantitative and qualitative data, the next step is to start connecting the dots. Look for recurring themes or surprising insights that might emerge from the data.

If you’re dealing with a lot of data, a market research platform like Attest can be a lifesaver. It’s designed to help you navigate through both numerical data and in-depth qualitative feedback efficiently. With the right tool, you can highlight the patterns that are most relevant to your business goals.

For those diving deep into qualitative data, sentiment analysis tools are handy for teasing out common attitudes or emotions among your respondents.

Whatever consumer research methods you use, the goal is to compile a report that doesn’t just present data but interprets it in a way that’s actionable and directly tied to your strategic objectives. Looking for patterns and trends is crucial, but so is understanding why those patterns exist and how they can inform your next moves.

6 simple ways to test consumer preferences

We run through 6 ways to test consumer preferences online and get answers to your burning questions in next to no time.

Communicate findings to your stakeholders

When it’s time to share your consumer research findings with stakeholders, here’s how you make sure your presentation resonates and drives action:

Highlight real voices : Instead of relying solely on numbers and averages, bring in quotes or examples from respondents to paint a vivid picture of your target customer. This approach adds a human element to your data, making the insights more relatable and impactful.
Verify your findings : Before presenting, take a critical look at your data. Consider different interpretations and prepare to address potential questions from stakeholders. This shows you’ve thoroughly vetted the information and aren’t just presenting surface-level insights.
Focus on action : Don’t stop at what the data says; discuss what it means for your business. Suggest concrete steps that could be taken based on the research, outlining potential impacts.
Explain your methodology : Give a brief overview of how the research was conducted and the measures you took to ensure data quality. This builds trust in the research process and the findings.

Using visuals like charts, graphs, and even video clips can make complex data more accessible. Also, consider distributing a summary report as a follow-up for those who may want to dive deeper into the data on their own time.

Action your findings

Putting your consumer research into action is what really makes a difference. Create a plan based on your findings, ensuring each department receives insights relevant to their area. Encourage teams to brainstorm and develop innovative solutions inspired by this data. Remember, insights are only as valuable as the actions they inspire.

Understand where more insights are needed

Keep in mind that consumer preferences evolve. Continually plan for follow-up research so your future marketing decisions are based on the latest, most relevant insights. This ongoing approach keeps your strategies fresh and aligned with consumer trends.

1. Drive better results with data-driven decisions

Understanding your customers’ preferences and behaviors allows you to make informed decisions that improve product development, fine-tune marketing strategies, and sharpen your brand’s edge. That way, every decision contributes to your bottom line.

2. Win and maintain market share

Regular consumer research helps you stay in the loop on emerging trends, so you can adapt quickly and keep your competitors in the rearview mirror.

3. Launch more original and impactful marketing

Dive deep into the psyche of your target audience to craft marketing messages that resonate on a personal level. Consumer research uncovers the emotional and psychological triggers that lead to more engaging and memorable campaigns.

4. Develop products that have fans, not just users

Create products that people love having and using. By understanding the nuances of consumer needs and preferences, you can innovate in ways that turn casual customers into loyal advocates.

Our research experts have crafted a bunch of super useful guides and tips on how to run great market research—check out the Consumer Research Academy .

Here are some quick tips to get you started:

Start with why: Before diving in, clarify why you’re conducting research. Knowing your goal shapes the entire process and ensures relevancy.
Ask with intent: Formulate consumer behavior survey questions that are to the point, clear and serve a purpose.
Listen more, lead less: Let your participants do the talking. The more open you are to their feedback, the richer the insights you’ll gather.
Segment wisely: Tailor your research to specific segments of your audience for more targeted insights.
Keep it conversational: Whether in surveys or interviews, a conversational tone can elicit more genuine responses.
Visualize your data: Charts and infographics can make complex data more accessible and engaging for your team.
Act on feedback: Insights are only as valuable as the actions they inspire. Implement findings to continuously improve your offerings.
Research on repeat: Consumer trends evolve. Regular research keeps you aligned with your audience’s changing needs and preferences.

By understanding your customers deeply, making creative and strategic decisions becomes easier than ever. Explore how market research tools can streamline your efforts and unlock new insights at Attest .

Check out this breakdown of how some awesome brands saw big wins from their consumer insights.

VP Customer Success

Sam joined Attest in 2019 and leads the Customer Research Team. Sam and her team support brands through their market research journey, helping them carry out effective research and uncover insights to unlock new areas for growth.

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Consumer Research: Definition, Types and Methods

Are you ready to dive into the fascinating world of consumer research?

We’ll take you on a mind-blowing journey where we’ll uncover the secrets behind why consumers make the choices they do.

So, what is consumer research?

In today’s rapidly evolving market landscape, understanding your consumers is more than a necessity—it’s the bedrock upon which successful businesses are built. Consumer research acts as a compass, guiding enterprises through the complexities of market dynamics by shedding light on consumer desires, preferences, and behaviors. Whether you’re a seasoned market researcher, a consumer behavior analyst, or a visionary business owner, unlocking the secrets held within consumer data is critical to carving out a clear path to success.

In this blog, you’ll learn the following:

What is Consumer Research?

Why is consumer research important, consumer research process, consumer research methods, types of customer research, how to create a consumer research survey, how to analyze and interpret consumer research survey.

Before diving into the blog’s core, we’ll address the following question: What is consumer research?

At its core, consumer research is the process of gathering and analyzing data about customers’ needs and preferences. It delves into the “why” and “how” behind consumer decisions, offering a window into the factors driving their purchasing behavior.

By revealing the context of consumer actions, businesses can anticipate market demands, tailor their offerings, and stay ahead of the curve. Understanding consumer research is akin to having a conversation with the market itself – an exchange of questions and answers that shapes the future of product development and marketing strategies.

Let’s dive into the reasons that make it such a crucial aspect of business!

Firstly, consumer research helps you understand the needs, preferences, and behavior of your target audience . By gaining these insights, you can develop products, services, and marketing strategies that align perfectly with their expectations.

Secondly, consumer research allows you to identify market opportunities. By understanding your customer’s desires, pain points, and emerging trends, you can spot gaps in the market and develop innovative solutions.

Capitalizing on these untapped opportunities can result in significant growth and success for your business.

Thirdly, consumer research plays a vital role in informing your product development. It provides valuable feedback on existing products and ideas in the pipeline. This feedback helps you refine and improve your offerings.

Consumer research guides marketing strategies.

By understanding your customers’ demographics, preferences, and media consumption habits, you can develop targeted and effective marketing campaigns . This ensures that the right message reaches the right audience.

Furthermore, consumer research can help you mitigate risks. Before investing substantial resources, you can assess the potential success or failure of your new products, services, or marketing campaigns.

Embarking on a consumer research project follows a structured process:

Define the Problem : Clearly articulate what you need to understand about your consumers.
Design the Research : Choose between qualitative or quantitative methods based on your objectives.
Collect Data : Gather information from various sources using tailored research instruments.
Analyze Findings : Interpret the data, looking for patterns, correlations, and actionable insights.
Report and Decide : Present the results in a meaningful way to inform business decisions.

A myriad of methods exist for unpacking the complexities of consumer behavior. Some include:

Surveys and Questionnaires : Quick and broad-reaching instruments to gauge consumer opinions.
Interviews : Direct conversations that explore individual consumer perspectives.
Focus Groups : Group discussions that generate collective viewpoints and ideas.
Observations : Real-world monitoring of consumer interactions with products or services.

Let’s dive into the world of consumer research and explore the two main types of consumer research methods.

Qualitative Consumer Research

Qualitative consumer research is like the art of business strategy. It’s about interpreting the subjective experiences of consumers, often through methods like focus groups, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic studies. This approach emphasizes the nuanced motivations and emotions that quantitative data may not fully capture. Brands become storytellers, engaging in a dialogue that uncovers the rich, layered fabric of consumer sentiment.

One-on-one Interviews

Another approach is conducting one-on-one interviews. This method involves you conversing with a respondent, and asking open-ended questions.

It requires your expertise to probe effectively and obtain maximum insights. Though time-consuming, this method can yield valuable information when done right.

Text analysis

It entails analyzing words and images from various sources like social media.

By decoding the context in which images and words are used, you draw conclusions about consumer behavior. Social media platforms are a treasure trove of information for analyzing consumer sentiments and preferences.

Quantitative Consumer Research

If qualitative research is the art, then quantitative consumer research is the science. It deals with objective data that can be measured and analyzed statistically, such as surveys or usage patterns. This type of research provides a broad overview of consumer trends, helping to quantify preferences and behaviors that can inform large-scale strategic decisions.

Let’s walk through a step-by-step guide to help you create an effective consumer research survey and gather valuable insights.

Define your research objectives

Clearly outline the goals of your consumer research. Determine the specific insights to gather from the survey. This will guide the entire survey creation process.

Identify your target audience

Define the demographic characteristics of your target audience, such as age, gender, location, etc. This information will help tailor your consumer research survey questions appropriately.

Determine the survey format

Choose the consumer research survey format that best suits your needs. You have the option of choosing online surveys, phone interviews, in-person interviews, or paper-based surveys. Online surveys are the most convenient and cost-effective option.

Design the survey structure

When designing the survey , establish clear objectives, select appropriate question types, ensure logical flow, and use unbiased language. Also, include demographic questions, and pilot test the survey for clarity and effectiveness.

Pretest the survey

Before distributing the survey, conduct a pretest with a small group of respondents. This helps you identify issues, confusing questions, or technical problems.

