Mobile Market Reseearch Resources

How Polling Software Disproves that Polls Don't Work

Polling has a bad reputation, but polling software, when used correctly, proves that polls are predominantly accurate.

In order to receive responses that truthfully reflect the views of a certain population, there are a few things to keep in mind on the nature of polls and survey research. When you take these matters into consideration and couple them with robust polling software, you will be poised to glean useful data that you can use to power any market research campaign.

This article will cover polling software, including instances of it having made accurate predictions, along with the key aspects to keep in mind to reap the most out of your polling efforts.

How the Right Polling Software Predicted the 2016 Presidential Election

The Pollfish polling software was able to predict Trump’s lead in several key swing states back in 2016. While most national and state polls projected Hillary Clinton to win the presidency, Pollfish was able to forecast Trump’s victory in several key states.

The platform discovered Trump’s favorability in purple states including Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio. It also reported Trump winning in blue states such as Wisconsin and New Hampshire, which ran counter to many state polls. These findings painted a far more accurate picture of the direction of the 2016 presidential election.

This is due in part to the sentiment we studied using the Pollfish platform, which included measuring attitudes around each candidate’s stance on key issues. The platform showed that many of the states with Trump’s victory held his opinions on salient topics, like immigration.

This polling software was also able to hyper-localize opinions, by amassing respondents based on their US census region, city and zip code. These capabilities, along with calculating the margin of error allowed Pollfish to extract data that was closely aligned with the 2016 presidential election.

Avoiding Inaccurate Data: The Sampling Error & the Margin of Error

Regardless of the polling software you use, by their very nature, polls do not reflect the views of everyone in your target market or subject of interest. The reason is self-evident; it is impossible to survey everyone who fits within your targeted population.

Even those who would not object to participating in a poll may not happen upon one, whether it is over the phone or online. This is especially true in random sampling, in which respondents partake in a poll by chance. As such, polling is subject to several errors.

The most common error found in polling is known as the sampling error, which comes about from using a sample of a population instead of its entirety. The sampling error itself is unknown; it relies on the margin of error for a calculation.

The margin of error is an estimate of how much of the results of the sample may deviate from chance as compared with what the results would be like if the whole population was polled. It shows the maximum possible size of the sampling error.

In doing so, researchers can understand the range of data, rather than one number for a truer read. For example, if polling finds that 35% of people use their phones to listen to music and the margin of error is at 5%, the statistic is then expressed as 30 to 40%.

Accurate polling requires using the correct methodology. This involves calculating the margin of error to gather more precise findings. Being able to calculate the margin of error helps researchers pinpoint the degree of variability to expect around responses. This will help gain more accurate insights — the kinds that make accurate predictions.

Avoiding Polling Biases

Regardless of how researchers choose to conduct polling, biases exist inadvertently. In order to disprove the myth that polling doesn’t work, you ought to understand the various biases that you are sure to encounter in the polling process.

Avoiding these biases will help refine your polling efforts. Most importantly, using the proper polling software will help you avoid these biases by way of its capabilities. Here are the most common biases to avoid and how an online polling tool can help you circumvent them.

Sampling Bias

Also called the sampling error, as aforementioned, sampling bias arises when only specific portions of a population take part in a poll. Sometimes, leaving out certain segments, or only polling one is intentional, as it may be part of a targeted effort towards one segment of a target market.

But when it’s not, it creates polling results that don’t accurately reflect all the views of the segments that make up a population.

To stamp out sampling bias: use polling software that allows you to zero in on your audience, with multiple subcategories. Make sure the software allows you to add quotas on each subcategory; that way you won’t miss the respondents who belong to this category. If you want to study a wide group of people, opt for a tool that allows you to incorporate multiple audiences.

Non-Response Bias

This bias refers to the inadequate responses or a low response rate from the respondents who you’re targeting. This can include customers who have made purchases from a long time ago or those who simply do not wish to take part in polling research.

To stamp out non-response bias: Make sure the timing of the survey is not too far away from an interaction with your brand, such as a chat, a call with a customer service agent or a digital experience. You can also send it through various ways of distribution such as via a web page, social media or email.

The proper polling survey can remedy this without trouble. This is because this kind of software (the right kind, that is) should be equipped with a response-generating capability. This will ensure that not only is your poll sent out but that it doesn’t stop making the rounds online, until it receives the preset amount of responses.

Often, the software achieves this with quotas and an option for the total number of completes.

Survivorship Bias

This type of bias emerges when your polling is only completed by retained customers, clients and longstanding employees. This kind of bias is present specifically within a business survey. It gravely limits your results to people who generally have a favorable opinion of your business. Their opinions are going to differ in a number of other ways from customers who churned or bounced.

To stamp out non-response bias: software can wipe out this bias with the use of screening questions. These allow researchers to ask for specific questions, as they would in the questionnaire portion of a survey; however, the answers to these questions qualify or prevent a respondent from taking part in a poll.

A potent online polling tool will include several screening questions so that you can diversify your survey respondents.

Acquiescence Bias

This bias occurs when respondents repeatedly and consistently answer with positive responses or connotations. This can arise due to boredom, so rather than entirely reading a question and thinking about it, respondents just answer with “yes” by default. This can also come about out of politeness or fear of retribution in non-anonymized surveys.

To stamp out acquiescence bias: Keep surveys relatively short and ensure your questions and answers are

The best way to minimize the chance of acquiescence bias is to use thought-out questions and answers. You should avoid yes or no questions for this purpose as well.

