Majority of American Consumers Feel Comfortable With Smart Home
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MAJORITY OF AMERICAN CONSUMERS FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH SMART HOME
56% of American consumer report feeling extremely or very comfortable with smart home products.
LOUISVILLE, Ky (February 13, 2019)—Internet connected homes have gone beyond niche early adopters, with the majority (56%) Americans feeling comfortable with IoT technology. In TraQline’s inaugural Smart Home survey, 69% of household reported owning a smart product. Further, 35% of consumers reported having bought a smart product within the past six months. TraQline’s Smart Home survey covers not only penetration and purchase of smart home products, but the usage and attitudes of consumers—including who’s using the products and how often.
“Of the 2,045 households surveyed, nearly 70% owned a smart home product. For those smart products owned, over 60% of the time consumers are extremely interested or very interested in buying another,” says Brennan Callahan, a director of National Accounts for TraQline, “This shows the value consumers place on the convenience of smart home products”
Other takeaways from this recent survey include:
- The top three factors that influence a consumer’s smart product purchase are Price (68%), Ease of Use (50%), and Security concerns (37%).
- 39% of consumers surveyed indicate that they plan to purchase a smart thermostat within the next six months (44% intend to purchase a smart home security camera).
- 40% of smart products are used two or more times a day.
TraQline Smarthome provides additional usage and attitudes for 27 different categories, measuring attributes such as: why people purchase, who in household uses smart functions, type of devices controlled by Alexa and Google, importance of smart home features, features desired, and more.
About TraQline
Syndicated by The Stevenson Company, the TraQline™ suite of market data delivers improved market intelligence for US retailers and manufacturers. TraQline™ launched its Smart Home survey in November 2018 to capture consumer purchases and usage/attitudes of smart home products. When combined with 300,000 TraQline US respondents, this bi-annual survey is the largest of its kind.
TraQline’s syndicated survey solutions provide consumer market research and insights that can be customized based on the individual needs of the retailers and manufacturers. For more information, please visit http://www.traqline.com or follow us on Twitter (@TraQline) for updates on our products and consumer trends.
For more information, contact Eric Voyer: 502-271-5267 or ericv@traqline.com.
Statistical Testing: 6 Questions You Need To Ask First
Statistics plays an important role in research projects: without them, you may be making decisions based off the roll of the dice. The more in-depth you go with statistics and data, the more confusing it can seem. It’s easy to make mistakes without ever realizing it. If you don’t already have that PhD in Statistics, we’ve got a few questions you should consider when thinking about data and statistical testing, whether from your own research or something your competitor has published:
1. Do you understand the difference between correlation and causation?
The classic example used to explain the difference between correlation and causation is that as ice cream sales increase, so do shark attacks. Therefore, ice cream sales must cause shark attacks! Thankfully for ice cream lovers everywhere, this is a case where correlation does not equal causation. Correlation describes the size and direction of a relationship between two variables (the ice cream sales and shark attack rates in our example). Causation indicates that one is the result of the other.
In more practical terms, if you see your sales go up when you lower your price, you have a correlation between your sales and your price. But lowering the price may not have caused the sales increase. Other factors that could have contributed include:
- Seasonality: Is this a time of year when your sales increase anyway? (such as in the example of shark attacks and ice cream sales)
- Competition: Did competitive actions impact your sales?
- Product: Did you introduce a new product with new features?
The point: If you see correlation, make sure you look at the bigger picture before assuming causation.
2. Are you using the right terminology?
Describing results in stats testing is one case where being nit-picky about word choice is important. For example, if a measure in your research goes from 5% to 10%, that is a 5 percentage point increase, not a 5 percent increase. The latter is often incorrectly cited in research (for the record—this is actually a 100% increase). Being exact is necessary when describing data and trends, so that you can make informed decisions based on your research.
The point: Using the right terminology will allow researchers and non-researchers alike to more objectively understand the results.
3. Are you overdoing the stats analysis?
It’s tempting to do every analysis you can think of with your data. You want to be thorough and make sure you extract every last detail from the numbers.
Sometimes those additional analyses are completely unnecessary. Often, simple cross tabs can provide all the insights you need to make a confident decision. Think of it this way: review your objectives for the research. If analyzing cross tabs provides answers to all your on-going questions, then you likely don’t need to go any further by delving into more complex statistics.
The Point: Spending time on additional, unnecessary multivariate analyses can prolong your timeline and add additional costs that don’t give you any extra benefits.
4. How large is the denominator?
You may see brands claiming things like, “It’s the fastest growing brand in the market”. While probably true, statements like that can be very misleading. For example, if a brand had 1% share and increased to 2%, that would be a 100% increase—which could make it the fastest growing brand, but only because it started with such a small share. That large increase is due to the denominator in the calculation being so small (1% in the example: 2%/1% = 100%). The claim sounds great and is technically correct. However, the brand still only has a 2% share, which doesn’t exactly make it a major player.
The Point: Statistics can be used to manipulate takeaways. Don’t fall into this trap. Use stats transparently and honestly and your results will be replicable and reputable.
5. What’s the confidence level vs. sample size?
One question our team is frequently asked is “What sample size is statistically significant?”
As your sample size increases, the stat testing will become more sensitive- smaller differences between two scores will be significant.
Technically, you can get statistical significance at almost any sample size. However, to determine the sample size you need when measuring share of preference, you need to ask two specific questions:
- What confidence level do you want? (95% and 90% confidence levels are the most commonly used)
- What size difference in two data points do you expect to be or want to be statistically different
Confidence level: Confidence level can be defined as the repeatability of the experiment. In plain English: at a 95% confidence level, for every 100 times you complete the experiment, you will receive the same results 95 times. As your confidence level decreases, you need smaller differences for statistical significance because the criteria relax somewhat.
Put into practice, at a 95% level of confidence with a sample size of 100, you need a difference of around 10 points for a significant difference between two market share numbers*. With a sample size of 200 and the same level of confidence, there only needs to be a difference of about 7 points. However, there is a level of diminishing returns with sample size. Past a sample of 500 or so, your gains in sensitivity become very small.