Distribute the survey

Choose the most suitable channels to distribute your survey. This could include email invitations, social media platforms, etc. Consider the characteristics of your target audience and select the channels they use the most.

Analyze and interpret the data

Once you’ve collected data, it’s time to analyze the data. Use charts like the Likert Scale Chart to visualize your data and derive meaningful insights. Look for patterns, trends, and correlations that can inform your next course of action.

Summarize the findings

After analyzing the data, summarize your findings in a compelling data story . This will help you translate your insights into strategies and actions that drive your marketing efforts forward. With these steps in mind, you’re ready to create a consumer research survey.

Congratulations on successfully learning how to unlock valuable insights from consumer research surveys. Now, it’s time to unlock the true potential of your consumer research survey data by analyzing it.

While tools like Excel are helpful in organizing data, they lack consumer research survey-specific charts, like the Likert Scale Chart.

Don’t worry.

There’s an exciting solution that can take your consumer research survey data analysis to a whole new level. It’s called ChartExpo.

ChartExpo is a powerful Excel add-in that will revolutionize how you analyze your best survey questions.

With its user-friendly interface and a wide range of consumer research survey-based charts, ChartExpo effortlessly transforms survey responses into actionable insights.

You don’t need to be a programming genius to use ChartExpo’s features.

One of ChartExpo’s standout features is the Likert Scale Chart. This chart acts as a magnifying glass, allowing you to dive deep into your survey data for hidden insights.

Try ChartExpo’s free 7-day trial and experience its full potential

How to Install ChartExpo in Excel?

Let’s imagine you run a restaurant. You want to know whether your customers are satisfied with your menu, services, and other aspects of your restaurant.

You’ve organized a survey to gather feedback from your customers and you’ve used the sample questions below:

Are you satisfied with the quality of our food menu?
Are you satisfied with our staff’s behavior?
Are you satisfied with our overall quality of service?

Let’s further imagine you’ll use the following answer options in your consumer research survey format.

Very dissatisfied
Somewhat dissatisfied
Neither dissatisfied or satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Very satisfied

In the coming section, we’ll use ChartExpo, and sample data to demonstrate how you can leverage a Likert Scale Chart to visualize your consumer research data for insights.

Before we dive into this, we’ll show you how to install ChartExpo in Excel .

Are you satisfied with the quality of our food menu?	Are you satisfied with the staff’s behavior?	Are you satisfied with the overall quality of the service?
Very satisfied	Somewhat satisfied	Somewhat dissatisfied
Neither dissatisfied or satisfied	Very dissatisfied	Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied	Somewhat dissatisfied	Neither dissatisfied or satisfied
Very dissatisfied	Neither dissatisfied or satisfied	Very dissatisfied
Neither dissatisfied or satisfied	Very dissatisfied	Somewhat satisfied
Very satisfied	Very satisfied	Somewhat satisfied
Very dissatisfied	Somewhat satisfied	Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied	Somewhat satisfied	Somewhat dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied	Somewhat dissatisfied	Very satisfied
Very satisfied	Somewhat satisfied	Very dissatisfied
Neither dissatisfied or satisfied	Neither dissatisfied or satisfied	Very satisfied
Somewhat dissatisfied	Very satisfied	Neither dissatisfied or satisfied
Somewhat dissatisfied	Somewhat satisfied	Somewhat dissatisfied
Neither dissatisfied or satisfied	Very dissatisfied	Somewhat satisfied
Somewhat dissatisfied	Somewhat satisfied	Very dissatisfied
Very satisfied	Very dissatisfied	Neither dissatisfied or satisfied
Somewhat dissatisfied	Somewhat dissatisfied	Very satisfied
Very satisfied	Somewhat satisfied	Somewhat satisfied
Very satisfied	Neither dissatisfied nor satisfied	Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied	Very satisfied	Very dissatisfied

To get started with ChartExpo in Excel, follow the steps below:

Open your Microsoft Excel.
Open the worksheet and click the Insert button to access the My Apps option.

Click the Insert button to initiate the ChartExpo engine.

Click the Search box and type “Likert Scale Chart.”

Highlight your data and click the Create Chart From Selection button, as shown below.

Use the multiple-choice responses you deployed in your survey to gather responses to map your Likert Scale Chart.

In our case we’ll use the following multiple-choice responses:

Very dissatisfied=1
Somewhat dissatisfied=2
Neither dissatisfied nor satisfied=3
Somewhat satisfied=4
Very satisfied=5

Click the Create Chart button, as shown above.

To add the chart header, click the Edit Chart
Once the Chart Header Properties window shows, fill in your header in Line 1, as shown.

Toggle the small button below Line 2 to the right side to activate the header.
Click the Apply button, as shown above.

To edit the legend properties, click the pencil-like icon on the X-axis.
Once the Legend Properties window shows, fill in your legend below the Text
Click the Apply All button, as shown above.
Click the Save Changes button to preserve all the changes.
Check out the final Likert Scale chart below.

Service Quality Satisfaction

50% of customers expressed satisfaction with the quality of our service.
Conversely, 35% of customers reported being unsatisfied.
The remaining 15% remained neutral.

Staff Behavior Satisfaction:

50% of customers indicated satisfaction with the behavior of our staff.
On the other hand, 35% of customers expressed dissatisfaction with our staff’s behavior.
Additionally, 15% of customers chose not to answer.

Food Quality Satisfaction

45% of customers stated satisfaction with the quality of our food.
However, 35% of customers reported being unsatisfied.
Meanwhile, 20% of customers remained neutral on this matter.

Survey Response Overall

Out of the respondents, 48% provided a positive response to our survey questions.
Conversely, 35% of customers responded negatively to our survey questions.
The remaining 17% of customers chose to remain neutral.

What are the two methods used for consumer research?

The two methods used for consumer research are qualitative research and quantitative research.

How do you run consumer research?

To run consumer research, you need to follow these steps:

Define research objectives
Identify target audience
Choose appropriate research methods (qualitative or quantitative)
Design surveys or conduct interviews
Collect and analyze data
Summarize findings and draw actionable insights.

In conclusion, consumer research is a powerful tool that can help you unlock valuable insights into your target audience’s minds and behaviors.

Moreover, it can help you understand your target audience, identify market opportunities, and make informed decisions.

By leveraging the insights gained through consumer research, you can tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies to meet consumer needs effectively.

ChartExpo, a leading provider of data visualization tools, can play a crucial role in helping you analyze and present consumer research data.

With its user-friendly interface and robust features, ChartExpo simplifies the process of transforming raw data into visually appealing charts and graphs.

This enables you to gain a clearer understanding of the consumer research findings and communicate them more effectively to stakeholders.

Visit ChartExpo to explore the power of data visualization and make informed decisions that drive growth.

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The past, present, and future of consumer research

Published: 13 June 2020
Volume 31 , pages 137–149, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

Maayan S. Malter ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0383-7925 1 ,
Morris B. Holbrook 1 ,
Barbara E. Kahn 2 ,
Jeffrey R. Parker 3 &
Donald R. Lehmann 1

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43 Citations

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In this article, we document the evolution of research trends (concepts, methods, and aims) within the field of consumer behavior, from the time of its early development to the present day, as a multidisciplinary area of research within marketing. We describe current changes in retailing and real-world consumption and offer suggestions on how to use observations of consumption phenomena to generate new and interesting consumer behavior research questions. Consumption continues to change with technological advancements and shifts in consumers’ values and goals. We cannot know the exact shape of things to come, but we polled a sample of leading scholars and summarize their predictions on where the field may be headed in the next twenty years.

Consumer Behavior Research Methods

Consumer dynamics: theories, methods, and emerging directions

Understanding effect sizes in consumer psychology

Explore related subjects.

Artificial Intelligence

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

1 Introduction

Beginning in the late 1950s, business schools shifted from descriptive and practitioner-focused studies to more theoretically driven and academically rigorous research (Dahl et al. 1959 ). As the field expanded from an applied form of economics to embrace theories and methodologies from psychology, sociology, anthropology, and statistics, there was an increased emphasis on understanding the thoughts, desires, and experiences of individual consumers. For academic marketing, this meant that research not only focused on the decisions and strategies of marketing managers but also on the decisions and thought processes on the other side of the market—customers.

Since then, the academic study of consumer behavior has evolved and incorporated concepts and methods, not only from marketing at large but also from related social science disciplines, and from the ever-changing landscape of real-world consumption behavior. Its position as an area of study within a larger discipline that comprises researchers from diverse theoretical backgrounds and methodological training has stirred debates over its identity. One article describes consumer behavior as a multidisciplinary subdiscipline of marketing “characterized by the study of people operating in a consumer role involving acquisition, consumption, and disposition of marketplace products, services, and experiences” (MacInnis and Folkes 2009 , p. 900).

This article reviews the evolution of the field of consumer behavior over the past half century, describes its current status, and predicts how it may evolve over the next twenty years. Our review is by no means a comprehensive history of the field (see Schumann et al. 2008 ; Rapp and Hill 2015 ; Wang et al. 2015 ; Wilkie and Moore 2003 , to name a few) but rather focuses on a few key thematic developments. Though we observe many major shifts during this period, certain questions and debates have persisted: Does consumer behavior research need to be relevant to marketing managers or is there intrinsic value from studying the consumer as a project pursued for its own sake? What counts as consumption: only consumption from traditional marketplace transactions or also consumption in a broader sense of non-marketplace interactions? Which are the most appropriate theoretical traditions and methodological tools for addressing questions in consumer behavior research?

