Sample Sizes in Qualitative Market Research: Striking a Balance

If you’re diving into the world of qualitative market research, you might be wondering: “How many participants do I really need for my study?” Jump into various resources, and you’ll find a range of opinions. Some suggest that you need at least 30 participants for robust results, while others argue that even a solo participant can offer invaluable insights. Others even argue that you can’t possibly know how many participants you’ll need until analysis has begun.

While this article won’t give you a magic number (sorry!), it will equip you with the tools to make an informed decision tailored to your specific project.

Understanding Qualitative Market Research

First, let’s clarify what qualitative market research is and what it isn’t.

• Qualitative market research is not quantitative market research. While the two methods might be trying to climb the same mountain, we are approaching it from different angles. While market research can (and should) use plenty of quantitative data, qualitative data allows us to tap into the ‘why’ behind human thinking, helping us understand what motivates and drives people in their decision-making.
• On the flip side, qualitative market research is our golden ticket to tap into our customers’ minds. It’s the bridge that lets us incorporate customer viewpoints into our decisions. Whether testing ad campaigns, brainstorming novel products, or plotting out buyer behaviour, this research method enables us to truly empathize with our customers. By doing so, we not only grasp their actions but also the heartfelt ‘whys’ behind them. 

Tailoring Your Sample Size to Your Research Goals

The specific aim(s) of your research plays a big role in deciding the number of participants you’ll need:

1. For Broader Insights. If you’re looking to understand a group’s general needs, are just starting to explore a segment or market, or looking to build personas, a larger sample can help you capture a wider variety of perspectives.
2. For Specific Feedback. When you have a clear goal in mind, like getting feedback on a product concept from a well-defined group or seeking to deep-dive into the purchasing behaviour of a well-known audience,  it might make more sense to keep your participant pool more contained to get precise, actionable feedback.

The Role of Data Saturation in Qualitative Market Research

Here’s a term that’s vital in the qualitative research world: ‘Data Saturation’. Imagine you’re filling a sponge with water. Initially, it soaks up everything, but eventually, it reaches a point where it can’t hold any more. Similarly, in research, data saturation is when you keep hearing the same feedback, indicating you’ve likely gathered all the insights that the group has to offer.

Predicting when you’ll hit this saturation can be tricky. However, if you’re clear about who you’re studying (your segments), you’ll have a better shot at gauging it. For some well-defined groups, you might find that even 5-10 participants give you all the insights you need. In contrast, more exploratory studies might require a broader participant base.

If you are still unsure on the right sampling size for your qualitative market research, get in touch! We can help you outline the right study, sample size and target audience for your next study. Get in touch here.

Conclusion

While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for the perfect sample size, understanding your research goals and being aware of concepts like data saturation can guide you toward a more informed decision. Research is as much an art as it is a science, so trust in the process, and you’ll uncover the insights you’re searching for.

Extra Reading

For those of you looking for further reading this topic, there are ample resources covering multiple perspectives on the complexity of sampling – here are some highlights below:

Sample Size for Qualitative Research
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/QMR-06-2016-0053/full/html

Sample Size in Qualitative Interview Studies: Guided by Information Power
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1049732315617444

Can Sample Size in Qualitative Research be determined a priori?https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13645579.2018.1454643

Master Brand Perception: The Power of Consumer Narratives

Brand perception is not just a buzzword in the marketing world—it’s a critical element that shapes consumer behaviour and decision-making. The way consumers perceive your brand affects their trust, loyalty, and purchasing decisions.

Yet, mastering brand perception is not much of a joy ride. Most of the time, marketers and brand professionals will flat-out ignore it and focus only on brand identity – much to their loss, really.

In fact, the clash between your brand identity (a.k.a. how you would like to sound) and consumer brand perception (a.k.a. how your consumers hear you) can only morph into messaging mismatches, which will only frustrate your communication efforts.

So, how do you focus on and master consumer brand perception? In this blog post, we’ll show you how understanding your consumers through their narratives will help you discover, master, and influence their perception of your brand.

So…What Is Brand Perception?

