Consumer Insights as Alignment with Customer Needs

As retailers, marketers, and brand managers, we often think of our customer’s relationship to our product category in isolation, removing crucial outside influences that may shape purchasing behavior. In our view, consumer preferences are a bit more complicated. Consumers take a variety of paths to purchase, and understanding how they get on and off of these paths is crucial to leveraging consumer insights in the real world. It’s not necessarily about changing consumer preferences and habits; instead, we recommend an approach that focuses on aligning with consumer needs and priorities.

In order to demonstrate consumers’ varying paths, we conducted a study on cosmetic purchases done at grocery, mass, and drug stores. Rather than assuming the path our respondents took (choosing a need, choosing a brand, choosing a store, making a purchase,) we spent a bit more time asking make-up shoppers how and why they made the decisions that led them to purchase. What we found is that shoppers’ differing paths offer marketers differing opportunities to reach them, and the right message in the right place can make a difference.

One of our most surprising discoveries was that some make-up purchases are not really based on make-up factors at all. About 10% of our respondents wound up making their purchase not based on a desire for a particular brand or product feature, but instead because it was conveniently available where they were already shopping. These shoppers had a cosmetics need, but it was only activated in the context of an existing shopping trip. That is to say, if these shoppers are headed to Wal-Mart, their consideration set isn’t “all make-up products in the category” but “the make-up products on the Wal-Mart shelf.” While recognizing the importance of varied retail channels is not a new insight, survey research approaches need to take into account that sometimes purchase decisions have already been constrained by external choices about the shopping trip.

Digging deeper into the priorities of make-up customers, we also discovered that these priorities evolve and change over time. Some consumers are simply looking for the best value on what they need, while others are looking for specific features. In our deep-dive on make-up purchases we found that these value considerations were much larger priorities for our younger consumers, who are likely more constrained in terms of income. In contrast, older consumers have a clearer picture of the product they want, and are willing to shop for the specific features they need. Whether due to the wisdom of age or simply being burned one-too-many times, older consumers have a more specific idea of what they’re looking for going into the shopping trip.

While shoppers focus on features, channels, and prices, they also care about brand. Moreover, in our cosmetics research we discovered that wealthier consumers are the most likely to prioritize brand-name over these other considerations. Wealthier consumers don’t just know the features they want, but are willing to hunt for specific brand-name products, even if they cost a little bit more.

Shoppers also choose very different channels based on how they prioritize brand, features, and price for a given purchase. For example, shoppers who prioritize price and brand were more likely to purchase through direct-sales channels like Mary Kay; those who prioritize a specific product feature are more likely to choose a drug-store. Modelling how shoppers choose their purchase channel and how this interacts with other shopper needs and priorities allows for much more specific, channel-focused marketing efforts that align with the needs of customers in those channels.

Rather than starting from the brand and the product, we believe that consumer insights must be grounded in consumer needs. Moreover, this is not just a matter of academic debate. By understanding customers through the lens of their needs, retailers, marketers, and brand wranglers can better use the levers at our disposal to drive particular customer segments to our stores and products. Extracting better insights means moving away from the kind of “brand narcissism” that leads to survey full of questions about the brand that are disconnected from customers and their experiences. Instead, marketing and research need to focus on aligning our brand and products with the needs and priorities of our shoppers.

 

About the Author
Mike Dickerson is Head of Product at Alter Agents, a research consultancy in Los Angeles. Drawing on a background in qualitative and quantitative sociology research, Mike brings a strong social science perspective to designing and executing market research projects. As a researcher, Mike is passionate about diving into the deep-end of data and digging for undiscovered pearls of wisdom.  Mike is also an avid gamer and puzzler.