Consumer Purchasing Habits
Tips & Advice to help you make your decision on Consumer Purchasing Habits
Small businesses everywhere are most concerned with the trends and consistencies of consumer purchasing habits. A solid understanding of the market and its direction is powerful knowledge when designing your business plan. It allows pandering to consumer interests and helps capture a target audience. This discriminate marketing technique may lead to large increases in sales while cutting wasted expenditures from ineffective campaigns.
The ability to pursue the market closely creates a practical outline from which companies may draw conclusions as to the consumers need and desire for a product. This is beneficial to the development of a consumer model which represents the type of shopper who will show reasonable interest in the product. Once the model is determined the company is able to market directly to that archetype.
This is very effectual and can be seen implemented in our every day lives. Television is a rich example as it separates consumer types automatically by channel. If you watch a cartoon based channel you may see advertisements for toys, candy, and learning aids. This is because the demographic who watches cartoons is in majority made up of children and parents. Thus companies who have products designed for children or parents will be most inclined to advertise on that station.
If you are interested in gaining more insight to consumer purchasing habits in your region try clicking the links to the left.
Using Customer Focus Groups
Finding out what customers want is easier if you ask themBy Matt Alderton, Writer, Editor and Media Consultant Logolepsy Custom Content and Communications When it comes to business, there is perhaps no greater riddle to solve than "What do customers really want?" After all, there are entire industries built on researching consumer tastes, trends and buying habits. And yet, customers remain a complete mystery to many business owners. Solving the puzzle gets a little easier, however, when you seek answers from the puzzle pieces themselves: your customers. Consider organizing customer focus groups — they can help you:
- Identify your community's specific needs.
- Generate rich customer data, in customers' own words.
- Build customer loyalty.
- Help create more effective marketing campaigns.
- Fine-tune concepts for new products and services.
- Expose — and help solve — problems within your business.
Stay focused on one objective
Establish a single purpose for your focus group. Is it to generate new product concepts, to determine if your customer service is satisfactory or to understand how your customers are using your existing products? Keep all your questions and the group discussion focused on that objective.
Try:
Market Navigation Inc. offers a list of the types of information focus groups are best suited to elicit.
Write a script
The best focus groups follow a scripted agenda that includes a series of predetermined questions - phrased clearly and in a manner that will encourage discussion. Add an element of entertainment to keep participants interested and engaged.
Try:
Open your session with a series of icebreakers. Try Susan Boyd's “Ten Ways to Break the Ice!”
Choose a moderator
Select someone, whether recruited internally or hired externally, to run your session; someone approachable, comfortable with public speaking and able to follow a script. As the business owner, you should not moderate, but should feel free to observe.
Try:
Locate an experienced focus group moderator by searching the Qualitative Research Consultants Association's (QRCA) member database.
Select a site
Wherever you decide to host your focus group, make sure the setting is comfortable, quiet and well lit. Conference rooms and lounges are good choices.
Try:
Focus group sessions are best held on neutral ground; try reserving a meeting room at your local library, where space typically is plentiful and free.
Recruit participants
Focus groups typically include up to a dozen participants. Select yours carefully according to predetermined qualifications, such as age, location or interests; the idea is to get information from your target customers, not random strangers.
Try:
You can find focus group participants by standing outside your business, or you can hire a market research company, such as Direct Opinions, to locate prospects.
Monitor your sessions
It might be useful to monitor focus groups with a camera or tape recorder. Make sure participants know they are being taped, and that they consent to being recorded.
Try:
Consider hosting your session at a special focus-groups facility, which should have the necessary equipment and set-up — including two-way mirrors — for monitoring sessions.
Evaluate feedback
Following a session, review the discussion and track participants' responses. Don't expect hard, statistical data, however, as focus groups are qualitative - not quantitative - by design.
Try:
Consider holding a focus group online, with help from a data collection company such as Itracks. Doing so will make collecting, evaluating and reporting focus group results faster and easier.
- Most sessions should last between one and three hours, including time for a short break; several sessions will be required in order to collect worthwhile information.
- Beware of group dynamics and participants who dominate the conversation; both can skew your results.
- To reap the most from your focus group, encourage maximum participation; invite each participant to speak in turn and use differences in opinion to stimulate discussion.
- Phrase questions in terms that participants will understand; the best questions to ask within a focus group are open-ended and neutral.
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