In short, brand perception refers to how the outside world views and interprets your brand. It encompasses your consumers’ beliefs, attitudes, and impressions of a company, product, or service.

Brand perception is instrumental in shaping consumer behaviour in decision-making. Indeed, positive brand perception builds trust, loyalty, and consumer advocacy.

Think about it: don’t you have that one brand that, for your own reasons, you’re inexplicably loyal and attracted to? It may be a specific snack whose flavour elicits childhood memories, or a clothing brand that instantly makes you feel fashionable.

This leads to a key challenge: while companies may have one brand identity, they can have as many brand perceptions as they have consumers.

Circling back to our prior example, your favourite snack may be seen as unhealthy by others; your top-choice clothing brand as cheap or distasteful. And yet, both you and the rest of the world are exposed to the same brand!

How Do You Influence Brand Perception?

As a marketer or a brand professional, it’s your role to choose what consumers you want to appeal to most, and how to influence their perception with your messaging. And the most traditional influencing tools you are going to use are:

• Branded promotion. Brand messaging and advertising play a significant role in how consumers perceive a brand.
• Customer experience. Interactions between consumers and the company at every step of the journey reflect the brand and values of the company. For instance, your customer service, website, or physical stores can shape brand perception.
• Online presence. Social media, review platforms, and online communities contribute to how a brand is perceived.

Yet, using these levers without understanding your customers is like shooting at a target blindfolded: you may have the fanciest and most efficient gun out there, but your chances of hitting the bullseye are slim.

To get to the bottom of consumer understanding and put your influencing levers to good use, you’ve got to gather deep and meaningful consumer insights. And one effective way to do that is via consumer narratives.

The Key to Perfect Brand Perception: Consumer Narratives

Consumer narratives are the stories and experiences that consumers share about their interactions with a brand. They hold tremendous importance because they offer unique insights into how consumers perceive your brand.

By capturing and analyzing consumer narratives, businesses gain a deeper understanding of their target audience, their needs, and how they perceive their brand.

Qualitative consumer research, like unmoderated and moderated interviews, is perfect to help you collect your consumers’ stories. Ask your consumers to open up and share their stories on video: you’ll end up with a trove of deep, qualitative data you can use to understand how they see you and your brand.

In turn, you can use their insights to shape your branded promotion, consumer experience or online presence.

At Sonar, we have spent the past four years building a proprietary AI-powered platform to help you do just that, with no qualitative research experience required. In simple terms, we have built an AI that has learned to code and structure information and emotions provided in video interviews into actionable insights.

This means that when our platform has captured video of, for example, 15 participants delivering interviews based on a designed study for brand perception, our AI will turn these interviews into structured data and clear, actionable insights within minutes. This task would normally take hours upon hours of work by experts listening to and analyzing the data. If you want to learn more, you can book a demo here.

How to Master Consumer Narratives: a Case Story

Consumer narratives provide a wealth of information that businesses can use to uncover and improve the way consumers see your brand. By condensing individual stories into key themes, you can spot the common emotional drivers and produce actionable, contextualised insights.

But enough theory. Let’s see how EPOS used consumer insights to realign its brand efforts. The Danish Computer and Electronics Manufacturer used stories from its gaming audience to learn how its brand was perceived by gamers worldwide. It also learnt how it stacked against other popular gaming brands in terms of quality, prestige, reliability and gaming relevance.

By hearing stories from its audience, EPOS discovered how to refine its multimedia communication, the venues where it could promote its brand more aggressively, where gamers spent most of their time using its products, and why. You can read more about this story here.

Wrapping Up…

Understanding brand perception is vital for businesses to establish strong connections with their target audience. Consumer narratives serve as a powerful tool in uncovering these perceptions, allowing businesses to make informed decisions to enhance their brand reputation.

As a marketing or brand professional you must embrace consumer narratives to influence brand perception effectively. So, listen to your consumers’ stories, analyse their experiences, and use these insights to shape your brand strategy. As a result, you will improve your brand’s position, attract loyal customers, and ultimately drive business success.

Eye-Rolls into Eyeballs: Why Is My Campaign Not Performing?