2 A brief history of consumer research over the past sixty years—1960 to 2020

In 1969, the Association for Consumer Research was founded and a yearly conference to share marketing research specifically from the consumer’s perspective was instituted. This event marked the culmination of the growing interest in the topic by formalizing it as an area of research within marketing (consumer psychology had become a formalized branch of psychology within the APA in 1960). So, what was consumer behavior before 1969? Scanning current consumer-behavior doctoral seminar syllabi reveals few works predating 1969, with most of those coming from psychology and economics, namely Herbert Simon’s A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice (1955), Abraham Maslow’s A Theory of Human Motivation (1943), and Ernest Dichter’s Handbook of Consumer Motivations (1964). In short, research that illuminated and informed our understanding of consumer behavior prior to 1969 rarely focused on marketing-specific topics, much less consumers or consumption (Dichter’s handbook being a notable exception). Yet, these works were crucial to the rise of consumer behavior research because, in the decades after 1969, there was a shift within academic marketing to thinking about research from a behavioral or decision science perspective (Wilkie and Moore 2003 ). The following section details some ways in which this shift occurred. We draw on a framework proposed by the philosopher Larry Laudan ( 1986 ), who distinguished among three inter-related aspects of scientific inquiry—namely, concepts (the relevant ideas, theories, hypotheses, and constructs); methods (the techniques employed to test and validate these concepts); and aims (the purposes or goals that motivate the investigation).

2.1 Key concepts in the late - 1960s

During the late-1960s, we tended to view the buyer as a computer-like machine for processing information according to various formal rules that embody economic rationality to form a preference for one or another option in order to arrive at a purchase decision. This view tended to manifest itself in a couple of conspicuous ways. The first was a model of buyer behavior introduced by John Howard in 1963 in the second edition of his marketing textbook and quickly adopted by virtually every theorist working in our field—including, Howard and Sheth (of course), Engel-Kollat-&-Blackwell, Franco Nicosia, Alan Andreasen, Jim Bettman, and Joel Cohen. Howard’s great innovation—which he based on a scheme that he had found in the work of Plato (namely, the linkages among Cognition, Affect, and Conation)—took the form of a boxes-and-arrows formulation heavily influenced by the approach to organizational behavior theory that Howard (University of Pittsburgh) had picked up from Herbert Simon (Carnegie Melon University). The model represented a chain of events

where I = inputs of information (from advertising, word-of-mouth, brand features, etc.); C = cognitions (beliefs or perceptions about a brand); A = Affect (liking or preference for the brand); B = behavior (purchase of the brand); and S = satisfaction (post-purchase evaluation of the brand that feeds back onto earlier stages of the sequence, according to a learning model in which reinforced behavior tends to be repeated). This formulation lay at the heart of Howard’s work, which he updated, elaborated on, and streamlined over the remainder of his career. Importantly, it informed virtually every buyer-behavior model that blossomed forth during the last half of the twentieth century.

To represent the link between cognitions and affect, buyer-behavior researchers used various forms of the multi-attribute attitude model (MAAM), originally proposed by psychologists such as Fishbein and Rosenberg as part of what Fishbein and Ajzen ( 1975 ) called the theory of reasoned action. Under MAAM, cognitions (beliefs about brand attributes) are weighted by their importance and summed to create an explanation or prediction of affect (liking for a brand or preference for one brand versus another), which in turn determines behavior (choice of a brand or intention to purchase a brand). This took the work of economist Kelvin Lancaster (with whom Howard interacted), which assumed attitude was based on objective attributes, and extended it to include subjective ones (Lancaster 1966 ; Ratchford 1975 ). Overall, the set of concepts that prevailed in the late-1960s assumed the buyer exhibited economic rationality and acted as a computer-like information-processing machine when making purchase decisions.

2.2 Favored methods in the late-1960s

The methods favored during the late-1960s tended to be almost exclusively neo-positivistic in nature. That is, buyer-behavior research adopted the kinds of methodological rigor that we associate with the physical sciences and the hypothetico-deductive approaches advocated by the neo-positivistic philosophers of science.

Thus, the accepted approaches tended to be either experimental or survey based. For example, numerous laboratory studies tested variations of the MAAM and focused on questions about how to measure beliefs, how to weight the beliefs, how to combine the weighted beliefs, and so forth (e.g., Beckwith and Lehmann 1973 ). Here again, these assumed a rational economic decision-maker who processed information something like a computer.

Seeking rigor, buyer-behavior studies tended to be quantitative in their analyses, employing multivariate statistics, structural equation models, multidimensional scaling, conjoint analysis, and other mathematically sophisticated techniques. For example, various attempts to test the ICABS formulation developed simultaneous (now called structural) equation models such as those deployed by Farley and Ring ( 1970 , 1974 ) to test the Howard and Sheth ( 1969 ) model and by Beckwith and Lehmann ( 1973 ) to measure halo effects.

2.3 Aims in the late-1960s

During this time period, buyer-behavior research was still considered a subdivision of marketing research, the purpose of which was to provide insights useful to marketing managers in making strategic decisions. Essentially, every paper concluded with a section on “Implications for Marketing Managers.” Authors who failed to conform to this expectation could generally count on having their work rejected by leading journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research ( JMR ) and the Journal of Marketing ( JM ).

2.4 Summary—the three R’s in the late-1960s

Starting in the late-1960s to the early-1980s, virtually every buyer-behavior researcher followed the traditional approach to concepts, methods, and aims, now encapsulated under what we might call the three R’s —namely, rationality , rigor , and relevance . However, as we transitioned into the 1980s and beyond, that changed as some (though by no means all) consumer researchers began to expand their approaches and to evolve different perspectives.

2.5 Concepts after 1980

In some circles, the traditional emphasis on the buyer’s rationality—that is, a view of the buyer as a rational-economic, decision-oriented, information-processing, computer-like machine for making choices—began to evolve in at least two primary ways.

First, behavioral economics (originally studied in marketing under the label Behavioral Decision Theory)—developed in psychology by Kahneman and Tversky, in economics by Thaler, and applied in marketing by a number of forward-thinking theorists (e.g., Eric Johnson, Jim Bettman, John Payne, Itamar Simonson, Jay Russo, Joel Huber, and more recently, Dan Ariely)—challenged the rationality of consumers as decision-makers. It was shown that numerous commonly used decision heuristics depart from rational choice and are exceptions to the traditional assumptions of economic rationality. This trend shed light on understanding consumer financial decision-making (Prelec and Loewenstein 1998 ; Gourville 1998 ; Lynch Jr 2011 ) and how to develop “nudges” to help consumers make better decisions for their personal finances (summarized in Johnson et al. 2012 ).

Second, the emerging experiential view (anticipated by Alderson, Levy, and others; developed by Holbrook and Hirschman, and embellished by Schmitt, Pine, and Gilmore, and countless followers) regarded consumers as flesh-and-blood human beings (rather than as information-processing computer-like machines), focused on hedonic aspects of consumption, and expanded the concepts embodied by ICABS (Table 1 ).

2.6 Methods after 1980

The two burgeoning areas of research—behavioral economics and experiential theories—differed in their methodological approaches. The former relied on controlled randomized experiments with a focus on decision strategies and behavioral outcomes. For example, experiments tested the process by which consumers evaluate options using information display boards and “Mouselab” matrices of aspects and attributes (Payne et al. 1988 ). This school of thought also focused on behavioral dependent measures, such as choice (Huber et al. 1982 ; Simonson 1989 ; Iyengar and Lepper 2000 ).

The latter was influenced by post-positivistic philosophers of science—such as Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Richard Rorty—and approaches expanded to include various qualitative techniques (interpretive, ethnographic, humanistic, and even introspective methods) not previously prominent in the field of consumer research. These included:

Interpretive approaches —such as those drawing on semiotics and hermeneutics—in an effort to gain a richer understanding of the symbolic meanings involved in consumption experiences;

Ethnographic approaches — borrowed from cultural anthropology—such as those illustrated by the influential Consumer Behavior Odyssey (Belk et al. 1989 ) and its discoveries about phenomena related to sacred aspects of consumption or the deep meanings of collections and other possessions;

Humanistic approaches —such as those borrowed from cultural studies or from literary criticism and more recently gathered together under the general heading of consumer culture theory ( CCT );

Introspective or autoethnographic approaches —such as those associated with a method called subjective personal introspection ( SPI ) that various consumer researchers like Sidney Levy and Steve Gould have pursued to gain insights based on their own private lives.

These qualitative approaches tended not to appear in the more traditional journals such as the Journal of Marketing , Journal of Marketing Research , or Marketing Science . However, newer journals such as Consumption, Markets, & Culture and Marketing Theory began to publish papers that drew on the various interpretive, ethnographic, humanistic, or introspective methods.

2.7 Aims after 1980

In 1974, consumer research finally got its own journal with the launch of the Journal of Consumer Research ( JCR ). The early editors of JCR —especially Bob Ferber, Hal Kassarjian, and Jim Bettman—held a rather divergent attitude about the importance or even the desirability of managerial relevance as a key goal of consumer studies. Under their influence, some researchers began to believe that consumer behavior is a phenomenon worthy of study in its own right—purely for the purpose of understanding it better. The journal incorporated articles from an array of methodologies: quantitative (both secondary data analysis and experimental techniques) and qualitative. The “right” balance between theoretical insight and substantive relevance—which are not in inherent conflict—is a matter of debate to this day and will likely continue to be debated well into the future.