Size difference: When you’re basing you study size on a necessary confidence level, it’s important to make an assumption about how close the preference levels may be. Using our example above, you can see that if you expect preference between two brands to be only 7 points, a sample size of 100 will not yield significant results at 95%. Guessing at the share difference isn’t always easy, so it may be best to consult with a statistician to determine the trade-offs between sample size, cost, and significance.
*The exact difference needed varies depending on the actual numbers, but that’s a stat lesson for another day. To further drive home the complexity: the difference needed to determine statistical significance can vary depending on the exact question.
The point: When you’re deciding on a sample size, the correct number for your study will become a question of how much sensitivity you want versus how much of your budget is allotted for paying for sample.
6. Which tests are you using?
T-test. ANOVA. Chi-square. 1-tail. 2-tail. Independent samples…there are numerous options when it comes to statistical testing. With so many choices, it’s easy to feel uncertain when you’re doing all the testing yourself. Partnering with a research supplier often means that there is a statistician on hand who can help guide you through your options. While we’re not going to go in-depth to explain these different tests now, you can look forward to another stats lesson in a future post.
There is a lot that goes into interpreting statistics and data from market research. While it may feel overwhelming, you usually don’t have to have a PhD Statistician like we do to understand everything. Remember: Keeping it simple will often give you most of the data you’re looking for. If you do need more in-depth analysis, partnering with the Stevenson Company’s analysts will offer a free consultation and give you the additional resources and support you need to make informed decisions. Are there other parts of statistical analysis that are confusing you? Shoot us an email and we can help point you in the right direction.
Six Times You Might Want to Choose A Research Supplier
SurveyMonkey can be a quick and inexpensive vehicle for research projects. What’s more is they’ve done a fantastic job of building out tools you need to both acquire respondents and analyze the data they give you. They’ve even provided robust tutorials for neophytes who are planning their first projects. That said, there are times when it may not be the right fit for your project. We’ve outlined a few situations where partnering with a research provider may be optimal for your situation:
1) You might not have any previous experience with surveys and/or research
When creating a survey on SurveyMonkey, you are the survey writer. And writing an effective survey, even a simple one, takes practice. Tips for writing clear surveys abound (including on our own site!), and the more you practice, the better you’ll become. Make sure you write your questions and have someone read them over to ensure they aren’t misleading or fall into some other common traps. If you’ve never written a survey before, it may be safer to use an experienced research supplier. Otherwise, you may be making costly mistakes without realizing it.
2) You have a very specific and hard-to-find target
Between deciding what your niche is and finding your niche, reaching the right audience can be difficult. The narrower in scope your research sample target is, the lower your effective sampling incidence becomes. SurveyMonkey is one panel. While it does have tools for reaching a target audience, depending on how specialized your target is, they may have difficulty finding your target and helping you hit your goals. This can have implications for both cost and basic feasibility. For example, you may need feedback from recent purchasers of your product. But if your product has a purchase cycle that is years in length, something like major appliances or automobiles, finding recent purchasers will be more difficult. Working with an experienced research supplier can help mitigate any frustration, as they’re accustomed to this and have solutions. They’re more likely to be effective at finding your specific sample target.
Additionally, a research supplier can help you think more broadly about who your actual sample target is. For example, an appliance manufacturer may be introducing a new line of high-end appliances. The most obvious target is current owners of high-end appliances. However, there may be other targets/other way to think about targets. You may want to interview owners of mid-tier appliances who are looking to upgrade. Or you may want to talk to people building new homes who will need to furnish their entire kitchens. As before, research suppliers can help identify and find these alternate, but potentially important sample targets.
3) Your study is a B2B Study
Finding and getting responses from professionals for your survey is much more difficult than your standard consumer survey. As in the example of finding narrow consumer samples above, a research supplier will have professionals they can access for surveys, and know how to incent them to respond.
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4) Your survey is long and/or complex
It’s critical to keep a respondent engaged while they’re taking your survey, especially if the survey is long. You can’t list question after question and expect the respondent to stay focused and give thoughtful answers. It takes skill to craft a survey that is as engaging on its last question as it was on its first.
Additionally, you may be planning intense statistical analysis. Questions designed for studies that utilize conjoints or MaxDiff questioning are difficult to write well and are also tricky to program. Your research supplier will be an expert at survey writing and ensure the appropriate handling of your survey regardless of length or complexity.
5) Your back-end statistical analysis is complex
The statistical analyses offered by services like SurveyMonkey will suit the needs of simple surveys. However, if you need a more robust analysis on the back end, this can be difficult if you’re not already an accomplished statistician. You could take a stats class to learn how to do multivariate analyses such as conjoints, MaxDiffs, regressions, or factor or cluster analyses, but is that the best use of your time? A research supplier will have statisticians on staff specifically to help with these in-depth analyses.
6) You simply don’t have the time to do it all yourself
Developing a survey, analyzing its results, and writing reports on those results take time—sometimes more than you initially anticipated. This can be especially true if you’re new to the process. You need to be realistic about resources, and whether you’ll have the time to devote to fully running a research project. Don’t forget, your time is valuable as well. If you weigh the opportunity costs, you may find that your time is better spent working on other tasks while a trusted research supplier runs your project.
In the end, SurveyMonkey is an excellent tool for basic research. If you’ve already got some survey writing experience, aren’t planning any complex statistical analyses, and have the time to dedicate to the reporting, SurveyMonkey will help you plan your research at a reasonable cost. If you need to go above and beyond, reaching out to a trusted research partner like The Stevenson Company will help you achieve those complex goals. Want to know whether your project would benefit from having a research supplier? Contact us today and we’ll help you determine what’s best for your project!
Consumer Loyalty High For OPE Repair Parts
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONSUMER LOYALTY HIGH FOR OPE REPAIR PARTS
While brands like Stihl and WORX inspire loyalty, others have room to grow.