Hundreds of work hours. Weeks of preparation. Alignment meetings, timelines, kanbans and all kinds of charts imaginable. Glossy agencies. Internal debates. Spotless ads with copy so crisp it teethers on Japanese Haiku symmetry. And the budget, BOY the budget. And for what? A fast-sinking campaign, a handful of sh***y leads, and zero conversions to show. But hey, those banners sure looked pretty!

The frustration is real. You look around, wondering what you missed. Was it the poor design? The insufficient data crunch? The wrong GTM strategy? Or worse: the product itself? In short, why are your campaigns not performing, despite all your efforts – or better still, how can you make them work?

If you have ever found yourself in this situation, you’re not alone. The frustration of pouring countless hours and resources into a campaign, only to watch it fall flat. The feeling of being lost in a sea of data and analytics, trying to make sense of what went wrong. We get it.

But here’s the thing: the answer to these problems may be simpler than you think. In this article, we’ll share our take on what you can do to boost your next marketing campaigns (spoiler: it will involve your consumers).

The Changing Landscape of Marketing Campaigns

Let’s start with the usual suspects: our potential customers. In the Mad Men days of marketing, we could neatly categorize them into “Marketing Personas” based on their demographics or trust our gut feelings, because “We KnOw HoW pEoPlE wOrK”. But guess what? Those people, your consumers, are no longer cardboard cutouts.

Today’s consumers have evolved, and so have their preferences and behaviours. They’re savvier, more nuanced, more sceptical, and bombarded by thousands of ads (between 4,000 and 10,000 every day, according to a recent study). So, if you think your soulless high-budget campaign with the influencer of the hour is going to make them buy whatever you throw at them (we’re looking at you, Pepsi), think again.

Capturing the attention of your target audience is the first challenge you’re going to face, and dangling some shiny ads in front of them like a bunch of kids high on sugar is not going to cut it. You need to talk their language and, most importantly, understand what needs, pains and values make them tick and why.

In short, you need to do your research homework.

Quantitative Insights: Are They Enough?

Now, don’t get us wrong. Quantitative analysis and A/B testing are essential to understanding your audience, creating better ads, and improving your marketing game. As any good Growth Marketing person would tell you, hard numerical data provides creatives with valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t. But here’s the kicker: hard data can only tell part of the story.

So, let’s break down the tools any good campaign slinger should have in his/her holster… and explain why they’re still not enough.

• Quantitative Analytics Tools. Digital performance marketing tools like GA, Google Ads, LinkedIn Campaign Manager or Meta for Business can tell you how your digital campaign is going, which ads work, and which dont’s.
  
• A/B Testing. Want to see how different ads, landing pages, CTA or other marketing collateral would work against one another? A/B testing helps you learn what elements and optimizations impact user behaviour the most.
  
• Quantitative Survey Tools. Ever used heat mapping, polls and countless other quantitative testing techniques to have a finger on your campaign pulse? Quantitative survey tools are instrumental in exploring consumer behaviour, defining user journeys, and building amazing customer experiences.

Now, would you say a mix of these is enough for your campaigns to succeed? Think about it: have you learnt why your audience prefers certain ads over others, or why certain elements work better on your landing pages? Have you discovered the reason why they are/are not attracted by your messages? Best case, you have barely enough insights to make an educated guess. So, what are you missing? In case you haven’t paid attention to our not-so-subtle word spamming, you are missing the why.

Enter qualitative consumer insights.

The Missing Link: Qualitative Consumer Insights

Here’s the key that will transform those campaign eye-rolls into eyeballs: qualitative consumer insights. These insights are extracted by observing your audience interact with your campaign ideas, concepts and assets and by hearing their outloud comments and observations.

Qualitative insights are key to understanding the motivations behind your consumer’s pains, needs, and behaviours. By mixing them with your traditional quant-driven consumer research portfolio, they will help you plunge deep into the minds of your target audience.

Getting these insights is instrumental in sparking new ideas, influencing or validating existing campaigns, or learning how to improve future ones. In business terms, qualitative insights will convert into sharper marketing campaigns, shorter development time, fewer internal debates, and higher customer conversion rates.