Polling software is your best bet to clamp down on this bias, as it allows you to create scaled questions. This gives respondents a diverse set of answers, so they won’t feel that the answer they have in mind simply isn't there and then resort to the positive or “yes” answer. A strong polling tool will allow you to create a wide variety of scaled and ratings surveys such as the NPS, CSAT, CET and other such surveys.

Testing Your Marketing, Market Research and Other Business-Related Campaigns

Polls have a bad rep, especially those of the political variety. However, a well-built polling software can overcome any challenge present in market research, which includes gathering responses that are accurate to a specific population.

Aside from making predictions, polling software is also useful for many other market research needs, such as testing the images and messaging of an advertising campaign that’s underway, or seeing if new product releases have been useful for your customer base.

At any rate, it is crucial to pay heed to the features of the software you seek to use. These should empower your research and help you avoid skewed results and other pitfalls.

You should also bear in mind the various biases that exist within polling and keep track of the margin of error of any poll. When you couple these practices with robust polling software, you will be on the right track towards obtaining bias-free information that accurately reflects the thoughts of your subjects.

Frequently asked questions

What is polling software?

Polling software is a type of computerized platform that is used to collect feedback, usually in real-time, from a wide range of people. Polling software is most frequently used to predict the results of elections.

What is a sampling error?

A sampling error is a deviation between the sample group and the actual population. Sampling error occurs when the sample does not represent the entire population or is biased in some way.

What is a margin of error?

A margin of error is a statistical measurement that predicts how many percentage points the results of a sample may differ from the actual value when considering the entire population.

How can sampling bias be avoided?

Sampling bias can be minimized or avoided by using polling software that allows you to target an audience with multiple subcategories or multiple audiences.

What is non-response bias?

Non-response bias is a type of bias that occurs when certain people cannot or will not respond to a survey for a unique reason that separates them from the rest of the population.

by lorraine

How Surveys Help Increase Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a sweeping metric that helps brands both keep track of and maintain their consumer loyalty. This concept fortifies customer retention, which is central to keeping any business afloat.

In fact, customer retention — which provides a continuous flow of business — is more sustainable for business growth than customer acquisition, as it costs less to retain customers than to acquire new ones.

As the Harvard Business Review revealed, it costs 7 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a current one. Thus, businesses should prioritize maximizing, or at least maintaining a steady upkeep of their customer retention.

So where does the Customer Lifetime Value fit into this? This article explains what the CLV is, how it helps on the consumer loyalty and customer retention fronts, along with how surveys can help increase it.

Defining Customer Lifetime Value

As its name indicates, CLV is a statistic that measures the value of a customer in relation to a business. This metric does not merely gauge a customer’s value by their purchases; rather it measures their worth during their entire relationship with the company.

As such, customer lifetime value presents the total monetary value a customer will bring to a business during their patronage with the business throughout their lifetime.

Understanding the CLV of your customers, especially when taking their market segments into consideration, helps brands grasp which segments are most useful to their company. CLV therefore allows companies to focus and better market to their most valuable customer segments.

There are more critical reasons as to why brands should monitor their customer lifetime value, as increasing it gives rise to better financial performance.

The Importance of Monitoring and Increasing CLV

It is crucial for businesses to regularly observe the customer lifetime value of their patrons on several accounts. First off, the CLV provides a concrete dollar amount to the worth of customers and it does so in terms of a customer’s long-term relationship with the company.

With this intelligence, brands don’t have to guess how much in total a customer will contribute to their business. As far as customer retention is concerned, the CLV divulges whether certain customers will make repeat purchases.

Businesses can use this metric to determine how much to invest in their customer retention efforts.

While certain customers (those in certain segments of a target market) will show promise with a high CLV, others will require more marketing campaigns in order to incite retention.

It is therefore best for businesses to increase their CLV, as a high CLV indicates loyal customers, i.e., those who will continue to buy from a particular business. Alternatively, a low CLV is a marker of passive customers, those who have made one purchase and will be more difficult to retain.

As such, this metric allows brands to develop strategies around particular customer segments and individual customers in order to foster customer retention.

Furthermore, monitoring CLV enables brands to understand how their UX and CX (customer experience) efforts have been faring. Perhaps a brand introduced a new feature to its website, a new customer support training program or a new advertising campaign to increase customer retention.

The CLV helps brands understand how those efforts contributed to customer value.

How to Calculate Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value is relatively simple to calculate. However, there are two ways to approach this unit. These are known as the historic CLV and the predictive CLV.

These calculations involve incorporating the different aspects within a customer relationship, which includes customer revenue, acquisition costs and duration. Here are their differences and calculations:

Historic CLV:

This calculation involves looking at the sum of all the profits of a customer’s past purchases. The final amount is a number derived from existing customer data based on a previous time.

Historic CLV is considered the simpler CLV computation, as it exclusively focuses on what a customer has spent on a business in the past. (Hence the name “historic”). Using the simple historic method is most apt in circumstances in which variables remain the same. Ex: Buying a $20 kit from the same brand for 3 years, in which case, the CLV is $60.

The formula:

Customer revenue per year multiplied by

the length of the relationship in years minus

the total costs of acquiring/serving the customer = simple historic CLV

Example: Yearly revenue of Customer #1= $200

Relationship duration = 10 years

Cost of acquisition = $50

Cost to serve = $50 per year ($500 over 10 years)

Calculation:

$200 x 10 = $2,000

$2,000 – $550 = $1,450

CLV for Customer #1 = $1,450

Traditional CLV:

Aside from the simple historic, CLV formula, there is the traditional customer lifetime value formula. This is suitable for customer revenues that don’t remain flat year after year. As such, these require adding in those additional changes in the customer relationship. That is where the traditional customer lifetime value formula becomes handy.