LOUISVILLE, Ky (November 30, 2018)—According to TraQline’s most recent Maintenance and Replacement Parts™ (MRP) survey, on average 35% of people who own a specific brand of OPE product will buy replacement parts or products that are the same brand as the OPE product. The survey, which tracks purchasing and consumer behavior for upkeep of outdoor power equipment products, also revealed which brands are more likely to inspire consumer loyalty than others. For example, more than half of consumers who are purchasing replacement parts for a WORX or Stihl branded OPE will choose that brand for the replacement or maintenance product as well.
“We’ve seen some brands that have inspired consumer loyalty,” says David Garcia, a Director of National Accounts for TraQline™, “However, while third party brands are doing well with most products, the majority of OEMs have ample opportunity to increase loyalty to their respective brands.”
Other takeaways from this recent survey include:
- Replacement and maintenance parts are most frequently bought for mowers (both walk-behind and zero turn/riding), and least frequently bought for hedge trimmers and snow throwers
- The most commonly purchased repair and maintenance parts are oil and spark plugs for lawn mowers, trimmer lines for line/string trimmers, and chains for chain saws.
- About 16% of consumers don’t know the brand name of the replacement parts they purchased.
About TraQline
TraQline™ delivers improved market intelligence for US retailers and manufacturers. TraQline™ launched its Maintenance and Repair Parts (MRP) survey in January 2018 to capture consumer purchases of OPE maintenance and replacement parts in retail stores. Its syndicated survey solutions provide consumer market research and insights that can be customized based on the individual needs of the retailers and manufacturers. For more information, please visit http://www.traqline.com, or follow us on Twitter (@TraQline) for updates on our products and consumer trends.
For more information, contact Eric Voyer: 502-271-5267 or ericv@traqline.com.
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8 Tips For Writing A Questionnaire
When writing a survey, the goal is to make it as easy as possible for your respondents to give you accurate information. If your respondents are confused or frustrated, you won’t be able to collect information that you can act on. With more than 75 years combined experience in writing surveys, the Custom Research team has highlighted their top tips for writing an understandable questionnaire that will get you actionable data:
Ask only one question at a time
You want to get as much information as possible from your respondents, and it’s easy to be tempted to cram a lot into each question. Unfortunately, that makes it difficult to determine what the respondent is actually saying. If a restaurant’s questionnaire asks “Rate your server’s friendliness and efficiency on a scale of 1-10,” there’s no way of knowing if the respondent’s rating correlates with “friendliness” or “efficiency”. Asking two separate questions, “Rate your server’s friendliness...” and “Rate your server’s efficiency…” will give you a more accurate understanding of the traits you’re seeking to measure.
Use easy-to-understand language
It’s tempting to use technical jargon when writing questions- after all, this is your product or service that you’re writing about, so you have a deeper familiarity with it than a potential survey respondent. However, while this may be perfectly clear to you, respondents may be puzzled. When you write survey questions, it’s best to be as simple and clear as possible. If you’re not certain that your question is easily understandable, ask an outsider! Consider asking a friend or family member (or even a coworker unfamiliar with your product or service) the question to make sure they understand it.
Don’t lead the witness
Make sure you’re not asking questions that inadvertently suggest what sort of answer you want to receive from the respondent. For example, you should avoid phrases like “Most people say… Do you agree?” or “Wouldn’t you say that…” This type of phrasing encourages respondents to answer in certain ways, regardless of what their true opinion is.
Don’t give away the answer
Sometimes you’ll need to ask both open ended (respondents answer with their own thoughts) and closed ended (respondents react to specific ideas/statements you provide) questions about a topic. In those cases, make sure the open-ended questions are asked first. For example, suppose you want to know what’s important to consumers when they’re shopping for your type of product. First, ask them the question and allow them to respond with whatever comes to mind (this would be the “open-ended” question). You could follow up with a closed-ended question asking them to select qualities that might be important to them from a list you provide. By asking the open-ended version of the question first, you’re ensuring that you’re getting qualities that are top-of-mind for the respondents. If you’d asked the closed-ended version first, they may just be repeating the qualities that you listed, without mentioning what’s truly important to them.
Make it easy for them to be honest
It’s important to keep your identity under wraps when conducting a survey. You want honest opinions on your products and services, so you need respondents to remain unbiased. If respondents know that this is your survey, one of two things could happen:
- Respondents may be “nicer” than they would otherwise be, so as not to seem mean OR
- Respondents may be even harsher than usual, as a way to “get back” at you over negative past experiences. (Not that this feedback isn’t important, it’s just more valuable when the respondent doesn’t have an ulterior motive)
In both cases, you’re not getting an accurate reflection of the respondent’s views. One way to camouflage your own involvement and get honest responses is to ask questions about your competition in addition to your own products. Not only do you get useful competitive information, it makes it harder for respondents to discern who created the survey (which is much easier for them to do if your product or service is the only one being asked about).
Try and keep your scales consistent
The types of questions you’re asking will generally help you determine what kind of scales to use. Depending on the questions, you will need to consider:
- Scale Polarity
- bi-polar (have a middle/neutral response with positive and negative options on either side)
- unipolar (responses are all positive to different degrees)
- Number of options
- 5, 7, or 10 options are typical
- Even number of options (forces a positive or negative response) vs. odd number of options (allows for a neutral response)
By keeping scales consistent (i.e.; a bi-polar scale with 5 options) as much as possible, you’ll make things easier for the respondent, which in turns means you’ll receive more accurate responses from them. When the scales are similar across the board, the respondent quickly gets familiar with the task, and can answer questions confidently. If each question has different scales, the respondent will constantly have to “relearn” the task, which is frustrating at best and confusing at worst—and could lead to less accurate responses.