The Fault(s) in Traditional Consumer Insights

Now, you may be thinking, “Great! But traditional qualitative studies like focus groups take forever and cost an arm and a leg.” And you would be right but for one small detail! Traditional qualitative research is indeed slow, expensive, and requires a whole team of experts to navigate through its complex process.

However, the rise of AI in consumer insights and AI-powered insights providers has democratised access to qualitative insights, making them cheaper to acquire, faster to produce, and more understandable to a non-expert eye. We’ve written a separate article on this topic, which you should definitely check out!

Speaking of which, at Sonar, we have spent the past four years building a proprietary generative AI. The key to its success is a digitalised dataset of 100,000 qualitative studies that we have conducted in the past 10 years. Our data is proprietary, meaning that companies do not have to worry about open-source sharing of their data, which has proven to be a big discussion point for big enterprises when it comes to using AI. Want to learn more? Book a demo here.

With the no-small caveats of time and cost solved, you’ve got to ask yourself two questions: When can you add consumer insights in your campaign development process, and how often should you lean on your audience feedback?

Insights: Not Just a Late Validation Tool

Contrary to popular belief (and, unfortunately, to what some insights platforms claim), qualitative consumer insights should not be used just as a last-minute validation tool, and for two reasons.

1. Sheer convenience. Picture this: you have created your marketing campaign, worked long and hard on your assets, and are ready to push the “publish” button. Granted, bringing in your audience at this stage can get you some validation, but what if your campaign is completely off? That’s your time and money down the drain…Circling back to our Pepsi example, here’s one brilliant SNL skit showing how NOT to gather consumer insights at the 11th hour.
   
2. Wasted potential. Qualitative insights have the power to spark new ideas by uncovering unique perspectives that fuel innovative strategies and captivating campaigns. Furthermore, insights can influence existing marketing ideas, refining messaging and design as they are under development. Finally, they can validate marketing collateral throughout development, ensuring messaging is impactful and resonates with your target audience, and giving you full confidence as you iterate them.

Insights: More Than a One-Off Gig

How often should you rely on your consumers for feedback? According to Forrester, insights-driven businesses with advanced capabilities are 8.5 times more likely than their beginner counterparts to report annual revenue growth of 20% or more (24% vs. 3%).

Does this mean “Test everything, just for the sake of testing”? No! Rather, it means you should be strategic in the way you test. Here are a few tips on how to get the most out of your qualitative testing efforts.

• Start high, and get down to details later. Why test a single ad of an already defined marketing campaign, when you could test your whole campaign concept early on? The earlier you test high-level concepts, the more likely you are to spot misalignments between your marketing campaign and your consumers. This enables you to validate/influence/correct your entire campaign; not just one collateral.
  
• Test. Iterate. Repeat. Testing once will help you, but true insights magic sparks when you adopt an iterative approach to slowly fine-tune your campaign until it rings true with your audience.
  
• Create an enterprise-wide consumer understanding. Don’t keep your consumer insights siloed within your team, or your consumer understanding journey may be short-lived. When you have insights from your target audience – especially if captured on video – you must share them across teams, your boss, and your boss’s boss. This will help them see your consumers, hear their thoughts, and create a real customer-centric company culture.

Wrapping Up…

The world of advertising is ever-changing, but you don’t have to drown in frustration. By embracing consumer insights and adopting a fresh, down-to-earth approach to ad creation, you can turn those eye-rolls into eyeballs.

So, if your campaigns are leaving you puzzled, it’s time to embrace the power of consumer understanding. By leveraging qualitative insights and integrating them into your quantitative marker research efforts, you can elevate your campaigns, capture your audience’s attention, and steer your brand towards lasting success. Remember, true marketing magic happens when we truly listen to our customers and let their insights guide our journey to excellence.

Why Generative AI Is Ushering in a Revolution in Consumer Insights

In these last few months, generative AI has been the hottest topic in the marketing world. Led by the crushing success of Chat GPT, countless companies implemented generative AI-powered software into their list of services in a bid to enter the AI race: this is ushering in a revolution in the way we, the end users, define business processes and productivity.