2.8 Summary—the three I’s after 1980

In sum, beginning in the early-1980s, consumer research branched out. Much of the work in consumer studies remained within the earlier tradition of the three R’s—that is, rationality (an information-processing decision-oriented buyer), rigor (neo-positivistic experimental designs and quantitative techniques), and relevance (usefulness to marketing managers). Nonetheless, many studies embraced enlarged views of the three major aspects that might be called the three I’s —that is, irrationality (broadened perspectives that incorporate illogical, heuristic, experiential, or hedonic aspects of consumption), interpretation (various qualitative or “postmodern” approaches), and intrinsic motivation (the joy of pursuing a managerially irrelevant consumer study purely for the sake of satisfying one’s own curiosity, without concern for whether it does or does not help a marketing practitioner make a bigger profit).

3 The present—the consumer behavior field today

3.1 present concepts.

In recent years, technological changes have significantly influenced the nature of consumption as the customer journey has transitioned to include more interaction on digital platforms that complements interaction in physical stores. This shift poses a major conceptual challenge in understanding if and how these technological changes affect consumption. Does the medium through which consumption occurs fundamentally alter the psychological and social processes identified in earlier research? In addition, this shift allows us to collect more data at different stages of the customer journey, which further allows us to analyze behavior in ways that were not previously available.

Revisiting the ICABS framework, many of the previous concepts are still present, but we are now addressing them through a lens of technological change (Table 2 )

. In recent years, a number of concepts (e.g., identity, beliefs/lay theories, affect as information, self-control, time, psychological ownership, search for meaning and happiness, social belonging, creativity, and status) have emerged as integral factors that influence and are influenced by consumption. To better understand these concepts, a number of influential theories from social psychology have been adopted into consumer behavior research. Self-construal (Markus and Kitayama 1991 ), regulatory focus (Higgins 1998 ), construal level (Trope and Liberman 2010 ), and goal systems (Kruglanski et al. 2002 ) all provide social-cognition frameworks through which consumer behavior researchers study the psychological processes behind consumer behavior. This “adoption” of social psychological theories into consumer behavior is a symbiotic relationship that further enhances the theories. Tory Higgins happily stated that he learned more about his own theories from the work of marketing academics (he cited Angela Lee and Michel Pham) in further testing and extending them.

3.2 Present Methods

Not only have technological advancements changed the nature of consumption but they have also significantly influenced the methods used in consumer research by adding both new sources of data and improved analytical tools (Ding et al. 2020 ). Researchers continue to use traditional methods from psychology in empirical research (scale development, laboratory experiments, quantitative analyses, etc.) and interpretive approaches in qualitative research. Additionally, online experiments using participants from panels such as Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific have become commonplace in the last decade. While they raise concerns about the quality of the data and about the external validity of the results, these online experiments have greatly increased the speed and decreased the cost of collecting data, so researchers continue to use them, albeit with some caution. Reminiscent of the discussion in the 1970s and 1980s about the use of student subjects, the projectability of the online responses and of an increasingly conditioned “professional” group of online respondents (MTurkers) is a major concern.

Technology has also changed research methodology. Currently, there is a large increase in the use of secondary data thanks to the availability of Big Data about online and offline behavior. Methods in computer science have advanced our ability to analyze large corpuses of unstructured data (text, voice, visual images) in an efficient and rigorous way and, thus, to tap into a wealth of nuanced thoughts, feelings, and behaviors heretofore only accessible to qualitative researchers through laboriously conducted content analyses. There are also new neuro-marketing techniques like eye-tracking, fMRI’s, body arousal measures (e.g., heart rate, sweat), and emotion detectors that allow us to measure automatic responses. Lastly, there has been an increase in large-scale field experiments that can be run in online B2C marketplaces.

3.3 Present Aims

Along with a focus on real-world observations and data, there is a renewed emphasis on managerial relevance. Countless conference addresses and editorials in JCR , JCP , and other journals have emphasized the importance of making consumer research useful outside of academia—that is, to help companies, policy makers, and consumers. For instance, understanding how the “new” consumer interacts over time with other consumers and companies in the current marketplace is a key area for future research. As global and social concerns become more salient in all aspects of life, issues of long-term sustainability, social equality, and ethical business practices have also become more central research topics. Fortunately, despite this emphasis on relevance, theoretical contributions and novel ideas are still highly valued. An appropriate balance of theory and practice has become the holy grail of consumer research.

The effects of the current trends in real-world consumption will increase in magnitude with time as more consumers are digitally native. Therefore, a better understanding of current consumer behavior can give us insights and help predict how it will continue to evolve in the years to come.

4 The future—the consumer behavior field in 2040

The other papers use 2030 as a target year but we asked our survey respondents to make predictions for 2040 and thus we have a different future target year.

Niels Bohr once said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Indeed, it would be a fool’s errand for a single person to hazard a guess about the state of the consumer behavior field twenty years from now. Therefore, predictions from 34 active consumer researchers were collected to address this task. Here, we briefly summarize those predictions.

4.1 Future Concepts

While few respondents proffered guesses regarding specific concepts that would be of interest twenty years from now, many suggested broad topics and trends they expected to see in the field. Expectations for topics could largely be grouped into three main areas. Many suspected that we will be examining essentially the same core topics, perhaps at a finer-grained level, from different perspectives or in ways that we currently cannot utilize due to methodological limitations (more on methods below). A second contingent predicted that much research would center on the impending crises the world faces today, most mentioning environmental and social issues (the COVID-19 pandemic had not yet begun when these predictions were collected and, unsurprisingly, was not anticipated by any of our respondents). The last group, citing the widely expected profound impact of AI on consumers’ lives, argued that AI and other technology-related topics will be dominant subjects in consumer research circa 2040.

While the topic of technology is likely to be focal in the field, our current expectations for the impact of technology on consumers’ lives are narrower than it should be. Rather than merely offering innumerable conveniences and experiences, it seems likely that technology will begin to be integrated into consumers’ thoughts, identities, and personal relationships—probably sooner than we collectively expect. The integration of machines into humans’ bodies and lives will present the field with an expanding list of research questions that do not exist today. For example, how will the concepts of the self, identity, privacy, and goal pursuit change when web-connected technology seamlessly integrates with human consciousness and cognition? Major questions will also need to be answered regarding philosophy of mind, ethics, and social inequality. We suspect that the impact of technology on consumers and consumer research will be far broader than most consumer-behavior researchers anticipate.

As for broader trends within consumer research, there were two camps: (1) those who expect (or hope) that dominant theories (both current and yet to be developed) will become more integrated and comprehensive and (2) those who expect theoretical contributions to become smaller and smaller, to the point of becoming trivial. Both groups felt that current researchers are filling smaller cracks than before, but disagreed on how this would ultimately be resolved.

4.2 Future Methods

As was the case with concepts, respondents’ expectations regarding consumer-research methodologies in 2030 can also be divided into three broad baskets. Unsurprisingly, many indicated that we would be using many technologies not currently available or in wide use. Perhaps more surprising was that most cited the use of technology such as AI, machine-learning algorithms, and robots in designing—as opposed to executing or analyzing—experiments. (Some did point to the use of technologies such as virtual reality in the actual execution of experiments.) The second camp indicated that a focus on reliable and replicable results (discussed further below) will encourage a greater tendency for pre-registering studies, more use of “Big Data,” and a demand for more studies per paper (versus more papers per topic, which some believe is a more fruitful direction). Finally, the third lot indicated that “real data” would be in high demand, thereby necessitating the use of incentive-compatible, consequential dependent variables and a greater prevalence of field studies in consumer research.

As a result, young scholars would benefit from developing a “toolkit” of methodologies for collecting and analyzing the abundant new data of interest to the field. This includes (but is not limited to) a deep understanding of designing and implementing field studies (Gerber and Green 2012 ), data analysis software (R, Python, etc.), text mining and analysis (Humphreys and Wang 2018 ), and analytical tools for other unstructured forms of data such as image and sound. The replication crisis in experimental research means that future scholars will also need to take a more critical approach to validity (internal, external, construct), statistical power, and significance in their work.

4.3 Future Aims

While there was an air of existential concern about the future of the field, most agreed that the trend will be toward increasing the relevance and reliability of consumer research. Specifically, echoing calls from journals and thought leaders, the respondents felt that papers will need to offer more actionable implications for consumers, managers, or policy makers. However, few thought that this increased focus would come at the expense of theoretical insights, suggesting a more demanding overall standard for consumer research in 2040. Likewise, most felt that methodological transparency, open access to data and materials, and study pre-registration will become the norm as the field seeks to allay concerns about the reliability and meaningfulness of its research findings.

4.4 Summary - Future research questions and directions

Despite some well-justified pessimism, the future of consumer research is as bright as ever. As we revised this paper amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that many aspects of marketplace behavior, consumption, and life in general will change as a result of this unprecedented global crisis. Given this, and the radical technological, social, and environmental changes that loom on the horizon, consumer researchers will have a treasure trove of topics to tackle in the next ten years, many of which will carry profound substantive importance. While research approaches will evolve, the core goals will remain consistent—namely, to generate theoretically insightful, empirically supported, and substantively impactful research (Table 3 ).