Randomization and Rotation
As we mentioned with setting up the order of open-ended and closed-ended questions, the very order of questions in your survey can introduce bias. One of the ways to avoid that is to randomize and rotate the order that questions appear to different respondents. With a list of attributes, randomize the order for each respondent—though the list should appear in that same order for the respondent every time in order to minimize confusion. This way that over the course of getting all the completed surveys, each attribute will have opportunities to appear at the beginning, middle, and end of lists. If you’re evaluating multiple stimuli, such as two brands or concepts, rotate the order in which they appear in the survey. For example, half of the respondents may see Option A followed by Option B, while the other half see Option B followed by Option A. (As a side note, don’t go back and forth between options with your questions. Ask all your questions for Option A and then move onto Option B. This allows respondents to keep their focus on a particular option.) Methods like randomization and rotation help eliminate the inherent bias that’s introduced if everything is always shown in the exact same order
Make sure your answers are mutually exclusive
If the same answer appears in two options in a question, it will confuse the respondent and result in data errors. For example, suppose you want to know how much someone spends each week on groceries. The respondent wants to answer $50. If you use this scale:
- $0-$50
- $50-$100
- $100-$200
- More than $200
The respondent won’t be sure which option to check since each of that amount appears in 2 different places. By slightly adjusting your scale to:
- Less than $50
- $50-$100
- $101-$200
- More than $200
You’ve solved the problem and made it easier for the respondent to give you an accurate answer.
Ultimately, the quality of the data you collect will only be as good as the effectiveness of the survey you use. As a final tip, once you have written and programmed your survey be sure and test it yourself and with others. This will confirm it is working the way you envisioned and provide reassurance regarding the data you are gathering.
Need help writing your survey? The Stevenson Company’s experts can give you an unbiased view of your survey. Our experts have decades of experience writing, implementing, and analyzing surveys. Contact us today for your free consultation.
Kenmore is the Diamond in the Rough for Sears
In its heyday, the Kenmore brand once commanded the largest share of major appliance sales. However, Sears, Kenmore’s parent retailer, last had a profitable year in 2010. At the beginning of its steady decline beginning in 2009, Kenmore’s share was 20%. Today, it holds just over 10% of the market share. Recent reports of Sears’ CEO Eddie Lampert offering to buy the brand name and Amazon’s deal to sell the brand on their site, have further increased speculation of a brand which is gasping for air. However, these are signs that Eddie Lampert may know what many people do not – that there is evidence that indicates that Kenmore is still holding on to some of its cultural currency, especially with regards to loyalty.
Kenmore Market Share and Shopping is Down
Currently, nearly 70% of Kenmore’s product mix is made up of three products: refrigerators, washers, and dryers. In fact, dryers recently saw 3 quarters of significant year over year growth before stabilizing in Q1 2018.
In the last three years, the market has been in a give and take with manufacturers like GE, Electrolux, and Whirlpool, while Korean Appliance manufacturers Samsung and LG have gained share (6% combined share gain from 2015 to present). Conversely, Kenmore’s brand share for major appliances has fallen significantly each quarter, but still holds 10% of the market (units sold in Q2 2018).
With Kenmore being a cornerstone of the Sears Appliance store, the closing of Sears stores across the nation (78 more closings in September) has taken its toll on the percentage of people shopping the Kenmore brand (online or brick and mortar). This percent of shoppers, once in parity (or above) all other brands now rests at 17% for the most recent quarter – well below its primary competitors.
A Case for Kenmore and Brand Loyalty
Despite fewer people shopping for the brand, Kenmore still consistently closes its sales with more than half of the people who shop it. In fact, Kenmore’s close rates surpass both Samsung & LG, though it’s still slightly lower than brands like Whirlpool, General Electric, or Frigidaire.
Kenmore’s value to its loyal customers remains high. 51% of Kenmore buyers are replacing an appliance of the same brand. Despite Sears outlets fading, more than half of all Kenmore buyers only shopped the one brand. That puts them nearly 10% ahead of those who only shopped for Samsung and slightly ahead of Whirlpool, GE, and Maytag for buyers who only shopped one brand.
In addition to inspiring loyalty, consumers who buy Kenmore feel that they’re getting good value for their money. When asked about why they chose to buy Kenmore, customers cite Kenmore’s good brand name as frequently as those who buy Whirlpool or GE. They’re also more likely to cite having previously owned the brand than those who purchased other brands. The competitive pricing on Kenmore’s products also endears them to consumers. With an average price of $649 for major appliances, Kenmore is on the lower end of average prices for appliances. But the lower average prices don’t make consumers feel that they aren’t buying a quality product. In TraQline’s surveys, consumers buying Kenmore indicate that the quality of the product influences their choice as often as those who buy GE or Whirlpool.
The Future of Kenmore | Market Research Data
Sears has had a rough time lately, but there is still value in its in-house appliance brand. Kenmore major appliances may not occupy the same cultural cachet they once had, but they’re still relevant in the market. In fact, with their recent alliance with Amazon, Kenmore appliances are more likely to be bought online as compared to major appliances as a whole (17% for Kenmore vs 15% for the market, per TraQline market research data in the R4Q June 2018). By making inroads with loyal demographics and expanding their availability through e-commerce alliances like the one they’ve developed with Amazon, they can continue to reach consumers.
TraQline keeps you in the know about the appliance industry with detailed market trends and consumer insight. Use this industry insight to access the data you need to reach your target market and make informed business decisions surrounding the latest trends. Contact the industry research experts at TraQline to get started today.
What Takes a Research Supplier's Report From Good to Great
At the end of a study, you’ve ideally been given a report that is both thoughtful and full of actionable insights. Depending on your past experiences with research suppliers, you might not be familiar with the hallmarks that separate a good report from a great report. Here, we’re outlining the steps we take to ensure that our own clients receive optimal reports that allow them to achieve their business goals.
The report tells a logical, comprehensive story
When surveys are written, they’re designed to flow logically for the person taking the survey. This flow helps respondents understand and answer questions accurately. However, this doesn’t mean that the report should follow the survey’s flow. Instead, the report should address the objectives and answer the key questions around which you’re basing your decisions. On The Stevenson Company’s end, we use the report as a story to tell the reader what we’ve learned while conducting the study.
