Consumer portrait

Who is the consumer in a situation where a grandmother buys a toy railway for her grandson at the request of her mother with the money of her grandfather, having previously asked the advice of the seller? This is what we have to figure out in order to determine the real target audience and find the main advantage that ensures sales.

Hidden competition
Consumer research is the search for insights from the brand's audience. The main objectives of these studies are to understand the motives of consumption, structure the audience and draw up portraits of the identified segments. This work can be carried out both completely by us and by the customer's side according to agreed questionnaires.

Consumer research helps to deconstruct the buying decision process and understand who makes the choice, who pays for the product, who is the target user, and who is the hidden one. It sounds like a study of multiple personalities, but without it, the selling mechanism remains a myth, and not only in the B2C segment. In B2B brands, the question of the audience is also not obvious: sometimes it is the head of the enterprise, and sometimes the freight forwarder or driver. To trace the decision-making chain and find its key link, we conduct interviews with all departments of the company under study.

Customer journey
At all stages of consumer research, audience surveys serve as the main tool. Depending on the specifics of the project, their format varies: to solve some problems, it is enough to conduct field research at points of sale or organize telephone surveys, while others require in-depth interviews. Whenever possible, we try to transfer any communications offline in order to reduce the level of formality and give the conversation the character of a free conversation. This helps the consumer to open up, and we learn about his values, views on the world and habits. After analyzing this data, we will be able to identify the real motives for the purchase, find out the attitude towards the product and opinion about competitive offers.

In parallel with the surveys, we conduct desk research, which includes both official statistics and feedback on forums or analysis of profiles of social network subscribers. Such a range of sources makes it possible to create the most objective model of the consumption situation.

We analyze the received data and form portraits of the core of the target audience, reference groups and potential consumers. We draw up the revealed insights into a list of recommendations, improvements to the product, service and service model, and some of the findings are applicable when creating a brand.