5 Conclusion

At any given moment in time, the focal concepts, methods, and aims of consumer-behavior scholarship reflect both the prior development of the field and trends in the larger scientific community. However, despite shifting trends, the core of the field has remained constant—namely, to understand the motivations, thought processes, and experiences of individuals as they consume goods, services, information, and other offerings, and to use these insights to develop interventions to improve both marketing strategy for firms and consumer welfare for individuals and groups. Amidst the excitement of new technologies, social trends, and consumption experiences, it is important to look back and remind ourselves of the insights the field has already generated. Effectively integrating these past findings with new observations and fresh research will help the field advance our understanding of consumer behavior.

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Malter, M.S., Holbrook, M.B., Kahn, B.E. et al. The past, present, and future of consumer research. Mark Lett 31 , 137–149 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-020-09526-8

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Have you ever wondered what goes into making a really successful product or campaign? The answer is consumer research.

Consumer research is a technique used by marketers and product developers to understand the needs, wants and behaviour of their target audiences. It involves collecting data about customers, analyzing it and using it to create strategies that will yield the most successful results.

Whether you are a marketer planning an advertising campaign or a product developer creating a new product, understanding your customers is essential for success. Consumer research can give you detailed insights into your customers’ behavior, preferences and motivations, which can be used to make better decisions about how to serve them in the most effective way possible.

In this article, we will provide an overview of what consumer research is and how it works. We will also discuss how businesses can benefit from using consumer research in their marketing and product development efforts.

What Is Consumer Research?

Consumer research is a process used to understand the behavior of consumers and their preferences. It helps businesses get an accurate understanding of their target audience. This research focuses on understanding why people choose certain products and services, what drives their decisions and how they feel about different aspects of a product or service.

The research process includes analyzing customer data, conducting interviews, collecting survey responses and observing consumer behaviour. This allows businesses to identify issues in their target markets, uncover new opportunities and measure customer satisfaction with products or services.

Overall, consumer research is an essential tool for gaining insights into the market trends, customer needs and preferences that allow businesses to understand their existing customers better while identifying new customers they can acquire. By conducting this type of research, they can ensure that they are providing the right solutions to meet the demands of their target audience.

Types of Consumer Research

Consumer research is a broad term encompassing a variety of techniques used to glean information about buyers and the marketplace. Depending on the data being sought, there are several different types of consumer research that can be employed.

Surveys: Surveys are one of the most popular methods for gathering consumer data. Surveys typically consist of a series of questions posed to participants, which can be administered online, in person or by phone. The responses from these surveys can provide valuable insights into consumer attitudes, preferences and behaviours.

Focus Groups: Focus groups typically feature moderated discussions with a small number of participants about a particular product or service. This type of research allows organizations to gain feedback on products or services before they reach the market and get a better understanding of how users perceive and interact with their offerings.

Observation Studies: Observation studies involve watching participants use products or services in real-world environments and recording their activities. This allows researchers to observe how people use products in different contexts and gain insights into user experience.

Overall, consumer research is an important tool for understanding buying behaviour and driving successful marketing initiatives. By using the right techniques for gathering data, companies can gain valuable insight into their target audience’s needs and preferences, helping them make informed decisions about their product offerings and marketing strategies.

The Consumer Research Process

Consumer research is the process of gathering, analyzing and using consumer data to make decisions about how to best serve the needs and interests of customers.

The consumer research process typically involves five steps:

Defining the research objectives
Developing a research plan
Collecting data
Analyzing the data
Developing conclusions and recommendations

At each step, specialists in consumer research methods use quantitative and qualitative methodologies to gain insights into consumer behaviours, attitudes, needs and preferences. This data can be used to develop strategies for marketing campaigns, product development initiatives and other activities that help companies meet their goals of providing products and services that resonate with their customers.

Benefits of Consumer Research

Consumer research is an invaluable tool for organizations striving to gain insights into the opinions and behaviours of their target audience. By using consumer research, businesses can discover what their customers want, how they make decisions, and how they view the organization’s products or services.

The benefits of opting to conduct consumer research are numerous. Here are just a few:

Improved Product Development

Conducting consumer research enables organizations to find out what their customers desire in a product or service, enabling them to create offerings that meet these exact needs. This helps to reduce the risk involved with launching new products by ensuring they are tailored to meet customer demands.

Enhanced Marketing Efforts

By learning more about target audiences, marketers can use this information to devise more effective marketing strategies. This could include developing more personalized messaging that resonates with customers and attracts them to your business.

Increased Customer Retention Rates

Insights gleaned from consumer research can help organizations identify any customer pain points and work towards creating better experiences for their clients. This leads to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty rates, resulting in increased customer retention rates over time.

Challenges With Conducting Consumer Research

Conducting consumer research can be a tricky business. Despite its fundamental importance in improving the customer experience, there are many common challenges that make it more difficult for organizations to get the data they need.

Among the most typical challenges with consumer research are:

Data collection – Gathering data from consumers can be time-consuming and expensive, especially in a global context. It involves designing surveys, questionnaires or other research tools, managing sample selection, and conducting field research.

Data accuracy – It’s difficult to ensure the accuracy of data collected through consumer research, as responses may be affected by various external factors such as moods or personal opinions.

Data analysis – Analyzing large amounts of data collected through consumer research takes specialized skills and knowledge in order to draw meaningful insights from it.

Data implementation – Once the data has been collected and analyzed, it is necessary to implement the insights across all departments within an organization in order to make strategic changes based on customer feedback. This requires close collaboration between departments and a clear understanding of how different teams can leverage the information for their benefit.

These challenges demonstrate why consumer research is not only necessary but also complex; without it, organizations will struggle to understand their customers’ needs and develop effective strategies for growth and success.

Best Practices for Effective Consumer Research

Consumer research is an invaluable tool for any business looking to stay competitive and grow. There are strategies you can use to ensure that your consumer research is effective:

Choose Your Methodology Carefully

When conducting consumer research, it’s important to choose the correct methodology for your project. Different methods may be more effective in different situations and industries, so take the time to plan and select the most appropriate one for your goals.

Gather Data From Multiple Sources

To gain a complete picture of how consumers think and feel about your product or service, you need to collect data from multiple sources. This includes online surveys, focus groups, interviews, and observation.

Keep Up With Emerging Trends

Technology is constantly evolving, so it’s important to keep up with emerging trends in consumer research. Utilizing new tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning can help you gain insight into customer behaviour faster than ever before.

Analyze The Data Accurately

Once you have gathered all the data, it’s essential that you analyze it accurately. Use data visualization software or statistical analysis tools to quickly spot patterns or trends in the data that could be useful for your business decision-making process.

In summary, consumer research is a critical part of any business strategy. It can help companies identify and target the right consumers, understand their behaviour, and develop effective marketing campaigns. From identifying the needs and wants of customers to determining the best ways to communicate with them, consumer research is an essential component for any business that wants to remain competitive and successful. Additionally, companies can use consumer research to assess their current strategies, as well as to acquire their customers’ overall level of satisfaction. Through these insights, businesses are able to provide a better overall customer experience and drive profitable growth.

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An Introductory Guide to Consumer Research And How to Conduct One

Consumer research is used across industries in order to gain key insights into consumer behavior and needs. In this article, we will explore the key aspects of consumer research, namely what it is and how to do it.

What Is Consumer Research?

Consumer research is research undertaken to gain an idea of customers' preferences, attitudes, motivations, and buying behaviors. This information can enable you to categorize customers into groups or segments, and tailor marketing efforts (or other aspects of the business, such as product development) to those who are most likely to spend their money on your product or service.

Research can take many different forms - such as surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. All of which enable you to gain answers to questions that your business is struggling to find through other means.

For example, most businesses have some kind of customer service department. Through consumer research, you can find out what methods of customer service are most preferred by your customers and invest more in these methods resulting in greater customer satisfaction.

Consumer research enables you to group customers into customer segments. A customer segment is simply a collection of individuals with similar consumer data - possibly in terms of the personal demographics such as age, gender, or location, or it could be that their spending habits, AOV , and preferences are similar.

These customer segments can be targeted in different ways, enabling you to maximize revenue from each individual.

2 Types of Consumer Research

There are two basic types of research, both of which apply to consumer research.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research produces quantifiable data. This means that it can be considered directly in numbers and percentages and, as a result, is usually easier to analyze.

For example, perhaps you want to evaluate your quality assurance strategies . In order to gain quantitative data for this, you might ask yes/no questions or ask customers to rank statements on a scale from 1 to 10, such as “I frequently come across bugs in X software”. 10 would indicate all the time, and 1 would be never. The responses can then be added together to create a percentage.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is often more in-depth, and questions enable responders to explore their answers in full detail. In 2021, 67% of researchers agreed that online or virtual qualitative research is helpful to consumer research. Qualitative research enables a much deeper understanding of the customer experience and opinion but is harder to analyze.

For example, returning to our example of experiencing bugs in software, a qualitative researcher may approach this question as follows:

Q: How often do you experience bugs when using our software? Explain in detail when and where this occurs.

A: I only experience bugs when using the accounting tool of the application. Whenever I try to export a report of my accounts, the app glitches and deletes my data.

This answer provides specific examples to the researcher and would make solving the problem much simpler. This is reflected in how business practices and software development intersect, as business needs are shaping new technology, a response that is driven through research.

However, if you are dealing with hundreds of responses, getting through them all can be challenging.

3 Benefits of Consumer Research

1. provides valuable market insight.

Consumer research provides insights that you cannot get from analytics alone, as it gives you insight into the thoughts and feelings of the consumers. These insights are extremely valuable, as if you know how to use customer analytics , you can apply these skills to implementing the data gathered from your consumer research.