There aren’t too many pages
We call it “research by the pound” – many people associate a long report with a better report. While being thorough is important, trudging through a data dump is counter-productive. Instead, a focus on answering the questions that will help you make your decisions should be the main section of the report. Data that’s been gathered that isn’t as vital to your decision-making process is included in an appendix. Using this layout ensures our reports have the most important information and action items in the main section of the report, but all the data is available in an appendix to anyone who wants to dive into the minutia of the study.
The charts and tables are understandable
Tables and charts are sometimes accused of being too esoteric to easily understand. It’s easy to get lost in overstuffed tables and lose sight of the really important information. The research team at The Stevenson Company believes that the key data in reports should practically leap off the page. Overstuffed graphics can cause readers to glaze over and lose focus, but a well-placed infographic or fine-tuned table can help readers visualize the data more easily. Save the heavy-duty tables for the appendix.
The key information is at the top of the page
All too often, the first thing at the top of a page in the report will be the title of a chart, or the question name. While this information is important, it’s better positioned a little further down the page. Instead, our research team puts a statement or bullet point that summarizes the key findings from that page. This way, the reader will still be able to absorb the most important information even when just skimming the report. The more detailed data will still be available for when they have the time or inclination to read it.
The executive summary is effective
At The Stevenson Company, we believe that a good executive summary does two things-
- It presents all the key learnings from the study without being too long. If someone only reads the executive summary and doesn’t look any further, they’ll still have a strong grasp of what the study learned.
- It includes both implications and recommendations. The results should provide you with actionable data, and the executive summary should list those recommended action steps.
After reading the executive summary, you may not agree with all the recommendations that your supplier makes. You’ve got insights into your business that your supplier doesn’t have. On the other hand, they have an outside perspective that just might prove valuable from a consumer’s perspective. Regardless, the suggestions and implications should give you food for thought as you consider what actions to take after completing the study.
A lot of time, care, and effort goes into creating the deliverables that you receive at the end of a study. Every research provider will have a unique take on what they feel is most important. The Stevenson Company feels that taking steps to ensure that the deliverable is logical, easy to follow, and actionable helps improve your experience.
How to Use Consumer Data from Tracking Surveys
When diving into data analysis for your business, the sheer volume of data can be overwhelming. Having a better understanding of your data so you can identify how to target your consumer is essential. There are many tools available for market insights: consumer tracking data, government data, internal sales data, industry association data, POS. In this article, we’ll focus on how tracking surveys can give you a wealth of information about customers and give you a competitive advantage in pursuing potential customers to help move your business forward (for more on the others, click here). By using tracking surveys like TraQline, you are able to track, monitor, and compare behavior and market trends to create significant value for your company.
Tracking and Monitoring
An important component to understanding your customer is to recognize your customers’ purchasing behavior. Every company should be tracking and monitoring their customers’ purchasing behavior over time to identify movements and market share trends. When looking at the changes in market share for you and your competitors, you can identify if particular competitors are gaining or losing ground. Consistency over time provides great insight in comparing price levels and market share trends. Here are some key measures that you can track over time:
Market Share – Every brand and retailer can look at comp sales. But while it may be great to see that you’ve grown your sales volumes by 15% vs. last year, if the market grew by 20%, you may be in trouble. Market share takes into account market growth as well as your growth and provides a scorecard for performance. As an added, and possibly more important, bonus, not only can you track your performance, but also your competitors as well. Add in the ability to track up-and coming brands and this metric is indispensable.
Pricing trends – a quick look at unit shares and dollar shares will often reveal a disparity between each. A higher unit share compared to dollar shares highlights lower than average industry pricing. This insight can help you understand positioning of competitors, retailers, or brands – giving you valuable knowledge about what gaps might exist for your products.
Online performance and mix – Amazon isn’t the only retailer selling online. Recently announced, Microsoft and Walmart are teaming up to grow online sales. Best Buy, Lowe’s, Sears, even manufacturers are selling online. Monitoring this trend and the changes will help you ensure your online strategy is working against others in the industry. For example, if online sales are cutting into the market, you can redirect your strategy focus more on online advertising and e-commerce applications.
Draw (Consideration) Rate – Obviously, if consumers don’t shop your store, they’ll never be able to buy your products. Draw rate provides hard data on what percentage of buyers for a category are shopping your brand/store. Measuring over time allows you to measure the long-term impact of promotions, store additions, and strategic changes for you and your competition.
Close Rate – What happens to the consumer once they’re in your store? Hopefully you close the sale. Close rate measures the % of your shoppers who end up purchasing. Use this metric to quantify the impact of in-stocks, salespersons, pricing, and strategic changes.
Brand penetration – having insight into what percentage of a retailer’s sales is devoted to each brand can be a critical component in determining where a potential brand or feature might fit into the product lineup. When looking at this penetration over time, retailers and manufacturers alike can identify shifts in brand alliances, thus proactively implementing measures to ensure your store or brand has just the right mix.
Incidentally, TraQline's quarterly reporting covers all of these key measurements and more. If you'd like to learn more about the data TraQline can provide, check out our Deliverables page.
More about online: Analyzing Shoppers' Online Behaviors
Beyond measuring share and trends for online mix, understanding online shopping behaviors can further lend to understanding and address your brand positioning. When you have a buyer persona established for your ideal customer, determining where and how often those shoppers are shopping online can help you determine how to increase your market share. Are you losing ground to online consumers? If so, figuring out where and why they are shopping online can help your marketing strategy.
This kind of analysis should look beyond raw numbers to give context to the reasons consumers provide for shopping online. Are they merely browsing online or are they purchasing online? The distinction between your draw and close rates becomes vital to understanding these reports. Analyzing prices paid, units sold, and their effect on your pricing and marketing models is essential for you to understand the degree to which online retailers represent genuine competition to your business.