Before you use the formula, you’ll need to understand some of the variables/terms that make it up. Here are the explanations behind each.

GML: The gross margin per customer lifespan, this is the profit a business can expect to earn during the average customer lifespan (the revenue minus the costs).

R: The retention rate, which is the percentage of customers who stay with a business over a fixed period of time (instead of the ones who churn during that time).

D: The discount rate, which is a percentage that accounts for inflation. It is usually at 10%.

The formula:

GML multiplied by

(Retention rate divided by (1+ Rate of discount – Retention rate) = traditional historic CLV

Example: A business’s GML = $1,900

Its customer retention rate = 70%

Its discount rate = 10%

Calculation:

1 + 0.70 – 0.1 = 1.6

0.70 / 1.6 = 0.4375

0.4375 x $1,900

CLV = $831.25

Predictive CLV:

This allows brands to forecast how much profit a customer is going to generate for their business over the course of their relationship with the customer. This is known as the more complete method of computing the CLV.

This calculation combines customers’ behavioral patterns with their transaction history as a means to discover 2 components: the current customer value and the value will alter as time progresses.

The accuracy of this method increases as brands gather more data in regard to customer transactions and behaviors.

Here are the explanations behind several of the variables used in this formula:

Average Gross Margin: The total sales profit a business earns after subtracting only the production costs.

Average Customer Lifespan: The average time a customer makes their first and last purchase with a company. For example, if the time between a customer’s first and last order is 100 days, then the average customer lifespan is 100.

The formula:

((Average monthly transactions * Average order value) Average gross margin) * Average customer lifespan divided by

Number of clients for this period = Predictive Customer lifetime value

Example: A business’s average monthly transactions = 30

Its average order value = $35

Its average gross margin: 25%

Its average customer lifespan= 5

Number of clients during this period:100

Calculation:

((30 X $35) x 25%)x 5) / 1000

CLV= $105,000

How Surveys Help Boost Customer Lifetime Value

Conducting market research will allow you to understand your customers and your industry at a more in-depth level. Secondary research is especially helpful for discovering trends within your niche, along with the marketing tactics your competitors are using.

However, it is primary research that grants businesses with a deep understanding of their customers. Surveys are the most optimal method for understanding the needs of your target market— this includes studying your existing customers, along with those in your customer base that haven’t patronized your business yet.

This is because you can gather data on virtually anything through survey research. Additionally, there are numerous survey types and methods. For example, if you need to measure customer loyalty, you can do so with the Net Promoter Score Survey or with a retrospective survey.

Moreover, an online survey tool can help you conduct market segmentation, so that you’ll understand the different segments of customers that make up your target market. You’ll need to know these when measuring your customer lifetime value.

When you constantly track the needs of your most valuable customers with surveys, you’ll understand how to serve them better, whether it be via product satisfaction, customer satisfaction, user experience (UX) or any other aspect in their customer journeys. By improving their customer experience (CX), you will, consequently, increase the CLV of your customers.

Questions to Use to in Surveys to Increase CLV

In order to improve your customer lifetime value, you’ll need to create surveys with content that is most relevant to your target market, with special regard to existing customers. After all, businesses ought to measure their CLV as a means to increase their customer retention.

The following includes pertinent questions to boost CLV. You may use them in a number of different surveys.

What do you feel is missing in [niche, industry, product]?
How can we better improve this product/ experience?
What would you like to see in this product/ service/ experience?
What is the most aggravating thing about buying [a product or service]?
How can we make the purchasing process more efficient for you?
On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate this company/product/service?
What product features would you like to see added in the future?
If the price wasn’t a factor, which of the following companies would you buy from?
What would you consider a fair price range for a product/service?
What would prompt you from buying from [company or product] again and again?

Other Considerations for Improving CLV

Online surveys can power a wide range of market research and marketing endeavors. To reap the maximum value out of surveys for your customer lifetime value, you ought to apply other best practices specifically aimed at increasing CLV. These include creating loyalty rewards programs, which incite customers to buy continuously to earn points that they can later apply towards some reward (a freebie or discount).

Additionally, businesses should consider revamping their customer relationship management. This concept is critical in CX, as a bad experience with a support agent will tarnish their opinions towards your business. Consider the CRM system you use, along with the training your representatives receive. If you optimize on these fronts, you’ll improve your CX, and by extension, your CLV.

Remember to pay special attention to customers with the highest CLVs. These tend to make repeatedly larger purchases. Retaining this group ought to be your first priority in terms of customer retention.

These customers are your most profitable; keeping them content with your business will provide the strongest stream of sales. You’ll need to study their motivations, behaviors and desires, which you can easily achieve with the help of online surveys.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?

Rather than measuring a single transaction, the customer lifetime value (CLV) is a metric that defines the value of a customer throughout their entire relationship with a business.

What are the three approaches used to calculate customer lifetime value?

The three ways to calculate CLV are known as historical CLV, predictive CLV, and traditional CLV.

How is historic CLV measured?

Historic CLV is measured by calculating the total amount of money that a customer has spent with a company in the past, and then subtracting the total costs of acquiring and/or serving the customer over that period of time.

What is predictive CLV?

Predictive CLV is a method of forecasting how profitable a customer will be over the course of their relationship with the business. The value is calculated by studying behavior patterns and purchase history in order to arrive at their CLV.

How can surveys improve customer lifetime value?

Surveys can provide a better understanding of your most profitable customers. By continually tracking their needs, you can better serve and retain them, thereby improving customer lifetime value.

by lorraine

How to Conduct Market Segmentation with Survey Research

In the world of an ever-increasing need to be customer-centric, conducting market segmentation is an absolute necessity. That is largely because customer experience (CX) has set the stage for business success.