2. Improve Marketing and Business Decisions

Once you have gained these insights, consumer research can actually be used to inform your marketing and business decisions and can even help the creation of brand marketing reports . For example, your research could suggest that your business lacks organization across its teams. This could lead to your business investing in WFM tools and ultimately revolutionizing its reputation.

3. Assists in Determining Market Position

Another benefit of consumer research is that it can provide insights into where your business sits within the market. You can find out whether you are preferred to your competition or vice versa, and why. It helps your business define its market position and make adjustments to improve this or solidify its brand identity.

5 Methods of Consumer Research

There are many different methods of conducting customer research. In this section, we will go through some of the key options available.

Interviews are a great way to conduct consumer research. The nature of spoken conversation often enables previously unconsidered ideas to come up naturally and opens up opportunities for discussions that reveal deeper insights. Furthermore, if you have access to software offering a free video call online , these interviews no longer need to be done in person.

Focus Groups

Interviews can be conducted in focus groups where a select group of individuals discuss and offer their opinions on a matter together. These individuals might be from the same customer sectors or may represent different perspectives. How you choose to structure these is up to you.

One-on-one Interviews

Alternatively, you may prefer to approach these with one-on-one interviews. This form of interview can often lead to a more in-depth conversation but, for logical reasons, are less time-efficient and can miss out on the group dynamic spurring new ideas.

Surveys are a written alternative to interviews and do not require a researcher to be present at the time of research. They can also be sent to a much larger group of respondents (meaning a more detailed set of data) and can be a combination of quantitative and qualitative responses.

Analytics is nothing new to anyone working in marketing, and it can be an excellent tool for conducting consumer research. Analytics will provide quantitative insights into consumer behavior, such as conversion rates and average sale values, and can contribute to consumer research.

Review Mining

Review mining can be a great way to gain consumer insights, and it doesn’t involve actively pursuing new research.

Previous reviews can often provide a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research through written descriptions and “star” system reviews. However, this method limits you to what is already available, and these reviews may not specifically target areas you are keen to research.

Secondary Research

Secondary research refers to looking at previously created research in your industry. Lots of this can be accessed online, and even if this isn’t the method you primarily choose to use, it can be a great starting point to guide your own research.

5 Steps to Conduct Consumer Research

1. set smart research goals and objectives.

SMART goals should be set before any business pursuit. Standing for specific, measurable, agreed, realistic, and time-bounded, these goals can help guide your research and avoid going off topic.

2. Determine the Research Methodology and Audience

As previously mentioned, there are several different methods of conducting consumer research. Choosing from the list above (and you are not limited to only one method), you should cover both quantitative and qualitative data for the best insight.

Develop a Buyer Persona

Develop a buyer persona in order to determine who your audience will be for the research. Buyer personas can be seen somewhat like “characters” in a story. They have certain wants, motivations, and behavior patterns. They make up your customer segments and who the research will target.

3. Conduct Research and Compile Data Findings

Put the research into action: send out surveys, schedule interviews, review your google analytics. Put all your findings into a spreadsheet, and begin to group responses logically. With qualitative data, it may be useful to identify “themes” in responses and categorize them according to these.

Once data is compiled, it is recommended to present it in a visually effective report , including charts or graphs depending on the content.

4. Analyze and Interpret Data Results

Take your data and consider what the information is telling you. Are you seeing frequent negative responses in one area? Do customers feel like you are overpricing your service? Interpret the data and come to conclusions as to what your business may need to do.

5. Take Action in Response to the Findings

Put your findings into action! If you are seeing consistent weaknesses in one area, this is a great time to bring the team together and brainstorm ideas to work around this and improve your business. When you implement changes that benefit the customers, you will see results coming back around to you in the form of increased engagement.

Key Takeaway

Consumer research is a brilliant way to ensure the success of any business. Enabling you to see how your customers view your company and gain key insights into how your business can improve. Provided your research has clear goals and gathers in-depth data, there is no reason your research shouldn’t be a raging success!

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad , an AI-powered cloud communication platform that fosters better team collaboration and boosts lead generation strategies . She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn .

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What Is Customer Research and Why Is It Important for Startups?

At the heart of your business is your customer, and to grow and scale you’re going to need to get to know them really, really well. Businesses get to know their customers better by conducting customer research.

Here we cover everything you need to know about customer research and the methods to conduct it, and how it all ties together with customer segmentation and buyer personas.

What is customer research?

Customer research is the practice of identifying the preferences, attitudes, motivations, and buying behavior of the targeted buyer. Using a variety of consumer research methods to gather this information, shared traits among the different customer groups are identified and categorized into customer segments and buyer personas, which are then used to create targeted marketing campaigns.

Customer research is the key to improving your product and successfully marketing to customers who want to do business with you. Interviews, surveys, and other customer research methods are some of your best friends when it comes to helping your company consistently increase its revenue year on year.

What is a customer segment?

A customer segment is a group of individuals who share specific traits relevant to marketing, such as age, location, gender, spending habits, and interests. The purpose of a customer segment is to provide a better understanding of how different groups of customers make purchasing decisions, and to allow marketing efforts to be more targeted and better tailored to those distinct groups.

Different customer segments may require different messaging, different communication channels, or even different pricing options . Additionally, customer segments can help a startup identify the most profitable customers, establish better customer relationships, and improve customer service.

Without identifying customer segments through research, your startup may not fully recognize the specific demands of your customers, resulting in missed opportunities and failing to gain a competitive advantage in your market.

What is a buyer persona?

A buyer or customer persona is a research-based profile constructed by analyzing real customers. A buyer persona is more than just a detailed description of your target customer; it’s built from the words of actual customers and provides in depth insight into who they are, what they value, and what their motivations are.

If you want to know what prospective customers are actually thinking as they weigh out their options on how to address whatever problem your startup aims to solve, you are going to need to create a buyer persona.

Buyer personas allow brands to better understand customer segments, and recognize the key traits within them, ensuring activities involved in acquiring and serving your customers are tailored to the targeted buyer’s needs. Unless your target market is extremely limited in scope, it’s very common to have a number of buyer personas within each customer segment.

How to Conduct Customer Research

Customer research can take many forms, from notes your team takes on a daily basis (such as sales and customer support calls) to more planned and structured methods of data collection.

4 Customer Research Methods

Identifying the best research methods for your business may take some trial and error, but the rewards are worth it. Wherever possible, your customers should be grouped into customer segments to help you achieve the goals of your data collection.

1. Interviews

Interviewing customers who are going through different stages of their journey with your product can be time-consuming. Even though interviews may prove to be a significant challenge, they can also be one of the most eye-opening and valuable customer research methods your startup can undertake.

Interviews offer a high level of insight into the mind of the customer with very specific details on their needs, wants, and motivations as they relate to your product. This information is invaluable for any startup, but it isn’t always easy to obtain. The data collected from interviews can be used across all aspects of your marketing strategy for a 12-month period. After this time, you should begin the process again to account for changes in your business and changes to your customer base.

If you don’t have the resources to carry out interviews (or your customers won’t oblige), there are other ways to gather some solid data.

Surveys might be the most commonly used customer research method, and for good reason too. Surveys don’t necessarily offer the same level of insight as interviews, but they are much easier to get customers to participate in and provide feedback due to their simple nature.

They are a quick and easy way for customers to provide feedback and feel their needs are valued by a company.

Surveys are conducted in a number of ways with varying degrees of effectiveness, but generally speaking, the response rate for surveys is much higher than interviews. Having a larger sample size makes it easier for a startup to recognize similar characteristics and patterns among consumers.

Some of the most common survey methods include retention email , snail mail, over the phone, face-to-face, in apps or website, and even through text messages on mobile devices.

Surveys can be self-conducted (the person responding will read and answer questions unattended) or they can be conducted by a person who records their answers.

New customer survey

Established customer survey

Past/canceled customer survey

Thank-you page survey

On-page pop-up surveys

On-site polls

User testing

Net Promoter Score

3. Analytics

Using analytics as a form of customer research is very different than interviews and surveys. Rather than focusing on what the customer says they want or need, analytics focuses on what the customer actually does. This is a form of observational research where the purpose is to measure the actual behavior rather than customer-reported behavior. It’s great to know what a customer wants, but sometimes they don’t even know what they really want or why, which is why it’s so important to track their behavior and make changes that get actual results.

Google (e.g. bounce rate, time on page, traffic)

Click tracking

Scroll mapping

User recorded sessions

4. Review mining

Review mining is an often overlooked customer research method, but also one of the most valuable methods, especially in SaaS, when it comes to cost and value . Review mining is the process of researching reviews of competitors to gather qualitative data to improve your own product.

Unlike interviews and surveys, review mining doesn’t require that you reach out to your customers to get feedback. Instead, all the feedback is already published and readily available for you to analyze, making it extremely easy to acquire valuable data to help your startup gain a competitive advantage. In fact, it might just be the most effective way to not make the same mistakes your direct competitors have made, and identify specific features that make similar products sell.

Review-based websites (e.g. G2 Crowd and Trust Radius)

Forums and comments (Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Product Hunt, blogs)

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the ways you can capture your voice of customer data, but it’s a good start if you’re not sure where to begin.

Why Customer Research Is Important

Conducting in-depth research on your prospects and customers will help to give you a clear snapshot of who your customers really are. This can often be an eye-opener. Some companies sink their precious marketing budget into targeting their ideal customers when their actual audience is quite different – so all the money spent on marketing has little effect.