Analyzing Market Conditions
Looking at the stability of the market and your customer base is critical to understanding the level to which you need to manage your business. Repeat customers can help identify brand strength. Looking at data of your own customers can determine whether or not you need to do more to retain customer loyalty to your business. But a tracking survey can identify whether customers shopping around more or purchasing less of your products or services relative to your competition? If so, you may need to refocus your strategy based on data about how consumer segments are buying.
In a broader sense, looking at the data on market changes is beneficial to your business. For example, if a competitor (or one of your retail partners) has gone out of business, you may have an opportunity to target their former customers. Understanding who these customers are, why consumers shop at other stores, and what brands are sold there can provide critical insights into what retailers stand to gain share from another retailer’s loss. Looking at the overall market condition gives you a chance to prepare for the future and identify any potential problems.
Identifying Market Opportunities
Of course, market conditions do not just speak to defensive needs. If you identify gaps in the market, you can turn those into offensive opportunities for your company. These can include an underperforming category or an opening for a product or service at a particular price point. Either way, if you identify a market opportunity that is underserved, you can move in and direct your marketing to help bolster your market share and general positioning.
Beyond looking at markets in which you already serve customers, you may benefit from looking at additional market opportunities. Are there areas in which competitors have found immediate success or lasting failure? Either of these can speak to the benefits of you expanding into those areas. Looking at opportunities in the market can inspire you to not only fill out your own market opportunity but to grow into others that may not even hold a direct competition for you.
Keep Moving Forward
Analyzing data is an important step in learning more about your customers and how to target their purchase process. Identifying your customers’ purchase behaviors will help you have a better understanding of your market and be able to shape your marketing strategy to be more effective and cost-efficient. The more you can implement data analysis – specifically tracking survey data like TraQline - into your marketing approach, the stronger you will grow in the long run.
5 Major Ways Consumer Durables Studies Differ From CPG Studies
If you’re coming from the world of research on consumer-packaged goods (also known as CPG—things like potato chips, diapers, or soap) into the world of consumer durables (things like refrigerators or mattresses), or vice-versa, it’s easy to assume you know what to expect. CPG and consumer durables may be fundamentally different things, but research is research, right? However, the differences between these categories of goods are vast enough that you’ll sometimes need to take a different tack to get to the information you want. There are some big implications for how research can be done and how much it will cost for each product category. It may seem obvious, but it can be easy to overlook things like the purchase cycle, purchase impact, and other important factors. Here are a few key differences to consider:
Longer Product Purchase Cycle:
CPG are bought frequently- often weekly or monthly (perhaps even more often). Consumer durables, on the other hand, may only be purchased every few years. If you’re planning a study that requires consumers who made a purchase recently, it’s far easier to find CPG customers than it is Consumer Durables customers. Finding those more difficult-to-reach durables customers that fit the criteria, might mean your study will spend longer in the field, and drive up the cost. Despite the increased difficulty, don’t cut corners – you’ll want to keep your research focused on recent or likely purchasers, regardless of the length of the purchase cycle.
Different Customer Path to Purchase:
Whereas a consumer might grab a bag of potato chips off the shelves of the grocery store in a hangry moment, odds are good that their choice in refrigerator or lawn mower is a little less impulsive. This adds different nuances to the kinds of questions you might ask a consumer about his or her purchases. For example, it makes sense to drill deep into the purchase process for their new lawnmower, but not for that bag of chips. On the other hand, for that bag of chips, you might need additional questions about what’s eye-catching to ensure it stands out in a grocery aisle.
More Involved Methodology:
Two of the more common tests for new products are in-home tests and central location tests. When testing CPG, it’s not difficult to send something like a new razor or a soft-drink to someone’s home for them to test. Putting a test mattress or clothes washer into someone’s home is more challenging, to put it lightly. Beyond access to the materials needing to be tested, there’s the matter of time. A quick taste test (like Pepsi’s famous Pepsi Challenge) to form a consumer’s opinion is easily done with CPG. It’s unreasonable—if not impossible—for consumers to form an opinion on something like how comfortable a mattress is in just a few minutes. Ideally, a consumer would need to sleep on a mattress the whole night, or even several nights. Central location tests help consumers form opinions on certain aspects of large, hard-to-evaluate products, where they can be hands-on with the product without having the product in their own home. But this still has some limitations. While testers can judge things like aesthetics, it’s hard to weigh in on a major appliance’s performance if testers can’t run a test load of laundry or put their own groceries into a fridge. If an evaluation of product interaction is essential and in-home testing is simply not a feasible option, the experience can be re-created at a central location. A refrigerator or clothes washer can be set up and consumers can be recruited to come and unload bags of groceries or do a load of laundry.
Longer Lead Times for Testing:
Depending on the complexity of the project, there can be significant lead-times on consumer durables projects. New prototypes must often be custom built, as there’s no manufacturer with an assembly line producing what’s needed. Lead time requirements for CPG are a bit different. While more time might be spent formulating new ideas, it typically doesn’t require a whole new assembly line to be built just to add a new flavor to chips. This allows for a more flexible timetable for CPG testing. There’s less time between when an idea is brainstormed to when a testable product can be put into a consumer’s hand. You’ll find it beneficial to plan our consumer durables research well in advance, working closely with engineering and design.
Logistic Considerations for Products:
As we mentioned previously, it can be difficult to get bulky consumer durables to people for hands-on testing. Due to the size of things like mattresses or refrigerators, there’s an added layer of logistical considerations that CPG doesn’t face. Large consumer durables take time and money to ship to the appropriate place, whether that location is a consumer’s home or a central testing facility. If a central location is being used, it must have adequate space to accommodate multiple large prototypes.
Many standard focus group facilities may not have rooms large enough and other types of locations (i.e. hotel conference rooms) may need to be considered. Once on site, final delivery of the prototypes also will likely require extra time (it’s not easy moving 6 refrigerators) and special arrangements. For example, you’ll need to consider:
- Does delivery need to be after hours?