86% of consumers have said they would pay more for a better customer experience and 89% said they would stop doing business with a brand that delivers a poor CX.

However, despite these stark outlooks, only 1% of brands consistently meet these expectations, according to consumers. Clearly, there is much work to be done on the customer experience and customer-centricity fronts.

To create optimal customer experiences, brands must profoundly understand their target market. Although this may seem to be a demanding feat, market segmentation provides the missing pieces to the puzzle.

Although it exists as a separate discipline from survey research, when you pair market segmentation with survey research, your brand is armed with a wealth of knowledge on how to properly cater to your customers' needs.

This article will explore how to do market segmentation in survey research.

What is Market Segmentation?

Market segmentation is a sub-discipline within marketing, in which you divide your brand’s broader target audience into smaller segments or subsets, based on various criteria such as demographics, behaviors, needs, opinions, interests, and other standards to better categorize your target market.

The better you understand your segmented audience, the more effectively you can target your consumers for various business needs, such as product development, sales, brand awareness and most importantly, customer retention.

For example, market segmentation allows you to understand how to improve your advertising based on segments such as low vs middle income, men vs women, those who enjoy online shopping vs those who don’t.

The Benefits of Market Segmentation

This practice offers more benefits than the ones listed above. The contributions of each of these benefits weed out unproductive marketing practices, thereby saving you time and money. Here is a list of the several advantages of market segmentation.

1. Gather pain points on specific segments. These pain points are not present within the entirety of your target market, proving the need to segment it. When you segment your consumers, you’ll understand each of their issues on a more intimate level, allowing you to resolve them faster (and know of their existence).
2. Convey stronger marketing messages. This practice allows you to avoid coming across as too vague and impersonal. Instead, by understanding your different segments, you’ll be able to create more specific and personalized messages, the kind that speak better to certain groups.
3. Avoid making the mistakes of your competitors. Your competitors aren’t going to admit their shortfalls at any time, unless they were able to bounce back ten times stronger. As such, you can use market segmentation to understand how particular marketing, offerings or experiences fell short among particular customer segments.
4. Pique the interest of high-quality prospects. Well-targeted messages will lure in the most likely segments to increase sales in your target market. These are the consumers who don’t merely click on your ads, but actually make purchases
5. Gain a larger reach by using the right channels. Segmentation helps you uncover the best digital (and other types) of channels through which to market to your segments. Some segments may prefer content, others may attend events, while others are heavy social media consumers. Understanding these preferences and being able to assign them to certain segments is key. You wouldn’t want to spend resources on a seldom-used channel by your segments.
6. Identify niche markets. Finding particular segments is known as niche marketing, meaning that your product/service is not necessarily niche, but certain segments of your target market form their own niches. Segmentation enables you to market to these niche audiences, so that you can create new products/services for your underserved segments.
7. Accumulate brand loyalty. Brand loyalty is ever important, as it is a pillar of a profitable business; it virtually guarantees that your target market will continue buying from your brand and think of your brand first when they need something from your industry.

How to do Market Segmentation

Before you begin on survey research, which is a crucial stage in market segmentation, you need to carry out the segmentation process at its basic levels. This means understanding all the major steps that make up this practice.

The following steps provide an overview of how to do market segmentation. Note that this article covers segmenting your market by four types in the following section.

Study your market. Conduct market research via secondary resources and the market research survey. What you should seek:
1. What’s the market demand for your product/service? Is it large or too small (niche)?
2. How does your brand fit into your overall market?
Find the proper type of segmentation. Market segmentation is conducted through 5 categories of study: demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioral (explained in the next section). Choose which your brand needs to study the most; you don’t need to focus on just one. Instead, you can do market segmentation with a few or even all of these criteria.
Continue doing market research. When you settle on which type of segmentation you are going to conduct, you’ll need to perform it via market research. You can do so by conducting more secondary research and implementing primary research as well. For the latter, focus on questions that relate to the above categories. You should create more personalized ones as you come to grips with your segments.
Categorize and develop your customer segments. Gather all your research based on which of the 5 types of segmentation you use, and all the secondary and primary research you garnered. Group customer types into their various commonalities, as part of the 5 methods. Group them into segments and personas.
Create new marketing strategies accordingly. Test them out on your newly found customer segments. This is not only beneficial for general marketing purposes but can lead to finding new personas within your segments.

The 5 Types of Market Segmentation

The previous section presented a general rundown of the market segmentation process. The core of this process, as its name implies, is the segmenting portion, i.e., step two. This is because market segmentation is divided into 5 sorts. These classifications will help you understand you to better market to and serve your segmented customer base.

Demographic Segmentation:

This segmentation type creates groupings of customers based on their demographics. These include categories such as gender, age, education, race, ethnicity, occupation, income level et al. Demographics is the most prominent and widely-used type of segmentation. Many products have been developed simply based on and for particular demographics.

Geographic Segmentation

This type of segmentation focuses on locations such as countries, territories, states, counties, cities, zip codes and others. Although it can exist as a demographic category, it is also regarded as its own type of segmentation. This segmentation is critical for marketing, as customers within different geographical regions have their own sets of needs, preferences and limitations.

This segmentation is also of great use to market research, especially specific types, such as real estate market research or quantitative research, when you need to make generalizations on segments in particular locations.

Behavioral Segmentation:

This divides markets by behaviors and behavioral patterns. The focus is on actions such as consumer purchases, loyalty, lifestyle, usage of products/services in your industry, device preferences and brand interactions. Conducting this segmentation will inform you on how the different subsets in your target market behave in relation to your brand and your industry at large.