Say, for example, you own a second-hand shop. All your marketing efforts target the 30-40 age group who you assume is your ideal audience. They are shopping with an eco-friendly, sustainable mindset. You can’t understand why your targeted marketing is having very little impact on your sales.

After surveying your actual customers, you find the majority of them are thrifty 50-somethings looking for bargains – a completely different audience from the one you’ve been trying to attract.

Here are five good reasons to conduct customer research for your startup:

1. Builds accurate buyer personas

Now that you understand what a buyer persona is (see above), it’s important to recognize why they are so valuable and what they actually look like.

An example of a buyer persona might look something like this: Wendy, the 45-year-old single mom with 2 kids who earns a modest income and enjoys tennis.

But what does this actually mean? The reason it is so useful is because it is based on actual research from customer data, rather than being dreamed up in a meeting room by marketers who think this is their target audience.

When you carry out regular customer research, you’ll have a much more accurate idea of the demographics that matter to your business. Building buyer personas based around this factual data have a far better chance of impacting your growth marketing than using educated guesswork.

2. Reveals the true voice of your customer

The voice of your business should mirror the voice of your customer (VOC), and your product should satisfy their needs. How better to attract your ideal audience than by using the language they use, reflecting back the pains they feel, and being there to help them find a solution to their woes. And by solution, I mean your product.

Capturing the exact words and messages of your customers by speaking directly with them is a goldmine for your marketing strategy.

A recent CoSchedule study revealed that:

Successful marketers are 242% more likely to conduct audience research at least once every quarter

56% of the study’s most elite marketers conduct research at least once a month

3. Creates effective content strategies

Content is one of the reigning champions of marketing for the top of the funnel. But if you’re basing your content creation on what you feel like writing, what competitor sites are doing, or what an influencer website said was hot to write about right now – your content marketing might be in need of some help.

Your customers are exactly that – yours. They found you and subscribed for a reason, so why not find out what that reason was and ask them what they’d like to see more of?

Simple pop-up web surveys or a casual email asking readers what they’d like to read more of on your site can provide you with ample content ideas to fill up your quarterly calendar.

4. Improves conversion rates

Every great conversion expert knows that the best performing copy and design is linked directly to the customer experience.

Copywriters, designers, and optimizers all look to customer data in their process – from beginning to end. Long after the main project has finished, A/B testing still relies on customer data to pinpoint the weak areas and make improvements.

Design trends and best practices may change, but the one thing that remains constant is your customer.

5. Grows your startup

Audience research is crucial to your business growth. Keeping in touch with your customer base is one of the best ways to find out what you’re doing right, and how to pinpoint what customers see as flaws in your product or service. Customer satisfaction can be measured with the Net Promoter Score (NPS) system , which directly correlates with your business growth.

In conclusion, don’t underestimate the impact that regular customer research can have on your business, whether you’re at start-up or enterprise level. The data you collect can impact the way you build your product, market your services, and message your audience, all of which are directly tied to healthy and sustainable business growth.

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The past, present, and future of consumer research

Maayan s. malter.

1 Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York, NY USA

Morris B. Holbrook

Barbara e. kahn.

2 The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA USA

Jeffrey R. Parker

3 Department of Marketing, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL USA

Donald R. Lehmann

Introduction

A brief history of consumer research over the past sixty years—1960 to 2020

Key concepts in the late - 1960s

Favored methods in the late-1960s

Aims in the late-1960s

Summary—the three R’s in the late-1960s

Concepts after 1980

Extended ICABS Framework after 1980

ICABS	Explanation
—information	Product categories hitherto neglected by marketing scholars, such as the arts, entertainment, and other cultural offerings.
—cognitions	Various dreams, daydreams, and subconscious thoughts lumped under the headings of “fantasies.”
—affect	A broader range of emotions such as joy, sorrow, love, hate, fear, anger, attraction, and disgust encompassed under the heading of feelings.
—behavior	Forms of consumption that go well beyond purchase commitments, including the expenditure of time as well as money on leisure products, games, playful activities, entertainment, and so forth, under the heading of “fun.”
—satisfaction	Consumer value broadly defined and represented by multiple interacted preference experiences (e.g., efficiency, excellence, status, esteem, play, esthetics, ethics, spirituality)

Methods after 1980

Interpretive approaches —such as those drawing on semiotics and hermeneutics—in an effort to gain a richer understanding of the symbolic meanings involved in consumption experiences;
Ethnographic approaches — borrowed from cultural anthropology—such as those illustrated by the influential Consumer Behavior Odyssey (Belk et al. 1989 ) and its discoveries about phenomena related to sacred aspects of consumption or the deep meanings of collections and other possessions;
Humanistic approaches —such as those borrowed from cultural studies or from literary criticism and more recently gathered together under the general heading of consumer culture theory ( CCT );
Introspective or autoethnographic approaches —such as those associated with a method called subjective personal introspection ( SPI ) that various consumer researchers like Sidney Levy and Steve Gould have pursued to gain insights based on their own private lives.

Aims after 1980

Summary—the three I’s after 1980

The present—the consumer behavior field today

Present concepts.

Revisiting the ICABS framework, many of the previous concepts are still present, but we are now addressing them through a lens of technological change (Table (Table2 2 ). In recent years, a number of concepts (e.g., identity, beliefs/lay theories, affect as information, self-control, time, psychological ownership, search for meaning and happiness, social belonging, creativity, and status) have emerged as integral factors that influence and are influenced by consumption. To better understand these concepts, a number of influential theories from social psychology have been adopted into consumer behavior research. Self-construal (Markus and Kitayama 1991 ), regulatory focus (Higgins 1998 ), construal level (Trope and Liberman 2010 ), and goal systems (Kruglanski et al. 2002 ) all provide social-cognition frameworks through which consumer behavior researchers study the psychological processes behind consumer behavior. This “adoption” of social psychological theories into consumer behavior is a symbiotic relationship that further enhances the theories. Tory Higgins happily stated that he learned more about his own theories from the work of marketing academics (he cited Angela Lee and Michel Pham) in further testing and extending them.

ICABS framework in the digital age

ICABS	Explanation
—information	Consumers get their get information from different source-social media, peer to peer reviews, and websites for every product and have access to far more information (admittedly of greatly varying degrees of veracity) than before.
—cognitions	How does technology impact consumer cognition. For instance, attention is divided more than ever across our myriad devices and multi-tasking is the norm for most people.
—affect	Increasing effective polarity and stark mood swings arising from the combination of (1) never-ending streams of media and news exposing consumers to very positive and negative ideas and events and (2) the increased prevalence of confirmation biases arising from “fake” sources/news.
—behavior	The consequences for moral/ethical actions and perceptions of outsourcing decisions and responsibilities to technology, the replacement of intimate interpersonal relation sips of relationships with one’s phone, online game person/ avatar, and the like.
—satisfaction	The dramatic shift in satisfaction from a personal to a shared experience, industries, and firms (e.g., Yelp) built solely on markets of consumer satisfaction ratings.

Present Methods

Present Aims

The future—the consumer behavior field in 2040 1

Future Concepts

Future Methods

Future Aims

Summary - Future research questions and directions

Future consumer behavior research questions

Future research questions	Explanation
1. How does the new generation of consumers differ from past generations?	Consumers are digitally native; many enact purchase behavior through their mobile phones first.
2. Where do consumers go for information and how do they weight information from different sources?	Consumers rely more on social media for their information; so, brands must learn how to promote through those channels, which include bloggers and influencers. Given the digitally connected world, peer-to-peer evaluations and reviews are increasingly influential in preference formation, perceptions, and choice.
3. What values drive consumer decisions?	Consumers have increasing concern about sustainability, healthy lifestyles, and fair labor practices—in sum, social responsibility—factors that have a growing influence on their purchase decisions. This means that although consumers remain brand loyal, they are now loyal to different brands from those favored by previous generations.
4. What do consumers expect from retailers?	Consumers think about retailers as an omni-channel entity. They expect seamless integration of information and marketing across all channels—brick-and-mortar, online, and mobile.
5. How have computational advances changed the retailer-consumer relationship?	Omni-channel retailing creates “Big Data,” which more sophisticated retailers can and do use to personalize and customize the shopping experience. By using machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), marketers can predict consumers’ attitudes and, in turn, recommend products based on individual preferences. Savvy marketers can mix a consumer’s past behavior with information from other consumers and expert advice in making recommendations. Recommendation systems have greatly changed the shopping journey in that consumers are offered “ideal” options without having to search. This technological advancement also allows consumer researchers to study the customer experiences during the whole customer journey, and not just on product transactions.
6. What implications do these changes have for personal data privacy and security?	Discourse over answering this question is and will remain a critical central debate between policy-makers, firms, and individuals in the years to come.
7. How will major global shifts change how and what we consume?	The COVID-19 pandemic is still unfolding, but we already see that it will have a major impact on every aspect of life. We are just beginning to see how it is affecting consumption during the crisis and can only take wild guesses as to what its long-term influence will be. Now that the world is so interconnected, this and other global events can have impacts that drive change in consumer behavior.

1 The other papers use 2030 as a target year but we asked our survey respondents to make predictions for 2040 and thus we have a different future target year.

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Online survey showing what is consumer research

Why consumer research?