Think about it: are you a web developer and need to code? Chat GPT got you covered; want to crop videos into multiple viral TikTok snippets without the hassle of sifting through your own content? Check Opus; need to radically change one image without hours spent on labour-intensive design? Adobe Firefly comes to the rescue. Heck, I wrote this article using not one, not 2, but 4 AI-copywriting tools (Chat GPT, Notion, Copy AI, and Wordtune in case you are wondering)!

In short, AI-powered task automation and content creation are helping us work quicker, better, and more creatively than ever before. But how does generative AI behave in traditionally human-driven tasks, like qualitative consumer research? How can machine learning provide accurate and actionable insights when it needs to analyze human emotions and reactions? Let’s find out.

Qualitative Consumer Research: is it still a slog?

Let’s face it, qualitative consumer research is seen as painfully slow, complicated, and expensive. The traditional notion we have when thinking about this kind of research is that of a stuffy room, with one moderator and 6-10 participants commenting on a given ad or tagline. This would result in countless weeks of research, and by the time we get any insights, the market has already shifted, leaving us with a useless report and our marketing budget in the red.

The Dealbreaker: Speed of Insights

The key factor that makes or breaks any qualitative consumer research is speed. The faster you can get insights, the faster you can act and make an impact. However, speed often comes at the expense of lower quality and higher cost. This forced marketing teams of all sizes to limit the use of consumer research to a few critical projects.

How to solve this conundrum? Quick, inexpensive, and intuitive insights. And if there’s something that can deliver results fast and at a low cost, that’s generative AI.

Enter AI-Generated Insights

Now, you might be wondering, “Okay, AI can process data quickly, but can it really understand human emotions and reactions?” Well, hold on to your hats because it can do that and more.

AI-powered insights platforms can run advanced sentiment analysis capabilities using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to understand the feelings, tone, and emotions of online interviews.

But just like any other AI, the data set the model has been trained with is crucial. AI models trained with real qualitative studies can also recognize the context in data analysis, analyze videos to capture subtle emotions and sentiments, and create actionable insights.

This means that you can reliably count on AI to generate trustworthy, high-quality, and lightning-quick insights to boost your marketing work.

Where Human Intelligence Meets AI

At Sonar, we have spent the past four years building a proprietary Generative AI. The key to its success is a digitalised dataset of 100,000 qualitative studies that we have conducted in the past 10 years. Our data is proprietary, meaning that companies do not have to worry about open-source sharing of their data, which has proven to be a big discussion point for big enterprises when it comes to using AI.

In simple terms, we have built an AI that has learned to code and structure information and emotions provided in video interviews into actual answers to business questions. This means that when our platform has captured video of, for example, 15 participants delivering interviews based on a designed study for brand perception, our AI will turn these interviews into structured data and clear, actionable insights within minutes. This task would normally take hours upon hours of work by experts listening to and analyzing the data. Want to learn more? Book a demo here.

AI-generated Insights+Marketing = 8.5x Success Rate

“Fine, AI-generated insights are a thing. How can they help me become a better marketer?” According to Forrester, insights-driven businesses with advanced capabilities are 8.5 times more likely than their beginner counterparts to report annual revenue growth of 20% or more (24% vs. 3%).

The formula is simple in theory: the more insights you have, the more you get to know your customers, and the better, and more profitable, decisions you make. But how do AI-generated insights translate into real marketing impact?

TL;DR

Generative AI is revolutionizing consumer insights by providing faster, more valuable insights to marketers. It is crucial for businesses to recognize the transformative role of generative AI and adapt to this new era of consumer insights to stay competitive in the marketplace. By embracing AI-powered platforms and leveraging AI-generated insights, marketers can enhance their decision-making, drive revenue growth, and transform the success of their marketing endeavors. We happen to have a platform to do just that! If you are interested, you can book a demo below!

Painting the Full Picture: How Jotun Explored Online Customer Behaviour

Challenge

Jotun, the leading Norwegian paint manufacturer, wanted to understand how current and potential customers began their search and found inspiration online when looking for paint.

This study was particularly interesting for the company since Jotun’s website did not have an e-commerce function. Therefore, when consumers visited its website, they would look for inspiration, but would eventually have to move ‘offline’ to purchase their paint.

