Why traditional market research hasn't worked for smaller brands

The Status Quo

Consumers can be tricky fish, which is why the market research and consumer insights industry grew up - to help brands understand customer needs and decision making, and test products and services before launching in market - helping them de-risk and accelerate product-market fit at the same time.

All quite sensible on the surface, but at Beyond, we see two major flaws with traditional market research that we want to fix.

Why things need to change

Prohibitive costs

Firstly, high costs have meant this kind of consumer research has been inaccessible to start-ups and scale-ups - a competitive advantage being enjoyed by big consumer brands with big research budgets.

Failing to account for the realities of human decision making and behaviour

Second, there are often big gaps between the actual data collected in surveys and research and the truth.

The majority of this is not because people are lying (although that happens too), but because so much of traditional research still relies on out-of-date thinking and approaches which fail to account for the complexities of doing research on humans - think poor memory, unconscious drivers, post-rationalisation, context or social compliance to name a few.

An example which illustrates this challenge well, is the famous wine shop study. The study demonstrated that customers were more likely to buy wine produced in a certain country if music from that country was being played in the shop. German music played = German wine purchased.

However, when asked why they chose that particular bottle, no-one mentioned the music - instead they spoke of more rational motives - ‘it will pair well with dinner this evening’, or ‘I liked the label’.

This is a great example of how easy it is to put too much confidence in what customers are telling you. As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt put it - the conscious brain thinks it is the ‘oval office’ when in reality, it’s more like the ‘press office’.

In other words, we often don’t have conscious awareness of the real reasons behind our actions - yet our brains still serve up a plausible post-rationalisation.

Traditional approaches to research might deliver plenty of data, but so much of it fails translate to behaviour in the real world, because it fails to account for the realities of real-world behaviour.

Our approach - smarter more accessible insights

However, with the advancements in research technology and a deeper understanding of the true drivers of behaviour from the behavioural sciences, it’s now possible to do much more efficient, more accurate research. As such, there is a huge opportunity to help smaller businesses and disruptive brands get the customer insights they need to underpin their go-to-market strategies without the traditionally bloated agency fees.

By leveraging technology and behavioural science alongside our network of research and behavioural science specialists, we’re able to help more and more independent brands get in on the act. Delivering more efficient and impactful insights for forward-thinking, disruptive brands, looking to find an edge and accelerate their product market fit.

At Beyond, we love solving consumer challenges, so if you have an ‘unknown’ about your audience - what’s driving their purchase decisions? How is your brand or pack being perceived? Or why is your retention lower than your competitors? - let’s chat!