- If needed, what elevator is available? (The main one may not be suitable)
- Is there a place to park the delivery truck? (Not a given in large metropolitan areas.)
Next, there are additional time considerations to account for when it comes to set-up. Additionally, it’s usually a good idea to have someone on call who can help with any troubleshooting needs that might arise as consumers interact with prototypes.
All these considerations can be handled by a well-prepared research team. We’ve discussed how to choose research providers that fit your needs, as well as how to have open lines of communication with your research providers before. Finding a research provider who’s familiar with the kinds of product testing you need will help you avoid potential pitfalls as you progress. Some teams, like the one assembled by The Stevenson Company, have experience with both CPG and Consumer Durables, and can help you test everything from the box of frozen pizza to the oven where that pizza will be cooked and the kitchen table where it will be eaten.
Understanding the Design and Function of Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence is an ongoing process that identifies competitors and their actions to allow you to look at current and future market activities and respond accordingly. In a broad sense, competitive intelligence encompasses every aspect of what a business does. Within your business, this can include gathering the following information about you and your competitors:
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- Analyzing financial data
- Addressing production and distribution capabilities
- Assessing the corporate structure and the performance of the people filling each role
- Evaluating marketing and competitive threats
Each of these elements benefits from different kinds of expertise. For our purposes, we will look at how to gather and apply competitive intelligence to direct marketing and strategic efforts. The process relies on collecting information and data to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of competitors. This includes understanding the similarities and differences among what other companies do in the market. Following the collection and analysis of competitive intelligence, you can create your action plan to capitalize on your knowledge of marketplace conditions.
This article will focus on the first half of the marketing and competitive threat equation: how to identify, gather, and utilize market intelligence. Strategic analyses and decisions should stem from this intelligence, but compiling and understanding the right data comes first. In particular, we will focus on the following areas:
I. How to gather competitive intelligence
II. How to asses the competitive market
III. How to organize competitive intelligence
IV. How data points yield insights into market trends
V. Avoiding Analysis Paralysis
VI. How to move forward on competitive intelligence
How To Gather Competitive Intelligence
Gathering this competitive intelligence requires an understanding of the tools that are used to collect it. Companies gather competitive intelligence through both quantitative and qualitative methods. Qualitative methods are frequently used before quantitative and are often used to determine attitudes and feelings about a product, service, or industry. Quantitative intelligence is based on collecting enough data to draw statistically significant observations about the market. Analyzing market volume trends, sales trends, or market shares are examples of quantitative intelligence. On the other hand, qualitative intelligence relies less on collecting vast quantities of information and more on observations and descriptions. Naturally, both are valuable – providing insights upon which organizations can act on in different ways.
Qualitative Intelligence Gathering
As mentioned above, qualitative intelligence typically involves understanding the behaviors, usages, and attitudes of the target market. Therefore, more probing and in-depth research methods are used. Since the results are used to help guide the direction of quantitative intelligence, qualitative information is typically gathered before quantitative research. Some of the ways to gather qualitative competitive intelligence include the following:
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- Focus groups (In-person or Online)
- Dyads and triads
- In-depth individual interviews
- Observational research
- Online communities
In all of these, the data come from descriptive and observational information with a skilled moderator or administrator and a relatively small number of respondents. Due to the dynamic and in-depth nature of this information, collecting massive amounts of qualitative data is unreasonable. You will use it to focus on grouping and organizing the data into a coherent narrative. For example: Interviewing potential customers about previous shopping experiences provides individual stories and observations; grouping the information gleaned from dozens of these interviews can build a compelling story to apply to future marketing efforts.
Quantitative Intelligence Gathering
Some common examples of quantitative consumer research include the following:
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- Segmentation
- Performance driver assessment
- Mystery shopping
- Attitude, awareness, and usage (AAU)
- Equity assessment
- In-market tracking
- Positioning
- Pricing impact
- Concept testing
- New product evaluation
- Barriers research
- Product optimization
- Communications/Advertisement development and evaluation
- Package testing
Each of the above examples has its own time and purpose for using it. How you utilize these methods depends on your depth of knowledge about your product or service and your market position. The way you apply quantitative data will determine your success. Selecting the correct research method means identifying the challenge and matching the quantitative method to that challenge. Targeted selection and use remain key to building an effective competitive intelligence strategy.
To get the best results, gathering both quantitative and qualitative data goes hand in hand. It should almost never be an either/or approach to looking at the market. Instead, using the tools available in different ways can create a robust, holistic approach to understanding the competitive market.
How To Assess The Competitive Markets
Self-Assessment
Before you can identify your competitors, you need to be clear on the following question: In what industry do you operate? This is a stage of self-assessment that helps define the scope of a competent, competitive intelligence effort. Questions such as the following set the stage for self-assessment:
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- What is the broad industry in which you operate?
- Is your focus on products, services, or both?
- What are your core functions?
- What might be missing from your core function
- Who will your product/service serve?
While identifying the industry represents the initial step in building out a competitive profile – understanding the industry focus must follow as a second step. A company focused on automotive service, for example, is in the same general industry as a company that sells automotive parts. But the two serve different customer bases; the former sells to those looking for someone to perform vehicle repairs and maintenance, while the latter sells to people who want to complete repairs themselves. While they may ultimately serve the same end customer (i.e. someone whose car needs maintenance), they will seldom compete directly.
Market Assessment
Once a self-assessment is complete, you should begin your market assessment. To start that process, identify your addressable market. If the available market means all customers for a particular good or service, the addressable market is the subset of that market that a company can realistically reach. Every company faces limits of some kind, whether tied to geographical reach, size, scale, available resources, time, etc. The types of customers also limit the scope of whom a company can reach; some customers maintain loyalty to particular brands or stores, while others focus on price points or features available. An auto parts store may have an available market of all drivers, but its addressable market will be those with the combination of vehicle knowledge and available time to perform their own repairs and maintenance.