These behaviors are crucial to know so that you can create a more tailored marketing approach and better user experiences. That is because this segmentation allows you to glean how your customers make purchases and by how much.

Psychographic segmentation:

This categorizes people based on the psychologically driven aspects of behaviors. As such, the target market is divided on the basis of certain opinions, values, personalities and inclinations. Psychographic segmentation is the type of classification that not only allows you to assign segments to groups of people, but to pick their brains.

That is because you can create surveys centered on each of these segments to understand the intentions and feelings of a particular consumer group. This segmentation is especially useful in qualitative research, as it helps you pinpoint trends in opinions and uncover the causes behind actions.

Firmographic Segmentation

Comparable to demographic segmentation, this kind factors in demographics, except the kind that zero in on organizations. As such, this segmentation method would study aspects such as company industry, type, size and employee count, among others.

This is useful for a number of market research campaigns. You can use it to aid competitive analysis along with understanding your consumers from the perspective of their employment. Most of all, this segmentation is crucial for B2B businesses as it helps you discover how to market to other companies. You would certainly need to know how to divide this customer base into smaller markets.

Using Survey Research for Market Segmentation

Market segmentation is a clever practice for market research and marketing purposes. This is because it allows you to narrow your focus in advertising, social media and other marketing campaigns, to a smaller group of people who are nonetheless a part of your target market, the consumer group most likely to buy from you.

This methodology should therefore remind you that you should not merely focus on broad campaigns when addressing your target market. You should keep in mind that this market tends to be wide-ranging, thus has its own subsets that differ from one another.

In addition, survey research, as laid out in several above examples, is key to deploy when conducting market segmentation. But it is also crucial to employ after conducting market segmentation, as surveys allow you to dig deeper into the minds of your consumers.

Market segmentation (led primarily by survey research), like other marketing activities, must be acted upon. For example, if you were able to segment your target market into several categories, how will you know how to give them precisely what they need? Survey research will help you find out, not to mention help you avoid unproductive marketing campaigns.

Frequently asked questions

What is market segmentation?

Market segmentation is the process of dividing a brand’s audience into smaller groups (segments) based on more narrowly defined characteristics of the group.

What is the purpose of market segmentation?

Market segmentation is performed to help a company better understand its customers or potential customers by focusing on the varying needs of each specific segment.

What are some of the applications of market segmentation?

Market segmentation can be used to understand the needs of each segment in order to improve products or services, create more effective marketing campaigns, identify new markets, encourage brand loyalty, explore the competition, and expand the reach of marketing channels.

What is demographic segmentation?

Demographic segmentation is used to create market segments based upon the demographics of existing or potential customers.

What is geographic segmentation?

Geographic segmentation is used to create market segments based upon location. The location size may be small (e.g. neighborhood or specific zip code) or large (e.g. state or country).

by lorraine

Fortifying Your Market Research with the Qualitative Survey

Qualitative research is critical for performing market research. Using what’s known as the qualitative survey is the most potent instrument researchers can apply to garner data for this kind of research.

It’s important to be able to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative surveys when delving into either of these main types of survey research methods. As such, this article will focus on the qualitative survey, its corresponding research method, best practices and other considerations worth being mindful of.

With these key insights, you’ll be able to get your qualitative research up in running in no time.

Defining the Qualitative Survey

This type of survey is characterized by its adherence to qualitative research, that is, it seeks to gain descriptive insights on a topic, rather than measuring it.

A qualitative survey is predicated on digging into the details behind a topic. It also seeks to find causality and motivations. This provides details around happenings, opinions, beliefs and sentiments.

In short, it helps brands understand their target market’s psyche, as opposed to measuring for prevalence and other metrics.

This kind of survey is far less structured than a quantitative survey; it also makes more use of open-ended questions. While it provides a great deal of knowledge, this survey data can be more difficult to analyze.

When to Use a Qualitative Survey in Your Research Endeavors

A qualitative survey can be used in the beginning of your market research, or as a way to complement research you’ve already begun conducting. There are specific points during your market or survey research that you can best tend to with a qualitative survey. Here are several such cases:

Mapping out a hypothesis: A qualitative survey is an excellent way to both form a hypothesis and test it. As you begin your research process, this survey can help you find the most glaring issues and desires your target market has on their minds. These can help you form hypotheses that you can prove through quantitative research. You can also test your hypotheses with follow-up qualitative surveys.
When numbers and scales aren’t enough: Usually, a scaled survey isn’t enough — neither is one with visual ratings (hearts, stars, etc.). A qualitative survey can benefit your study to completely flesh out the themes, sentiments and general makeup of an occurrence.
Finding the “why” behind a phenomenon: You can administer a qualitative survey for this point in the middle of your research process. For instance, if you’ve run several quantitative surveys or even a qualitative survey, you will have gathered insightful data on the big picture of a topic. But there may be a few missing pieces, especially regarding the why behind an occurrence or firmly held belief. That’s where you would do further probing with this type of survey.
Discovering Latent Details: Although these details may be covert, they can help crack a customer experience (CX) or employment satisfaction puzzle. Whereas quantitative surveys help unlock the number of times something occurs or if it occurs in the grand scheme of things, qualitative surveys can help bring hidden details into light. By asking qualitative questions, you can uncover a gold mine when it comes to pleasing customers, as you’ll understand them in greater depth.
Putting together the final stages of your market research: Often conducted after gathering quantitative findings, you can use a qualitative survey to wrap up your research. There may be times in which you need more details to understand the results of a previous survey. Or there may be some key aspects that you feel you need to find to complete your research. The qualitative survey is a good closer for these needs.

