by Brands face a challenge to stay ahead of the curve in a fast changing consumer market. Throughout recent years consumers have been met with unexpected shifts in priorities. As a result, for brands there’s ongoing uncertainty surrounding the streams of data they could once rely on.
Iterative understanding of the complex consumer in a digitalised age
Consumers are constantly changing and evolving. Increased digitalisation of people’s lives drives access to more information, products, and services. The number and variety of consumer touchpoints is rapidly increasing. Combined with an uncertain and changing societal context, we’re faced with a complex consumer to understand.
Being informed and connected makes consumers more empowered. They have the access to constantly compare and evaluate products, so they’re able to demand more. Therefore, brands that are iteratively learning about their audience at scale to meet these evolving consumer expectations will succeed.
Recent Catalyx-own research illustrated this. We found packaging that stands out on shelf, can too easily blend into the background of online shopping. In a Crowd Safari Crowdsourced Shopalong on Corona Cero the findability and standout instore was strong and engaging for shoppers. Yet the same shopping trip online revealed the white and bright blue packaging was easy to scroll past on the white webpage background. This demonstrates that knowing how your product shows up for consumers across all touchpoints is essential for growth.
Innovate continuously to unlock growth
To find growth, innovation is key. Investing in innovation enables differentiation in increasingly saturated markets, and this needs to be done continuously with future-focused relevance to meet consumer expectation.
Understanding your consumers and how to better meet their needs, while keeping them involved iteratively on the innovation journey will enable being in the 5% of successful innovations*.
Unlock the secret to fast decisions in a fast changing consumer market
Research plays an increasingly crucial role in getting a successful product in front of the right consumer. Common approaches allow for fast but data-only DIY solutions, or detailed but time-consuming insight from traditional agencies. Within the market’s rapid change there’s an opportunity to explore and understand the new needs of your consumers like never before.
Within this complex consumer market, dynamic research approaches are vital for iterative learning. There’s a demand for powerful iterative solutions at speed.
Here are four key needs for iterative learning to enable growth in this fast changing consumer market:
- Talk to the many, not the few. In a world where things are rapidly shifting, from technology to economic pressures, your target audience needs to be represented at scale. Focus groups or 121 ethnographies are no longer robust enough for valid iterative decision making. You need to access consumers’ homes, shopalongs and product usage at scale to ensure success.
- Quick data doesn’t equal quicker decisions. How much time does it take you internally to get from data to decisions? Speed of data is easy, the speed to actionable insight is not. Agile dynamic research solutions need to provide rich synthesized insights with compelling outputs to facilitate fast decisions internally.
- You need more than a consumer test to launch an optimal product. Basic consumer tests to tell you what concept is winning is not enough to launch a product in the 5%* of successful innovations. A winning concept may be the best in the test, but how sure can you be that it’s the most optimal product without the why and optimisation identification?
- Your audience needs to be part of the whole innovation journey. Bringing your consumers into the innovation process at the start and the end won’t guarantee the most optimal product for success in-market. Iterative learning provides the opportunity to innovate with audience input at every step. Building and optimising innovation concept elements needs to be decided with consumers iteratively.
This is why Catalyx created Bitesize research – fast insights for fast decision making. With Bitesize, agility remains a priority with zero compromise on the impact of insights and strategic consultancy.
Developed to tackle the increasing pace of today’s fast changing consumer market, Bitesize offers two distinct approaches. Each designed to support iterative learning for innovation and crowdsourced ethnographic observation at scale. Both are paired with strategic Catalyx consultancy to ensure fast decision making.
Crowd Safari enables crowdsourced ethnographic access to 30 consumers at the same time, anywhere in the world.
Innovation Pick ‘n Mix, offers 7 flexible approaches providing everything you need to iteratively build and optimise your next successful innovation.
Guaranteed results in one week. Our quickest package for your quickest project.
Get a free report – The Battle of the Brands in a Crowded Beverage Market.
*$80Billion is spent globally on research every year [ESOMAR 2019] yet 95% of innovation fails [Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School]
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