MMR Strategy Group » Customer Usage & Attitudes

Recipe for a Better Brand Strategy: 5 Ways Brand Image Research Helped a Brand of Cooking Appliances

Dominique Romanowski — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 20:50:46 +0000

How do you keep your brand strategy relevant as the market evolves? Here are 5 ways brand image research helped an Italian brand of cooking appliances that is more than 130 years old. Ten years ago, Bertazzoni Inc. introduced its brand of ranges and cooktops in the U.S. market, and results have been excellent. Planning for the future, management wanted to understand how to evolve the brand strategy for continued growth.

To do so, MMR Strategy Group conducted two types of brand image research. First, we conducted focus groups for qualitative exploration of consumer attitudes. Then, we conducted an online survey with customers to provide the quantitative data that drives decisions. Together, both types of research answered key questions such as which brand values connect with consumers, which brand and product characteristics drive purchase, and how brand performance varies across different steps in the purchase cycle.

Background on the Bertazzoni Brand Image

Bertazzoni is an Italian brand sold around the world with strong values. It is known as a category specialist, an innovator in cooking technology, and as having a strong family heritage. It is currently owned and managed by the 6th generation of family members. Their Italian designed products are distinctive, beautiful, and high quality. Made in Italy means family, style, and excellent culinary traditions. In the U.S. market, it is priced lower than other high end professional cooking appliance brands.

5 Ways Brand Image Research Can Help Your Brand Image

Using the Bertazzoni project as an example, here are 5 ways brand image research can help you improve your brand strategy. Brand image research can:

1. Explore the emotional connection consumers have with your brand

Brands offering both superior functional and emotional benefits usually have the strongest market position. In general, functional benefits can be more easily matched by competitors, while emotional benefits are harder to copy. A brand’s emotional connection with consumers can be an important, more defendable, way to distinguish the brand in the marketplace.

Focus groups are an excellent way to explore the emotional connection between consumer and brand. In the case of Bertazzoni, we held in-depth conversations with small groups of customers. In advance of the groups, some participants wrote stories about their experience with the brand, other participants made collages, and some even wrote poems. We also talked to non-customers and sent them to appliance retailers to shop so they could share their experiences during the groups.

The focus groups helped us explore the emotions around cooking appliances and key brands. Results provided insight into which of the many Bertazzoni brand values resonate emotionally with customers and non-customers and which to focus on in their brand strategy. Information about the sales experience revealed opportunities to establish stronger connections with potential customers.

2. Identify the brand values that drive purchase

Ideally, a brand strategy focuses on the brand values that drive purchase.

Focus groups can help identify a set of reasons why consumers buy your brand. However, effective brand strategies usually focus on just a few benefits. A quantitative brand image study can provide the data useful to identify which benefits have the highest impact on sales.

In the case of Bertazzoni, the brand is rich in values to choose from. But, which really drive sales, those related to Italian design, cooking heritage, product performance, price, or something else?

In quantitative studies, managing questionnaire length is a requirement to maintain the quality of responses. Conducting focus groups before a survey can help ensure valuable questionnaire time explores issues most important for the brand. For Bertazzoni, the focus group identified which values to ask about in the survey, and the survey results helped identify which values are most closely linked to sales.

3. Identify the brand or product characteristics that inhibit growth

Focus groups among customers and non-customers allow in-depth probing about topics such as the product experience and likelihood to purchase or re-purchase. Quantitative brand image studies help identify which factors most impact trial, loyalty, and re-purchase. In the case of Bertazzoni, both research studies provided useful input for setting priorities in areas such as customer service and product development.

4. Map the sales process and identify a brand’s strengths and weaknesses

Focus groups can explore how a brand performs in key stages of the customer purchase process, from awareness to consideration to purchase. In the case of Bertazzoni, for the focus groups, non-customers spent several hours shopping at an appliance store for two brands assigned to them in advance. During the focus groups, we listened to their feedback and identified areas in the sales process that could be improved. We also received input that helped to focus the questions in the survey. Quantitative input helped management identify which areas at retail were most critical to address in the short term.

5. Collect data helpful for communicating the new strategy to sales and the trade

Making changes in a brand strategy requires effective communication to get key partners, such as the advertising agency, the salesforce, and the trade, on board. Presentations that include video clips from focus groups and data from a large sample of customers can be very convincing. In the case of Bertazzoni, both studies provided engaging first hand feedback from actual consumers, helping the whole organization believe in and focus on a similar set of priorities. A picture can really be worth a thousand words, and video from the focus groups proved very effective for Bertazzoni’s retail partners.