Solution

Jotun picked a custom-made version of Sonar’s “Website” study, and let Sonar recruit 10 B2C users from its well-established Swedish market and 10 B2C users from the UAE, a new market in full expansion.

The study asked participants to complete several tasks on Jotun’s website. The goal was to better understand how the website met users’ needs in terms of their ability to locate and select specific indoor and outdoor paints, as well as find a Jotun dealer.

Results

The study revealed customers could perform all tasks with ease, and found the website visually appealing, easy to navigate and intuitive. However, they also wanted more e-commerce features – such as price comparison across dealers and the option to buy online, as well as additional customer stories, visuals and editorials for inspiration.

Impact

The company recognised its website had potential beyond being an inspirational hub. As a result, the digital team at Jotun received clear content directions from its customers, as well as the validation it needed to champion the company’s need for a website e-store.

Customer Empowered Marketing: The Strategy Behind Sydbank ‘Favorit’

Challenge

One of the great challenges in customer retention is to make your customers valued for their loyalty, without breaking the delicate equilibrium a new reward system may threaten.

To optimise its customer retention programme, Sydbank worked with Customer Empowered Marketing on its new customer loyalty programme ’Sydbank Favorit’, which rewarded customers depending on their level of financial engagement with the bank.

In order to make sure that the system would be well received and easy to use, Sydbank understood that gaining precious customer insights before launch would have been fundamental for the success of the programme. 

Solution

We helped Sydbank define the objective of its study – to discover if its customers understood the loyalty programme, were interested in using it, and appreciated how important it was for Sydbank to include them throughout the development phase.

Results

Sydbank tested its initiative several times, using the “Loyalty concept validation” study from our Marketplace. Every time, the bank got clear insights from its customers on video within a few days, which it then used to make minor adjustments to its ‘Favorit’ initiative before launch.

Impact

Thanks to real customer insights, Sydbank has had great success in launching its new customer loyalty programme. Almost half of the bank’s customers went through ’Sydbank Favorit’ – and almost 90% of those agreed to be contacted by the bank. Eventually, the programme would be nominated for the Danish Digital Award.

Play to Win: How EPOS Validated Its Brand Strategy for Global Success

Challenge

How can you make sure customers worldwide clearly understand what your brand stands for?

When EPOS entered the gaming scene, it knew effective branding was critical to success. The company wanted to be recognized as a premium, high-quality gaming brand in a market already saturated with established competitors and die-hard loyal customers. Therefore, it began a thorough (and expensive) branding campaign.

After 12 months of intense brand positioning, and with its products ready to ship in more than 160 markets, EPOS wanted to see if its message was resonating with customers worldwide.

That’s when it reached Sonar to check the pulse of its brand perception among gamers.

Solution

Sonar and EPOS began their collaboration by identifying the scope of their research. They identified the main objectives of their research, mapped the target audience, set the screening questions, and agreed on the structure of the study. This led to tailor-made customer research that matched the needs of the audio tech company.

Next, Sonar recruited, screened and interviewed more than 80 participants from EPOS 3 biggest markets. After it analysed their feedback and aggregated them into actionable insights, Sonar provided EPOS with concrete, customer-backed recommendations.

Results

The insights were encouraging. EPOS was already perceived as a top-of-mind premium headset brand, thanks to the high quality of its audio products and its closeness with Sennheiser. In other words, the company had succeeded in its branding efforts, and it has the customer validation it needed to prove it.

However, gamers wanted more clarity on the business relationship between EPOS and Sennheiser. Furthermore, they also wanted the company to sponsor worldwide gaming events to increase its footprint as a gamer headset brand.

Impact

EPOS used the insights to refine its communication strategy, clarify its connection with Sennheiser, and place itself as an autonomous, fully-owned brand. It also began sponsoring multiple worldwide e-sports teams, as well as international gaming events like the FIFAe Finals 2022.

Today, EPOS has a strong presence on social media, with informative and engaging content that caters to the interests of the gaming community.

Thanks to Sonar’s insights, EPOS was able to streamline its marketing focus and strengthen its brand image within the gaming community. The commitment to providing the best audio solutions for gamers has earned them a loyal fan base, and their brand awareness continues to grow.

