A lot of brands use their online resources to find out about quantitative research which can be available to businesses of any size. Researchers point out that even though brand evaluation can be done with quantitative methods, when it comes to dealing with certain concepts, it can be fundamentally flawed.
Most researchers will conduct a brand evaluation at times with pre-determined ideas of how the strategy will play out or even their own concepts of what it means. Doing this makes it hard to separate positive data from genuine statistical responses. Here are some methods you can use to evaluate brands effectively.
One of the main benefits of qual research is the ability to directly focus on customers’ experiences, perceptions, values, reasoning and conduct your research accordingly. You can do this through the laddering technique which includes attributes, consequences, and value sequencing. This technique is simple and all you need to do is identify brand attributes of opinions that participants have and then see the results of the same. For example, if a customer prefers fast cars then this can be attributed to freedom – by understanding this, you can determine the values of the participant and how to see your product to them.
By introducing participants to a wide range of tasks and stimuli from the products, services to marketing and advertising materials you are assured that they will remain engaged. You can introduce them to multiple brand elements as well as differences in opinion and use this data to track their perception over time. For example, invite participants to create their own mood boards of images, colors, and sentiments of what they want and what they think of the brand. This can then be used to get a tone of voice, a design, and visualization such as values and propositions to inform brand guidelines.
With customers online most of the time nowadays, it has become vital for brands to always be listening and monitoring perceptions so that they can constantly re-align their positioning and evaluate the same. Right from how customers interact on social handles to how they analyze and discuss brands as well as their insight can be driven by qualitative research. By keeping track of customer and community diaries you can track how customers’ likes and wants change over a period of time and understand how to adapt your brand to their needs. For example, in the time of the pandemic, most brands instead of focusing on pushing products and selling services, try to help the customers in their community and provide support.
The Bottom Line
Evaluation can be tricky sometimes and each brand will have different visibilities and touchpoints but you need to carefully plan your qual research and take into account innovative ideas and research tools to gain more access so you can accordingly and efficiently monitor your consumers’ core values and ensure that your brand stays current, on-trend, fresh, and relevant.
About the Author