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An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article. Target market insights: the topic of endless discussion and debate. Whether or not to target is not the question. Who or what to target ... aah, that is where the real discussion begins.
Until recently, if you knew a person was 42, you could pretty much predict which soap he or she would buy. And it would be the same soap every time. Now that there are endless numbers of body washes, bar soaps and other clean-you-up items, can age really predict soap purchase?
Not anymore. Do all 42-year-olds buy the same soap? Do they even buy the same soap from purchase to purchase? Not a chance! Therein lies the limitation of traditional consumer research. Gaining true consumer understanding before developing strategies and crafting communications - or even the brand itself - is critical if you want your marketing to succeed. Why? Because the profusion - as well as confusion - of consumer choice has so fragmented people's options that you must delve deeper than ever before to truly understand your target's underlying motivation for purchase and usage of products:
- Why are insights so important?
- How deep must you go?
- How do you dig for meaningful insight?
This white paper explores all of the above, while revealing market-savvy ways - beyond traditional insight-gathering techniques - to help you gain deeper insight into the "whys," "whens" and "hows" of human behavior. You will learn new ways to pay attention to your target market, new things to ask, new manners in which to ask them - all designed to help you make your product or brand better serve the needs of your target consumer.
Let's begin at the beginning. Who is the target? And what do you know about the target? Typically, we spend endless hours on this. Age and gender are a given. Ethnicity is too. How about regionality? Quite possibly. Household-level coding? A 50-50 chance. What your consumer buys? You likely have some understanding of that. Why he or she buys ... now that is where it gets interesting.
The "whys" behind behavior have been sorely lacking from traditional consumer understanding. And that is a...