‍EPOS has found its footing in the gaming industry, and it’s only up from here.

A Window to Success: How VELUX Boosted Conversions with Customer-Optimised Webshops

Challenge

Although VELUX’s products are best experienced in person, many customers first interact with them online. Indeed, VELUX offers a variety of digital products including their website, apps, and other digital tools, to help their customers explore their product catalogue and make a purchase. Therefore, delivering a high-quality user experience is a fundamental need for the company.

To bolster online sales and improve the online shopping experience, VELUX renovated 2 of its webshops. The company set as a usability benchmark that at least 80% of its customers should be able to find what they were looking for on the two webshops within no more than 3 steps.

Solution

VELUX tested the two online stores with its customers, using a customised version of the ‘E-commerce flow’ study from the Sonar marketplace. By aggregating VELUX customers’ impressions, suggestions and reactions on video, Sonar compiled these results into actionable insights and recommendations.

Results

VELUX received all full videos, an executive summary and access to our insights dashboard, containing 3 key takeaways, suggestions for next steps and 10 concrete optimization points that described potential initiatives for our client to increase customer satisfaction.

Impact

By implementing these recommendations and taking action on its customer insights, VELUX reached its KPI and increased customer satisfaction and usability, which resulted in quicker customer purchase journeys and higher offline sales.

Breaking the Bank: How Santander Created a Money-Spinning Loan Application Flow

Challenge

As a leading financial service provider, Santander Finland was transitioning its service offering on its online portfolio. But there was a problem: large amounts of customers were dropping out during their online loan application process.

The challenge was clear: to improve the online application flow to reduce the drop-off rate and create a best-in-class online application process.

Solution

Santander first probed its customers to get feedback on its existing flow with a flow optimisation test. After it collected insights from the first testing round, the bank went back to the drawing table, editing its flow and presenting it to a sample of non-Santander clients.

During each testing round, Santander received usability scores, which it used to benchmark the two flows.

Results

Through iterative testing, Santander identified all highly critical issues in its flow and learned how to address them with precision and speed. Furthermore, by presenting it to a new audience, the bank discovered its new flow outperformed the old one in every single benchmark.

Impact

“Your process made usability testing quite easy for us. Before, there was a lot of hassle in conducting user research, but your process and approach were much more useful and easier for us”

Usko Manninen, Digital Marketing Leader (Nordics) at Santander Consumer Bank – Nordics.

Santander launched a customer-inspired flow that made online loan applications much smoother. As a result, online transactions grew markedly. More than that, the bank has now integrated customer insights into its production cycle, helping it make customer-inspired, more successful business decisions in a fraction of the time.

How Novozymes Leveraged Customer Insights to Create a Human-Centric Health Brand

But how can you, as a company, bring biological answers and find solutions for your consumers in an increasingly demanding marketplace?

You ask them about their needs and aspirations, of course.

Rethinking how to address health and solve challenges

Novozymes has been dedicated to enzymes and microbes for more than 70 years, working to solve biological problems and make a difference in the world.

But with the appearance of new health paradigms such as stress-related diseases, the company needed to rethink how to address health and solve society’s modern challenges. As a first step to tackle these new paradigms, Novozymes wanted to uncover more about its customers and their brand perception by combining customer insights with technology, to take those insights to adapt the brand.

But, according to Ulrich Irgens, General Manager of Novozymes OneHealth, the conclusion was not what they were anticipating…

Understanding the surroundings in the market landscape

Before Novozymes could figure out a way to grow, it was essential to know the competition, which meant scanning the market landscape and their brand’s perception: “We started with lots of insights on the perception of Novozymes in the health industry,” Ulrich Irgens explains.

The research revealed that while the company was up against some very established players in a competitive entry:

“It was pretty clear that Novozymes was a market leader in biotechnology, [but] in health, we were a completely unknown entity“

Ulrich Irgens

Consequently, it prompted the company to consider how it could increase its brand awareness. And so, OneHealth was born: a brand business unit used to market solutions within human health under one singular umbrella.