The purposes or motives behind consumer research are to:

Assist organizations with settling on better business choices and increase preferences against their rivals
Help advertising administrators or chiefs settle on various key and strategic choices by recognizing and fulfilling client needs
Give experiences that help control the making of a field-tested strategy, dispatch another item, advance existing items, and guide venture into new business sectors
Figure out which part of the populace will be well on their way to buy an item, given factors, such as, age, gender, and salary level
Observe how purchasers talk about the products in the market and recognize which customer needs are significant and whether current items are meeting these necessities

With viable statistical surveying, the organization can increase priceless data about your rivals, monetary movements, socio-economics, current market patterns, and your clients’ spending attributes.

The importance of consumer research for researchers

Until ten years ago, researchers thought differently about consumer psychology, not taking into consideration attitudes, moods, or circumstances that may impact a customer’s purchase choice. Thinking consumers often make budget judgments and rationally compare products and then pick products from the brands that provided them with the most significant consumer loyalty at the lowest prices.

However, that’s not the case anymore. Customers have access to information on all brands and their rivals. Because of this, a loyal consumer will recommend purchasing a brand to his/her relatives and friends, not just when the brand costs less, but when they offer excellent customer service.

Your customer is the core of your company, and you have to know them well, to expand and grow. By performing market analysis, often called customer analysis, businesses get well acquainted with their consumers.

How marketers and retailers understand consumers

By and large, you can break client statistical surveying into four classes: essential, optional, quantitative, and subjective. They are reciprocal and can be utilized together to create a more exhaustive comprehension of your client. In the following section, we will discuss some methods or strategies for customer research.

Online surveys

Online Surveys are one of the most ubiquitous techniques to gather information from your customers. With the help of the latest technologies, researchers can obtain data within a few minutes at a fraction of the cost. This helps brands to access the data instantly without any hassles.

Telephone interviews

Even though they give quicker input than mail reviews, the adequacy will be restricted by the available telephone numbers, especially since you can’t request mobile phone numbers without authorization. Likewise, potential customers are frequently careful about being called and might be hesitant to offer something besides short responses.

Face-to-Face survey

Individual meetings led face-to-face can be on the more expensive side; however, they can give in-depth bits of knowledge from your clients. But they do require coordination with Store Operations, which may mean more specific time restraints.

Online bulletin boards

With this purchaser research model, customers pick a three-day “bunch discussion” driven by an expert mediator who offers conversation starters to members and tests answers for additional subtleties. This can be done remotely which saves cost and is more convenient but it still takes time to coordinate.

Consumer quizzes and questionnaire

Another undeniably well-known review strategy is to have a short pop up study on your site. This can help affirm a theory you have about your objective market or help characterize a product issue. Make sure to keep it short — pop up reviews are best when you stick to one inquiry.

Neuromarketing research

With new technologies like Virtual Reality, traditional methodologies to obtain consumer data have become obsolete as they aren’t engaging and reliable. VR allows Researchers to study consumers’ minds and record involuntary muscle movements that can answer why consumers want what they want and what made them switch from one brand to another.

Have questions? Or looking to get some help on a VR project or idea? Great! Reach out and let’s chat.

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Consumer Research

This article covers meaning & overview of Consumer Research from marketing perspective.

What is Consumer Research?

Consumer research is the research done on consumers’ preferences, attitudes, loyalty, usage and behavior in a market. It helps in understanding customers so that the marketing campaigns can be designed accordingly.

Consumer research is a part of marketing research.

Market Research deals with processes to understand customers and end consumers which helps the marketer to build market strategy. It helps in analyzing the market using porter’s five forces which deals with the market condition. The strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats are analyzed. They help in defining the marketing goals, generate and define marketing activities, monitor them and improve performance and understanding of the market and consumers. The market research also guides the company in addressing the issues by conducting surveys and get customer opinions.

Marketing research is often partitioned into two categorical pairs

• Consumer marketing research, and

• Business-to-business (B2B) marketing research

Consumer research has two paradigms viz

• Qualitative marketing research- Text analysis

• Quantitative marketing research- Number analysis

Consumer research Process

This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team which comprises of MBA students, management professionals, and industry experts. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team . The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.

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Consumer Research: Examples, Process and Scope
Consumer research is a part of market research in which inclination, motivation and purchase behavior of the targeted customers are identified. Consumer research helps businesses or organizations understand customer psychology and create detailed purchasing behavior profiles. It uses research techniques to provide systematic information about ...
What is Consumer Research? Definition, Methods and Examples
Consumer research, also known as market research or consumer insights research, is defined as the process of collecting and analyzing information about consumers' preferences, behaviors, and attitudes toward products, services, brands, or market trends. This type of research is essential for businesses and organizations to make informed ...
Consumer Research: Definition, Methods and Benefits (+ Templates)
1-to-1 interviews. In most cases, this is a conversational method that presupposes an interviewer and an interviewee. During this type of consumer research, the researcher (the interviewer) asks questions (that are equivalent to the open-ended survey questions) related to products and services. There are two main limitations to this method.
Customer Research 101: Definition, Types, and Methods
Customer research (or consumer research) is a set of techniques used to identify the needs, preferences, behaviors, and motivations of your current or potential customers. Simply put, the consumer research process is a way for businesses to collect information and learn from their customers so they can serve them better.
What Is Consumer Research: Methods, Types, Scope & Examples
Introduction to Consumer Research. Consumer research, also known as market research, is the systematic process of gathering and analyzing data about consumers' attitudes, preferences, and behaviours. It is a vital component of strategic planning for businesses and organizations across various industries.
Consumer Research
Consumer research, also known as market research, is the process of aggregating information about consumers and their behaviours. The insights gleaned from this process allow you to better understand consumer preferences, needs, and expectations. As a result, your brand can make data-driven decisions about everything from product development to ...
A Guide to Consumer Research (Plus Tips for Conducting It)
Definition of consumer research Consumer research, or customer research, is a component of market research that helps businesses explore the preferences of their customers and learn more about what they expect from a business and its products or services. Consumer research is important to the overall function of a business because a company ...
Introduction
Consumer research is done with the intention of understanding the needs or behaviors of a particular group in order to define who to best market a product or service to, also known as identifying a target market. Customer segments can be grouped by different variables, such as demographic, geographic, psychographic (values and lifestyle), or ...
Consumer Research
Consumer research is the first thing that typically comes to mind when stakeholders are asked to think about market research and its popular use cases. The phrase 'consumer research' is typically used interchangeably with 'customer research' across all industries, with the term 'consumer' here taken to mean 'those who consume the ...
Consumer Research Guide: Best Process & Examples
Consumer research guide: best process and examples. Consumer research is all about genuine curiosity. You're not trying confirm your hopes and assumptions, or find insights that match your product or service. You're going in with an open mind, ready to learn about how your target customers feel, think, and behave—and then shaping your ...
Consumer Research: Definition, Types and Methods
Firstly, consumer research helps you understand the needs, preferences, and behavior of your target audience. By gaining these insights, you can develop products, services, and marketing strategies that align perfectly with their expectations. Secondly, consumer research allows you to identify market opportunities.
The past, present, and future of consumer research
In this article, we document the evolution of research trends (concepts, methods, and aims) within the field of consumer behavior, from the time of its early development to the present day, as a multidisciplinary area of research within marketing. We describe current changes in retailing and real-world consumption and offer suggestions on how to use observations of consumption phenomena to ...
What is Consumer Behavior Research? Definition, Examples ...
Consumer behavior research is defined as a field of study that focuses on understanding how and why individuals and groups of people make decisions related to the acquisition, use, and disposal of goods, services, ideas, or experiences. This research seeks to uncover the underlying factors and processes that influence consumers' choices ...
Consumer Research
Consumer research is the process of gathering, analyzing and using consumer data to make decisions about how to best serve the needs and interests of customers. The consumer research process typically involves five steps: Defining the research objectives. Developing a research plan. Collecting data.
An Introductory Guide to Consumer Research And How to ...
An Introductory Guide to Consumer Research And How ...
What Is Customer Research and Why Is It Important for Startups?
Customer research is the practice of identifying the preferences, attitudes, motivations, and buying behavior of the targeted buyer. Using a variety of consumer research methods to gather this information, shared traits among the different customer groups are identified and categorized into customer segments and buyer personas, which are then used to create targeted marketing campaigns.
What Consumer Research Is
mal definition of consumer research may be of little value, since consumer research will ultimately be de-fined by what researchers achieve, there is a need for direction. We begin with the premise that consumer research, whatever form it might take, seeks to produce knowledge about consumer behavior. Although simple,
The past, present, and future of consumer research
Abstract. In this article, we document the evolution of research trends (concepts, methods, and aims) within the field of consumer behavior, from the time of its early development to the present day, as a multidisciplinary area of research within marketing. We describe current changes in retailing and real-world consumption and offer ...
CONSUMER RESEARCH
CONSUMER RESEARCH definition: the study of people's opinions about products or services, and about what products or services they…. Learn more.
What is Consumer Research, and why is it important?
What is Consumer Research, and why is it important?
Consumer Research
Consumer research is the research done on consumers' preferences, attitudes, loyalty, usage and behavior in a market. It helps in understanding customers so that the marketing campaigns can be designed accordingly. Consumer research is a part of marketing research. Market Research deals with processes to understand customers and end consumers ...
PDF What is Consumer Research?
a definition intended to provide a core meaning for our field of inquiry. Specifically, I propose that we use the tierm consumer research to refer to the study of consummation in all its many aspects. Consummation thereby designates the core of the concept of consumer research. From this perspective, consumer research stands on its own as a
Meaning of consumer research in English
CONSUMER RESEARCH meaning: the study of people's opinions about products or services, and about what products or services they…. Learn more.

Consumer Research: Examples, Process and Scope

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