Importantly, the addressable market is not a fixed target. As you implement your corporate strategy, it may grow and expand its reach over time, it may gain the capability to introduce a new product or service, or the demographics and overall population in an area could change. Part of the continuous process of assessing competitive intelligence involves flexibility and recalibration of the scope and definition of the field of play, not only for you, but also for the market in which you compete.
Identifying Direct Competitors
The ongoing process of self-assessment and market assessment will allow you to reach a realistic sense of who your actual competitors are: those organizations that seek to sell similar products or services to the same set of customers. Market competition is not a zero-sum game; market differentiation allows companies to both find individual niches within a market and expand their market. Still, companies will always compete for individual customers, and those that contend most efficiently will thrive where other businesses fail. Identifying the relevant market competitors thus becomes critical to success.
How To Organize Competitive Intelligence
When you identify your addressable market and the relevant competitors within it, you can use this information to best address the areas that matter. An in-depth understanding of the market requires looking at multiple layers of what the market provides, as well as gaps in the market. The more you build out your competitive intelligence, the more effectively and thoroughly you can respond to their findings. Previously, we examined the steps necessary to build a thorough competitive analysis. More broadly, however, you can begin your competitive analyses with these avenues of investigation:
1) Start Big
For many, a starting point for gathering competitive intelligence is at the industry-wide level. While this goes beyond the aforementioned addressable market, it may give a more complete picture of what other companies are doing. Starting industry-wide can create value by identifying activities and trends that may not have reached a particular segment, but with which companies should expect to contend later. Identifying effective advertising or an appetite for other products in the broader category can lead to insights even without a direct correlation to the end product or service you provide. Casting a wide net can give you a head start by helping identify the seeds of potential future trends. For example, by looking at early adopters, companies can understand the purchase drivers, use cases, and possibly even demographics of a group of consumers that will ultimately buy a product – even if that product has yet to reach the mainstream.
2) Geography
Understanding trends in a geographical area provides immediate insight into how the market is likely to behave within that area. In a brick and mortar environment, prices tend to vary by geographic location, and understanding those metrics allows companies to balance profitability with competitiveness. Using trends of similar demographics across your other target markets can help you understand how consumers might behave in a new geographical area. Further, if you have the resources such as PRIZM, Mosaic, or VALS, metropolitan regions can be sub-divided into neighborhood-level demographics, attitudes, and trends, rather than providing uniform geographic blocks to study as a whole. Successful selling in the right place depends on multiple factors and understanding how attitudes and beliefs differ across an area can make a tremendous difference. Marketing approaches that work well in one neighborhood can fall flat in another. Geographic competitive intelligence allows you to see where other businesses succeed and falter and provides actionable information to guide their own efforts.
3) Demographic
Demographic differences can also provide critical information. Consumers of particular generations, ethnicities, or genders respond differently to competitor products or services. This may lead to gaps your company can fill, or may help narrow the target market for your products or services. Your company can glean information from these differences to build a marketing strategy. Understanding who is purchasing which products/features and each demographic’s purchase drivers can lead to impactful messaging to target groups. Competitive intelligence that focuses on the not only the “who” of a market’s demographics, but also the “why” of each segment can serve as a meaningful driver for your efforts. You can use their research data to segment your customers into your best demographic groups.
4) Core Offerings
Finally, competitive intelligence that looks into the differences among products and services available in the market allows for direct comparisons between your core offerings and those available elsewhere. This can focus on customer satisfaction, product or service effectiveness, or a host of other kinds of information. This analysis of competitive features is addressed in depth in Element 3 in our article: Competitor Analysis: 5 Elements To Unraveling Your Competitor’s Strategy. Of course, the better you understand what the competition offers to the market, the better you can analyze and assess your own offerings.
Data available in the competitive intelligence arena can get as granular as you want to go. Each of these broader categories provides for layers of information that in turn break into hundreds of smaller areas of study. The key, as always, is to stay focused and collect relevant data that you have the resources to analyze and use to help further your business goals.
How Data Points Yield Insights into Market Trends
There are some common problems companies have when collecting data in different areas:
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- The sheer quantity of information might be overwhelming
- The information may no longer be relevant by the time you start to analyze it
- It may be an anomaly that does not represent the actual market conditions
These changes need not relate solely to the particular product, service, or geographical area in which you operate. Similar trends in other segments can inform the understanding of present circumstances. As with any comparison or effort to understand the future based on the past, this process will not be perfect. Still, taking the time to gather an appropriate amount of information and track its changes over time yields information about patterns that successful businesses effectively use for their own strategic planning.
Avoiding Analysis Paralysis
Today’s wealth of data expands daily and can make gathering competitive intelligence a full-time pursuit. Indeed, the process is never-ending, with market conditions changing all the time and competitors entering and exiting different markets. Successful companies must know when to collect additional information and when to act on the information at hand. There is a real danger of getting stuck in a rut.
Still, the value of in-depth analysis is just as real. Collecting the information above will help you you move beyond obvious information to more fully understand the market. This will help you gain an advantage over your competitors—so long as you use the insights you’ve uncovered. This requires a dual approach.
How To Move Forward on Competitive Intelligence
Identifying and analyzing the right competitive intelligence isn’t a cookie-cutter process. Begin by looking within: define the company’s needs and wants, look at the market that currently exists, and determine what data will connect those needs to the market. The process and the information gathered must fit the organization’s specific needs. And this process itself can change over time; as a company grows or evolves, its needs change.
Once you begin the process, it should be a continual effort. To be effective, competitive intelligence can never be a one-shot proposition. Gather information over time and recalibrate as needed to ensure the information remains connected to what matters. And as the data develops, it can create a set of strategies to respond to the evolving picture that data trends create.
Contact TraQline | Market Research and Consumer Insight
If you are looking for market research partners skilled in competitive intelligence, contact the experts at TraQline. Our professionals have the tools, experience, and knowledge needed to keep your business ahead using competitive intelligence.
Contact our experts today to learn more about how we can help you succeed within your market.