How Jewelers of America Positioned Itself in Today's Marketplace with a Three-Phase Research Plan

How can the jewelry industry better position itself in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace? The fine jewelry industry was beginning to see a plateau in sales and wanted to improve growth.  

Jewelers of America is a non-profit trade association that was founded in 1906 by jewelers for jewelers, with a desire to advance the professionalism and ethics of the jewelry industry. Today, the luxury brand association aims to improve consumer confidence through advocacy in public, government, and industry affairs, and also consumer marketing and public relations efforts. 

Jewelers of America approached Provoke Insights to conduct market research to get buy-in from association members, understand the members’ target audience, and guide the strategic development of a national advertising campaign.

Provoke Insights designed a three-phase research plan:

1. In the first phase of the research, Provoke Insights developed a 10-minute online survey that was open-ended in nature to garner valuable insights from association members. This round of research provided Jewelers of America with an extensive understanding of trends, purchasing patterns, and customer insights among 257 association members. The results were used to aid the development of the consumer survey as well as better understand trends in the industry.

2. The second phase of research was conducted to assess buying habits, attitudes, and interests in the fine jewelry and luxury sector. It also set out to evaluate who has the highest propensity to purchase jewelry and the size of each segment. A twenty-minute online survey was conducted among 2,019 high-net-worth respondents. Advanced analytics was utilized to create a segmentation to find who has the highest propensity to purchase fine jewelry. 

3. Secondary research was used to supplement the segments developed from quantitative research in order to develop personas. 

   • Provoke Insights found that there are two main groups of target jewelry consumers: the “jewelry enthusiast,” a woman in her 30s who is married with children with a combined household income upwards of $100,000, and the “young and indifferent,” a woman in her 20s who is single, without children and making less than $100,000.

   • Both live in cities and suburbs, watch TV and engage in social media. The former makes up 8 percent of the U.S. population, or about 25 million people, and the latter 11 percent of the U.S. population, or about 35 million.

4. In the third phase, Provoke Insights created a video of the findings for Jewelers of America to use as a promotional video internally in order to generate buy-in/excitement for the ad campaign and fundraise. 

Using Provoke Insights’ research and strategic direction, Jewelers of America was able to fundraise and develop an upcoming ad campaign for 2020. The advertising company hired by Jewelers of America used the research in order to inform the advertising campaign and target the segments that were recommended to them. You can read more about the campaign here.