In Summary

The Bertazzoni case study shows how brand image research can generate important insights about a brand. This type of research measures how consumers perceive a brand, whether they are loyal, why they are loyal, and how the brand relates to the competition. Brand image research may help you improve your brand strategy by allowing you to:

Explore the emotional connection consumers have with your brand
Identify the brand values that drive purchase
Identify the brand and product characteristics that inhibit growth
Map the sales process and identify a brand’s strengths and weaknesses
Collect data helpful for communicating the new strategy to sales and the trade

Conducting focus groups as well as a survey requires a larger budget. However, the benefits from doing both often outweighs the extra cost. For Bertazzoni, both were key in cooking up a new strategy.

Dominique Romanowski
Vice President
MMR Strategy Group

The post Recipe for a Better Brand Strategy: 5 Ways Brand Image Research Helped a Brand of Cooking Appliances appeared first on MMR Strategy Group.

[Presentation] Identifying Growth Opportunities with Usage and Attitude (U&A) Studies

Bruce Isaacson — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:54:23 +0000

Usage & Attitude (U&A) studies are one of the fundamental building blocks of marketing researchers and consumers insights departments.

Also known as Attitude and Usage (U&A) studies, or even Awareness, Attitude and Usage (AA&U) studies, these types of studies are one of the most commonly used outputs from consumer insights groups because they are the most helpful in developing marketing strategy.

U&A studies help marketers to better understand their customers’ knowledge, perceptions, intentions, and behaviors. They provide information on consumer usage, purchasing habits, and attitude toward products and brands. Most importantly, U&A studies allow marketers to measure what consumers do, as opposed to simply relying on what consumers say.

Using sample U&A output from a restaurant study conducted by MMR Strategy Group, this presentation shows how U&A results can help marketers to:

Analyze consumer buying behavior by key steps in the buying process, such as awareness, consideration, and purchase
Make comparisons with key competitors
Understand the shopping cycle in an industry
Measure unaided awareness by customer type
Evaluate how different types of customers rate you and your competitors
Identify key opportunities, with visual tools such as quadrant maps

Click here to access the presentation.

Dr. Bruce Isaacson
President
MMR Strategy Group

The post [Presentation] Identifying Growth Opportunities with Usage and Attitude (U&A) Studies appeared first on MMR Strategy Group.

How Research Can Improve Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Dominique Romanowski — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 05:49:11 +0000

Do you wish that your customer retention research gave you more specific insight into how to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, even among the most profitable customers?

Here are a few ways to get the most out of your research and encourage your customers to keep coming back for more!

Understanding overall drivers of customer loyalty
To understand the overall drivers of customer loyalty, retention research should include both current customers and lapsed customers. Lapsed customers are often hard to reach but the investment is necessary.

Current customers are by definition positive about the brand or product. Their input alone is not enough to understand the key drivers of loyalty. Talking to lapsed customers helps identify the elements of your product or service that cause switching. Looking at the difference in results between current and lapsed customers is key to identifying where to focus resources to improve loyalty. For example, do changes need to be made in your product, service, or price?

Perhaps the issue is not your product or service. Looking at differences in demographics, behaviors, and attitudes between current and lapsed customers may reveal that lapsed users have lower income, are very price sensitive, are not benefit driven, and shop frequently. There may be nothing wrong with your product or service. Your sales force may be targeting and recruiting the wrong customers, customers who are by nature not likely to stay with your brand.

Understanding loyalty among the most profitable customers
The research, if designed properly, can help you identify how to increase loyalty among your most profitable customers. By talking to customer segments most important to the business, results can indicate how differentiated products, marketing, or services can improve loyalty with the most profitable customers.

For example, prior to the research, identify your high, medium, and low value customers. Make sure the research includes a sample of all three groups. Design the survey to help you understand if there are differences in levels of satisfaction, where, and why. You may choose to map the customer experience through customer journey mapping. This will identify where and what improvements would make the largest difference in loyalty among the highest value customer. Management can then allocate resources to retain the most profitable customers.

Or, prior to the research, identify your new, medium tenure, and longer tenure customers. Include a sample of all three groups. Compare satisfaction between groups. Use the research to find out when the level of satisfaction is the lowest and the likelihood of switching the highest and why. Educate your marketing and sales team to identify critical moments in a customer life cycle and when to commit more resources to which activities.

If the research results show that long tenure customers are less satisfied, additional data might reveal these customers to have higher income, buy your product or services with greater frequency, and do not feel like they are valued by the company. Losing these customers can have a negative impact on your bottom line. Results may also show longer tenure customers are more demanding, expect higher service levels or more discounts in reward for loyalty. Perhaps they get frustrated about poor response time when they call with a problem. This information can be very useful to map out a specific action plan to improve satisfaction of your most profitable segment.

When doing your next customer retention research, think and plan carefully about which customers you want to talk to. Make sure the research is designed to look at specific segments, identify differences in satisfaction, and understand differences in attitudes and behaviors. This way, the results will generate actionable insights that lead to more profitable ways to improve customer loyalty and retention.

