Consumer Research
Understanding the market is something that isn’t much of a choice for businesses in today’s inundated economic landscape – it is a necessity, especially if the business is to survive and more importantly, thrive. Assumptions, hasty decisions and intuition can take you on a path that is hit-and-miss but the cost of failure cannot be borne easily. In that vein, we provide incisive, impactful insights for businesses that allow them to connect with their buyer on a deeper level – resulting in a suite of consumer research agency-based solutions and services that naturally hit the mark.
A Bouquet of Consumer Research Agency Offerings
The purpose of all good research is essentially to demystify, to unveil. The importance of research cannot be underscored enough in today’s information-centric world, where we are assailed by an excess of data, all at our fingertips in tiny, sleek, technological packages. Good research cuts through this clutter and showcases causes and correlations that are relevant to you on an individualistic level. Consumer research is no exception to this rule, especially when it comes to brands as entities.
In an age where trends rapidly change, where attention spans have massively declined and technological innovations are relentlessly marching on, brands naturally struggle to stay relevant. Consumer mindsets, category dynamics, technology & business dynamics are also evolving rapidly. Businesses & Brands not only need to stay in tune with times but also need to future proof themselves for higher business impact which has heralded the need for the consumer research agency and the services it can offer.
More importantly, brands need to build agile, intuitive & memorable human experiences that are relevant & transform consumer lives for the better. To this end, we offer services that rival a dedicated consumer research company’s own assortment.
Peripheral Advantages
Beyond crafting transformative human-centric experiences, consumer research can open up newer avenues that may seem peripheral in nature; however, when consolidated, can make or break a business when it comes to how your product or service is looked at. Here’s a glance at some of those for your benefit:
Competitor Analysis: In tandem with what any top consumer research company would provide, we allow you to take a glimpse at the go-to competitors as far as your consumers are concerned.
Industry Insights: Our research can unveil industry trends from an experiential, on-ground perspective as opposed to simply examining articles and scholarship that hasn’t been personally verified.
Prevalent Challenges: Consumer Research can allow our clients to get an accurate handle on the challenges that are generally plaguing their competition, or similar businesses given the current scenario.
Impetus: What are the entities (individuals, knowledge portals and other avenues) that spur your target audience when it comes to purchase decisions?
As can be observed, all of these are essential components that underpin the successful execution of a product, a service and ultimately, an experience.
The Intersection of Design and Research
Design and research have been intertwined since time immemorial, regardless of the current emphasis on research methodologies and data analytics. This includes empirical approaches that are largely inductive in nature and have their own importance when it comes to aggregating isolated instances. Alternatively, a consumer research agency may utilize deductive models that attempt to understand behavioral trends and predict consumer behavior when encountered with a targeted product or service. It follows, naturally, that both these approaches have to be blended in the right proportion depending on the nature of the client and their industry.
Beyond empirical analyses, Elephant’s strategic design research practice follows a design-led innovation approach to delve rigorously into human & cultural contexts to unearth pathbreaking brand & business insights. Our user centered focus inspires original design interventions that humanizes brands & businesses while making them future ready. We encode design intelligence within brand experiences and new product development so that they become differentiated & self-sustaining.
Our Approach to Consumer Research
Any consumer research company with a reputation depends heavily on defining a framework, or a philosophy that underpins their processes and subsequently, results. At Elephant, our philosophy is rooted in our belief that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole when it comes to brand experiences & design interventions.
While this seems controversial given the popular adage (the whole is greater than the sum), it holds true for brands given that many interlocking components need to function optimally in order to curate an experience that seems all-encompassing.
To generate these outcomes, our consumer research methods attempt to tackle several key pain points and spheres of interest simultaneously. This includes defining key consumer insight metrics, utilizing the latest, cutting-edge research tools, eliminating a haphazard approach to make way for regularity and consistency and lastly, converting our insights into actionable items for our clients.
Through purposeful sense-making, our team strives to cut through the complexities of evolving consumer mindsets, emerging markets and competitive landscapes. This outstrips the conventional consumer research agency and the approach that is generally adopted. We strive to build tangible differentiation into your business at brand, product, service & experience levels through unbundling value that propels transformative change and promises business growth.
Refined Methodologies
Any top consumer research company will ideally blend primary and secondary research to arrive at insights that truly make a difference, and we are no exception. This includes, but is not limited to exploratory approaches (surface-level forays that are open-ended), targeted sourcing (from public, commercial and internal archives) as well as delving into the more academic areas like cultural anthropology, sociology, ethnography and more.
A cross-disciplinary approach is something we value above all else, since both: businesses and their intended audiences are multifaceted entities, whose behaviors cannot simply be decoded via a monolithic, static approach. In addition to performing Social Listening and Digital Ethnographic scans, our process is laid out for your perusal:
Design intelligence for transformative impact.
Category exploration study
Insights for Brand identity
Concept analysis & decoding
Usage & attitude evaluation
Trends and scenario mapping
Touch point experience audit