This work has long proven to me that market research has only one purpose: to understand the needs, desires, wants or cravings of customers and that will be the key to opening up another potential market.
This is a goal worth striving for but very elusive.
On December 28, 2005, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “It’s a Target Brand, Stupid,” co-authored by Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, with insights from Scott Cook, president of the Advertising Research Institute, and Taddy Hall, director of planning at the firm. The article deals with the controversial issue that marketers would sell more if they paid attention to branding “by understanding what their customers do and what they need, and by creating products that meet their specific needs.”
But the authors add: “When people choose a job, they inevitably buy products that are relevant to their jobs. The authors of the article also claim that they must increasingly create products that attract attention or products that customers can associate with the jobs they do.
But there remains a problem: How do we discover what customers need, want or desire that will create a prestigious brand?
As I write in my book, “customers buy things they need, like an inexpensive Chevy that’s easy to drive. They buy things they want, like a BMW, because it makes it easier to declare assets. They buy things they want, like a Porsche, because it’s a symbol of perfection. They buy things they’ve always wanted, like a PT Cruiser, because it takes them back to their childhood.”
“By skillfully understanding their identity in terms of needs, desires, wants and cravings, all of the engines – Chevy, BMW, Porsche and PTCruise – became “target brands.”
In essence, we need to create purposeful brands. But the other side of the coin – the really hard part – is to make it clear that a brand must be unique and that consumers can trust it.
Our economy is increasingly sophisticated and highly competitive. We have more options to satisfy more of our customers’ essential needs and wants. We have touched on the issue that researchers have not revealed, exploiting what may be a great need for the purpose of maintaining competition and that is not only to assert the goal of “building a unique brand”.
If more than 90% of total products fail to sell, market researchers are to blame. These products continue to have similar characteristics and lack of clear differentiation because the tactics used to conduct market research are often outdated. Many researchers have failed to develop new measures and methods to effectively identify customers' greatest wants and needs. These factors are important in determining the purpose that the brand will serve.
Here are some examples:
- What is the difference between Home Deport and Lowe's when it comes to their brand goals?
- What about Stanpler and Offceepot and OffceMax?
- What about cars when comparing a manufacturer General Motors with a product manufactured by Ford?
- Consider AllState and State Farm or CityBank and Chase.
- Look at Coke and Pepsi or Bud and Mile.
While manufacturers can easily argue that their brands all have a purpose, the work they do for their customers seems indistinguishable. I can’t point to any difference in the wants, dreams, and needs they claim as their own that would distinguish them as so-called “purpose brands.” Can you?
Simply put, researchers are using the same techniques from 20 years ago and they always assume that they are still relevant in today’s complex and volatile markets. For marketing research to be a useful tool today, creativity and innovation are more necessary than ever. Sadly, too few researchers are willing to conduct experiments with the risk involved. But there are still many promising models that can uncover customers’ needs and desires and help brands define their goals.
Today, many new research models are being tested and promising research is gaining ground over traditional methods. The problem is that we really don’t know which brands can do the job of their customers if we continue to conduct research using these outdated methods.
Think of a focus group as a 2-hour session. The session is considered a state of the art. The facilitator asks questions and texts to get the quickest response. Finally, after the facilitator has learned and the techniques seem to have worn off, the producers get the information for 2 hours (4-6 or 8 hours when multiple groups are run). Often, they think they learned something.
Most of them have the same misconceptions about their brands and products, and competition has crept into their focus group research. No wonder so many brands look the same. They’re all shooting the same gun.
The problem is often that what customers say in focus groups and what they do are different – and research has not yet been effective in understanding how attitudes and behaviors intersect to create clear, targeted opportunities. I would argue that until managers are given the time and money to develop new ways to understand this divide (and researchers are demanding management support to do so), we are a long way from achieving brand purpose.
So what to do? Well, would there be more insight, more detail if the focus group feedback came back for a second or third session? Would more needs, wants, desires emerge if customers had more time to think about our brand and the jobs they can do? Could a combination of recall and observing customers at home or at work yield a huge improvement in brand thinking? Could the concept of reinforcing consumers’ awareness of the products and brands they use help us do the job we and our brands have to do to make life easier for our customers, I think.
The way research is conducted reflects spontaneous consumer attitudes, while this may be necessary for many studies, it is rare for spontaneous consumer attitudes to be collected, which can yield a prominent brand position. So whatever you believe about market research, know that there are no new formulas that can dig deeper and allow for comfort in the familiarity created by the concept of position.
Needs, wants and desires. They are part and parcel of the tasks our brands can uniquely fulfill. Suffice it to say that a catch-all phrase (of “brand purpose”) is an oversimplification of a very complex issue.
According to Lantabrand