Dominique Romanowski
Vice President
MMR Strategy Group

The post How Research Can Improve Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty appeared first on MMR Strategy Group.

[White Paper] What Your Tracking Study Should Measure About Your Customers

Bruce Isaacson — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 13:29:36 +0000

Your tracking study should measure whether customers are more or less likely to buy your company’s products or services, and should help you identify the strategies and tactics that give your market spend maximum efficiency.

This article shows you how to improve your tracking study.

You’ll learn:

How to analyze consumer buying processes and purchase decisions
Why you should evaluate your marketing from the customer’s perspective
Essential tracking measures that map, describe, and measure customer buying processes

Click here to access white paper.

The post [White Paper] What Your Tracking Study Should Measure About Your Customers appeared first on MMR Strategy Group.

How to Improve Your Usage and Attitude Study

Bruce Isaacson — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 14:47:46 +0000

Usage and attitude studies are one of the cornerstones of information about customers. They go by a variety of names, including Usage and Attitude studies (U&A), Attitude and Usage studies (A&U), or Awareness, Attitude and Usage studies (AA&U). Sometimes they are just called “Customer Research.”

No matter what acronyms we use, U&As are one of the most important elements of marketplace intelligence you can gather. They provide information on:

Brands: U&As provide a dashboard to tell you how your brand is used and perceived, and how it compares to the competition.
Customers: U&As indicate the behaviors and attitudes of your customers in the marketplace, so that you can tailor products and services to them.
Communications: U&As can also monitor key elements of marketplace communications, such as ad awareness.
Changes over time: When done over time, U&As can serve as tracking studies to monitor changes in brands, customers, and marketplaces.

In our experience, a U&A study provides the most relevant and actionable information when attention is paid up front, before any data is collected, to certain elements within the questionnaire. If you are contemplating a Usage & Attitude study, or contemplating improving your U&A study, here are eight ways to improve your survey questionnaire:

Survey the right people: The first, and most important, decision for any U&A study is who to survey. Your sample will include users of your brand, product, or category, but how about frequent users, lapsed users, or non-users? Also, it may be useful to make sure you have sufficient interviews with users of key competitive brands as well.

Gather key measures for brands, products, and companies: Important elements of most U&A studies are key measures of the position and progress of brands, products, and companies. Most studies ask respondents which brands they have purchased over a specific period of time; limit this period to the timeframes that are most useful. It may be enough to ask which brands are purchased on a regular basis and which brand is purchased most often. If there’s been a lot of activity in the category, such as new brands entering the category or brands losing share, you may want to ask what brands consumers have recently begun or stopped using. We typically do not recommend asking consumers which brands they have ever bought unless the focus is on a brand that is relatively new or a small brand.

Expect noise in ad awareness measures: Measures of advertising awareness can be the most helpful and most frustrating elements of U&A studies. Customers may struggle to remember which brand they saw advertised, and be surprisingly inaccurate in remembering which media they saw that brand or product advertising.

Describe product and brand usage: Data on product or brand usage are typically some of the most helpful elements of any U&A, and there are a lot of ways to gather this type of data. For example, you can ask about when a product is used, the ways in which it is used, who uses it, what other products it is used with, how it is used with those other products, and where it is used. It may surprise you to learn some of the ways your product is used.

Obtain brand and product ratings from customers and non-customers: Many U&A studies make the mistake of only asking customers or recent users to rate their products and brands. It is often more important to survey those who do not use a particular product, or have not used it recently, to find out why. Even if non-customers or non-users have limited knowledge of a brand, their perceptions may help you understand why they are not buying your brand and what is appealing about another brand. Just make sure that you do not ask non-users to provide ratings that they cannot evaluate because they have not had experience with your product.

Develop importance scales: Many U&A studies ask consumers to rate brands, products, or companies. This type of information is most useful when it is combined with importance ratings, which indicate the factors that are most important to consumers. It is interesting to know how your product or service performs on a particular attribute, but it is much more actionable to know whether that attribute is important to consumers.

Remember the purchase process: If the goal of your U&A study is to increase sales, then it will be important to understand how customers and non-customers buy. In a previous post, What Your Tracking Study Should Measure About Your Customers, we described the things you need to know about how your customers buy. Measuring the stages in the purchase process – awareness, information gathering, purchase, and intent to repurchase, can help you tailor your products, services, and marketing strategy to meet customer needs and buying habits.

When tracking, consistency is key: If your U&A study will serve as a tracking study, it is important to maintain consistency from wave to wave. Small changes in the order or phrasing of questions can have considerable impact on the data you are gathering. Keep changes to a minimum, and consider having a few questions at the end of your tracking questionnaire that you can vary from study to study to address ad hoc issues.

Dr. Bruce Isaacson
President
MMR Strategy Group

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