How to Get Started on Formulating a Qualitative Survey

You may have several ideas on the direction you desire your qualitative research to take. When opting for a qualitative survey, there are certain tips you can stand to learn. The following presents certain key practices to take into consideration when embarking on this survey method.

Find a strong online survey platform to execute your research. Here are a few things to look for in online survey tools.
Discover the chief campaign of your qualitative research needs. Are you looking to improve your branding? Do you need insights on a specific industry, such as the technology industry?
1. Then, find the main need for this application. Or perhaps, see if there are some missing qualitative data you would need to acquire.
Create an overall theme for a survey, or for multiple surveys.
Begin with one survey at a time; first, gather the target audience of the survey. You can appeal to your general target market, or to a segment of it.
Draft your questions and get observations/commentary from other researchers or colleagues.
Launch your survey and carefully read over your responses. Cross-reference the answers with quantitative surveys, especially if your quantitative survey is underpinned by quantitative research you’ve already begun.
Iterate with another survey if need be.
Analyze your responses to find motivations and find deeper insights into themes and opinions.
Layout a plan of action for your broader campaign based on your analyses.
Take small steps; don’t rush (unless you’re facing a crisis). Start implementing some of the changes or accommodations for your target market. Or, finish your research with a presentation of your discoveries.

Questions and Surveys to Use in a Qualitative Survey

A qualitative survey can exist in a variety of formats. We’ve covered a wide variety of survey research methods and survey types themselves. Since qualitative studies can be applied across a number of survey types, you ought to know how to orient your questions around several of them.

Here are a few question examples of qualitative surveys. You can also add qualitative elements to surveys that are not specifically geared for qualitative research.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey Questions:

Along with the Ultimate Question, aka the main NPS survey question, use the following to extract qualitative data. (This question typically asks respondents on a scale of 1-10, how likely they are to recommend a company to others.)

Why is it that you’ve ranked us with this score? [open-ended]
What do you like the most about our company? [open-ended]
What services or products do you enjoy the most from our brand? [open-ended or multiple choice]
What are some of the things that we can do to improve how you view our brand?

Customer Loyalty Survey Questions:

Consumer loyalty is a widely-encompassing quality that can be evaluated in a number of market research studies. This includes using the Repeat Purchase Rate and Customer Lifetime Value metrics. Additionally, the notion of customer loyalty has several of its own surveys.

Do you consider [brand] to be high-quality? Why or why not? [multiple choice and open-ended]
Would you return to make more purchases from us? Why or why not? [multiple choice and open-ended]
Why have you bought [x number of times, carry forwarded from previous numerical question] from us? [open-ended]
Why are you [either considering yourself a loyal customer or not, piped from previous yes or no question]? [open-ended]

Product Satisfaction Survey Questions:

Which features do you find most useful from this product? [multiple choice]
How would you rate the product’s ease of use and why? [open-ended and multiple choice]
Have you experienced any issues with the product, if so what are they? [open-ended and multiple choice]
How has your general experience been with our product? [open-ended]

Retrospective Survey Questions:

Although these surveys are typically used in the fields of medicine and psychology, they too can be applied to the business market research sphere. Used in retrospective studies, these surveys scrutinize events that have taken place in the past (including the distant past).

Which aspects in your [in-store, over the phone or online] experience have contributed to the way you shop today? [open-ended and multiple choice]
How long have you been taking part in/buying [habit, product or brand]? [multiple-choice]
Have you used [product] in the past and how has it shaped what you currently use for your [niche] needs? [open-ended and multiple choice]
Why have you bought/chosen from [brand/product] for [x number] of years/months? [open-ended]

Event Evaluation Survey Question Examples:

What did you like the most about the event? [open-ended]
What experience stuck out the most to you and why? [open-ended or multiple choice]
What could we do to improve your experience? [open-ended]
Is there anything else you would like to tell us about the event? [open-ended]

Expanding Your Research Needs

Although the qualitative survey can help you unearth the “why” and “how” in your research on your target market, you’ll find that much like with quantitative surveys, it too can help you uncover more on the “what.”

The difference is that this type of survey allows you to get more granular and in-depth on a subject matter, whereas quantitative surveys paint a clear picture of its measurements, metrics and other quantifiable data.

Bear in mind that in the aforementioned qualitative question/survey types examples, each survey type is not intrinsically — or solely to be used for qualitative research. In fact, it often includes a mash-up of both qualitative and quantitative aspects.

This is natural in survey research, as both of these surveys and research types work in tandem. As such, make sure to add qualitative questions every now and then to your quantitative surveys. However, if you are looking purely for qualitative research, you can also attempt to conduct an entirely qualitative survey. The online survey tool you choose to apply is your best armor.

Frequently asked questions

What is a qualitative survey?

A qualitative survey is a type of survey that is focused on gathering descriptive insights and exploring motivations or causes for certain phenomena.

How are qualitative surveys different from quantitative surveys?

Quantitative surveys are focused on collecting data that can be assigned a numerical value in order to easily measure or quantify it. Quantitative surveys tend to answer the “what or who,” while qualitative surveys focus on the “why” or “how.”

What types of surveys can include qualitative questions?

Almost any type of survey can include qualitative questions, even if the bulk of the survey contains quantitative questions. Some of the most common survey types to include qualitative questions are the Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey, customer loyalty survey, product satisfaction survey, and retrospective survey.

How can qualitative survey questions help expand your research?

If you have begun collecting data on a certain topic, but have yet to unlock the “why” or “how” behind that data, qualitative survey questions can provide the missing piece. By allowing you to dig deeper into the psyche of your respondents, you can uncover additional information or unexpected responses.

When should qualitative surveys be used?