“We realised that we needed to build something quite specific.”

Novozymes sought to uncover consumer needs and develop tailored solutions to their issues. Therefore, the company needed a means of understanding its consumers on a deeper level.

Enter customer insights.

“How do you make a leap at the very beginning of your innovation or development project into the unknown? It’s scary [but it] can be triggered by consumer insights. We had to take insights as a way of working and embed it as a cultural way of thinking in everything we do.”

Ulrich Irgens

With insights into its customers, the company wrote a core story to leverage the value of the company while creating a strong and dedicated health brand: “[It was] us saying ‘what do we need to do, who do we need to do it for and why are we doing it?’” Irgens explains.

‍According to Irgens, helping consumers live better and healthier lives is not just achieved through scientific expertise, but with empathy as well:‍ ‍“We realised that we needed to build something quite specific” in order to stand out and solve the needs of the consumers of tomorrow – and this requires empathy and the ability to set oneself in someone else’s shoes.

Putting empathy and human understanding at the forefront

Novozymes OneHealth aims to create clinically proven probiotics and enzymes tailored to meet end-user needs. And to meet the specific needs, the company has to put empathy and human understanding at the forefront of everything they do:

“You have got to show consumers and customers that you are a business, a team of people and a culture that is there to understand people.”

For instance, all the visuals Novozymes use show actual employees and team members, “there to communicate that we are here to understand and here as human beings, not just as technology providers,” Irgens says.

Additionally, this is the company’s way of putting empathy at the fore of their work, which he states is a “supercritical [element]“, just as it is to ensure “that customers and consumers are at the front of everything“.

According to Irgens, the goal was to ensure that the consumer hasn’t moved on: “We must make sure that we check in at every point along the way to make sure that we have the consumers with us,” he concludes. And this was ensured by actually using the insights they gathered.

As a result, the company improved in both positioning and branding

Novozymes validated extensively with its consumers, needing the human side of things: “We pivoted and adapted our story and we tested again and got some really, really interesting insights out of it,” Irgens explains.

For instance, the company concluded that some concepts stood out more than others in the core story. Words such as “trillion” and “cutting-edge technology” were the most noticeable ones because of being the strongest claim of the core story. Additionally, the visual identity gave the impression of a human-centric and scientifically sound company, which was the aim.

Both examples enabled Novozymes to develop a tone of voice and a visual concept that resonates with its audience.

Ulrich Irgens explains that using the gathered insights has helped the company grow. However, he notes that:

“If you don’t listen and use these insights along each of these steps to either pivot or adapt or change, […] the market [can] move on and the value proposition [will] no longer [be] relevant.”

As a result, the company landed with a brand personality that translates its philosophy, culture and beliefs: the One-in-a-trillion brand idea.

Thus, empathy helped Novozymes amplify data development

Irgens explains that consumer insights show consumers are becoming more activist-oriented regarding health. “They are looking for a prevention more than a cure; they are looking for health care, not sick care,” he states.

This conclusion helped the company in its task of figuring out how to address health to resonate with consumers’ needs. Additionally, it helped establish the OneHealth brand as well as the ‘One-in-a-trillion’ vision and culture: “We want health to be an aspiration, not a need,” Irgen reveals, which correlates well with what the customers are looking for.

Novozymes validated the final concept with consumers by creating and testing several idea propositions. Ultimately, this ensured that the company offered its customers solutions verified by end-consumers. As Irgens states, it’s “not just [about] driving insights, but [about] understanding them” as well.

Using insights has been an excellent way for the company to ensure that the value proposition and innovation remain relevant. Combining trustworthy technology with actionable insights has enabled the company to build a business from the ground up, going from six people to hundreds of employees. In addition, it has helped deliver real breakthrough innovation to happy customers.

But, as Irgens explains, “Insights are not a single source for us”. Instead, it is used to amplify other data, such as scientific insights.”

Novozymes managed to create a vision and a culture with the OneHealth brand that resonates with the customers. Moreover, the brand’s goal to be “purely driven by insights” has enabled a considerable commitment to the customers, which is what “stood out in insights [into] what customers like,” Ulrich Irgens concludes.