Qualitative surveys can be used to complete existing research data in order to gain deeper insights. A qualitative survey can help you form a hypothesis, better understand your target audience, and/or figure out why something is happening.

by lorraine

Diving Into Longitudinal Surveys

Longitudinal surveys are the most powerful assets that marketers and market researchers can use when conducting longitudinal research.

We’ve previously highlighted the three main types of survey research methods, which include cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies and retrospective studies. In this article, we will cover longitudinal surveys and their underlying studies.

You can apply longitudinal studies for a wide range of verticals and purposes. As such, it is crucial to learn about this research method so that you can set it off smoothly for your survey research needs.

Defining Longitudinal Surveys

A longitudinal study is defined as a study in which researchers gather data on the same set of variables (respondents) over a period of time. This kind of research grants researchers the ability to closely examine the trajectories and changes of their subjects over time.

This study includes gathering insights on the sample pool’s opinions, behaviors, sentiments, desires, reactions and several other aspects. Mostly used in medical and social sciences, this form of research is also invaluable for brands, as studying your target market is key to keeping your business alive.

A form of correlational research, researchers (and businesses) conduct longitudinal research via collecting data on a group of variables without influencing or affecting the variables in any way. Each data collection is called a wave.

It is optimal to conduct this kind of study via longitudinal surveys, as they are designed to garner all the questions you need and to create them in innovative ways.

The Key Aspects of Longitudinal Surveys

To fully understand longitudinal surveys, you should peruse some of their key features. This will help you understand their make up and decide whether to use them for your survey research.

The following lists the core facets that distinguish these surveys from that of others. Here is how they differ aside from their deployment frequency:

These studies and their surveys gather insights over long-term periods.
Despite being typically used for a long period of time, there is no fixed amount of time required to constitute a longitudinal study.
These studies can range from several weeks to years and even decades.
They are part of observational studies, in which no intervention takes place, only pure investigation.
They involve repeated observations of the same group of participants.
They are used to uncover relationships between variables that are not connected to background variables.
They are used to discover how the sampling pool (respondents) changes over time.
They are used after extracting some findings from cross-sectional studies, when those studies warrant more data and inquiry.
They collect both quantitative and qualitative data.
They can be conducted through primary research, along with secondary research.
1. Primary sources: surveys, survey panels, interviews, focus groups
2. Secondary sources: government websites, focused reports, ex: longitudinal studies on American youth

How They Differ from Cross-Sectional & Retrospective Surveys

Longitudinal studies are often contrasted with cross-sectional studies. They also differ from retrospective studies. The survey of each study follows suit, as it will be distinguished in design, function and deployment frequency.

Unlike longitudinal studies, cross-sectional studies involve examining samples of a given population (the cross-section) at a particular point in time. The surveys in this research method paint a snapshot of a sampling pool, usually the prevailing one.

As such, cross-sectional studies are far shorter to conduct. They are often used as precursors to longitudinal studies, in that they discover correlations that can be further probed longitudinally.

Retrospective studies combine aspects of both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. They study respondents with surveys about past events. Researchers can thus compare past feelings and attitudes with those of the present, much like in longitudinal studies. In this way, these studies are used hand in hand with longitudinal studies, despite that retrospective studies form their own distinct set of research.

Retrospective surveys can be conducted just once, as are cross-sectional surveys. They may also amass data on several points in time. These surveys draw from a pool of an already existing data set.

As such, retrospective studies only deal with events of the past and will not gather any new data; that’s where longitudinal studies are needed to be used in tandem with them.

It’s important to note that all three of these research methods/survey types are observational, allowing researchers to record and understand the subjects’ behaviors via observation only.

The 3 Types of Longitudinal Surveys

Longitudinal studies can be carried out in various ways. There are three main classifications of longitudinal surveys: a panel study, a cohort study and a retrospective study. As mentioned above, retrospective studies make up their own major form of research. However, due to their close involvement with longitudinal studies, they can also exist as a form of these studies.

Panel study:
1. It involves sampling a prerecruited set of survey respondents.
2. These respondents agree to a particular length of participation.
3. Surveys are sent to the exact same group of respondents.

Cohort study:
1. It is conducted through online survey software.
2. Respondent selection is set by way of shared characteristics, such as a geographical location, births and historical experiences.
3. It also deals with respondents on the basis of demographics and opinions and behaviors (the latter two are collected via screening questions).

Retrospective study:
1. It uses past information on the same or similar subjects (variables).
2. It involves studying the past with recorded data. Ex: medical records, past surveys.
3. It complements any current or soon-to-be gathered longitudinal data.

The first two types of surveys are part of prospective longitudinal research, in which a sampling pool is studied over a period of time. They therefore fall opposite to retrospective studies.

Which Industries Depend on these Surveys for Market Research

There are several industries that utilize longitudinal surveys for market research undertakings. These surveys, therefore, provide a wide variety of applications. The following list details the various verticals that rely on longitudinal surveys.

Healthcare: Physicians, other healthcare providers and researchers can study any biological change in participants in terms of their lifestyle, i.e., their diets, their fitness/ sedentary habits, health upkeep, reactions to medicines and much more.
Retail: Retailers can study shopping habits from time to time and discover how advancements in the sectors affect those habits or form new ones.
Psychology: Psychologists can conduct these surveys to study how the mentality and psyche of various groups change over time in reaction to stimuli or any change.
Education: Those in the education sector can use students' test scores, work and products to track developments over time. Monitoring student progress can also identify disparities in academic performance levels among students.
Real estate: Real estate agents and business owners can use these surveys to gather opinions of residents and businesses within a neighborhood or property over time.
Technology: Tech leaders and manufacturers can learn how consumers change or develop certain behaviors due to the use of existing technology or the emergence of new kinds.
General business: Brands can conduct these surveys to closely monitor their target market, especially in relation to their products. Additionally, businesses can study closely associated target markets or even different knees to gain new patrons.

Types of Business Surveys that Rely on Longitudinal Studies

Dovetailing onto the final industry using longitudinal data, that of general business, it is crucial to understand just the kinds of surveys that brands can use. This is because a wide array of survey types (based on the subdisciplines of business) can be applied in longitudinal studies. Here are a few key survey types:

Marketing market research: Brands can use marketing surveys for market research to study trends in the market and within niches firsthand. They can also help businesses capture demand for their product/service, along with measuring campaign success.
Customer Satisfaction: A major component of any business, there are a variety of surveys for this purpose, such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and the Customer Effort Score (CES).
Product feedback: These surveys provide necessary insight into the sentiment around product launches or existing products, should you want to test their levels of customer contentment. You can test for usability, awareness and general opinions on your products via longitudinal feedback.
Employee engagement: Not all survey research is external, not even when it comes to the longitudinal variety. As such, it is apt for businesses to keep an eye on their employee engagement levels. This involves checking on employees’ comfort on the job and collaboration with others. A longitudinal survey on employee engagement will give you the full scope of your company’s pulse and how to improve it.

The Pros and Cons of Longitudinal Surveys

Longitudinal studies, like others, come with their own sets of benefits and stumbling blocks. You ought to consider both sides in order to get the full picture on this kind of research method. Understanding the pros and cons will help you determine whether it is worth using this kind of study and its accompanying survey(s). It will also keep you aware of what to expect.

Pros

Longitudinal surveys allow you to monitor your target market and general sampling pool in real time. This allows you to place all insights sequentially and be able to correlate events with causes.
This is the only study that gives you access into observing developments and life-spanning issues.
These surveys allow you to study hypotheses conjectured at cross-sectional surveys to learn more and form educated decisions.
This is the most optimal study for identifying causal relationships and cause and effect.
It stamps out the risk of recall bias, which denotes the inability to remember past occurrences.
It can be used within a variety of survey types and industries including ones not mentioned above such as advertising, community feedback and more.
They allow you to discover which sentiments and behaviors are conditional and which withstand the test of time.

Cons

These are the most time-consuming surveys; they may not work alongside other surveys since they’re results aren’t complete until the end of the studied period.
They require the most resources and are the most expensive kind of survey to conduct.
Respondents may drop off over time, as not all are going to be as committed to the study. This is known as selective attrition.

Beyond Market Research: Longitudinal Studies as Content Assets

Longitudinal studies take the most amount of dedication and commitment — both on the end of the researchers and respondents due to their time-consuming nature. Nonetheless, they are valuable sources of primary research.

For businesses, these kinds of surveys do far more than just provide firsthand insights and data. Marketing teams can delight in that conducting longitudinal studies provides an invaluable content marketing asset, the kind that will easily distinguish a brand from its competitors.

Many businesses rely on content to increase brand awareness and gain leads. In fact, 60% of marketers produce one piece of content per day to grow their business. There are brands that use it to boost their user experience (UX) and even retain their customers. While blogs and social posts are typical, a longitudinal study is a downloadable asset worth conducting. It may be enlightening enough to gain media attention.

Frequently asked questions

What are the three main types of survey research methods?

The three main types of survey research methods are longitudinal studies, cross-sectional studies, and retrospective studies.

Why are longitudinal surveys performed?

A longitudinal survey is one that is created in order to gather data from respondents over a period of time. Surveys are distributed multiple times to the same group of respondents in order to study how specific variables change over time.

Why are longitudinal surveys performed?

The purpose of a longitudinal survey is to understand how a group’s behaviors, opinions, feelings, needs, and desires change over a period of time.

How does a longitudinal study differ from a cross-sectional study?

Cross-sectional studies provide a snapshot of the sample pool at a specific point in time, while longitudinal studies provide many snapshots of the sample pool at specific points over a period of time.

What are the three types of longitudinal studies?

The three types of longitudinal studies are panel studies, cohort studies, and retrospective studies.

by lorraine

Excelling in Survey Research with the Quantitative Survey

A quantitative survey provides researchers with data that is quantifiable in nature, making this type of survey an important component of any research project. In a quantitative survey, numeric values are assigned to the answers so researchers can objectively measure and compare survey data.

A quantitative survey produces the type of data that many of us associate with surveys. This type of data is easily converted into objective, numerical results that can be viewed in tables and charts to provide a clearer picture.

In “The Complete Guide to Quantitative Market Research,” we covered the types of quantitative research methods that are used to drive market research. In this article, we will focus specifically on how you can use a quantitative survey to gather numerical data to drive your research project.

Defining the Quantitative Survey

In a quantitative survey, data is obtained by asking respondents objective, close-ended questions. Each question has a predefined list of answers. The responses are then used to compile numerical data that you can analyze via tables, charts, and graphs.

Quantitative survey questions are used to gain insights about ratings, pricing, frequency, and likelihood. They are often used to understand the relationship between attitudes and consumer behavior. The responses for quantitative survey questions include binary, multiple-choice, and scaled responses.

One of the main ways that a quantitative survey differs from a qualitative survey in that it asks “who” and “what,” while qualitative questions ask “why,” in order to understand the motivation behind actions, thoughts, or feelings. Qualitative questions are commonly used to gain context or gather information about attitudes, lifestyle choices, and issues. The responses for qualitative questions involve both open-ended and multiple-choice questions.

The Pros and Cons of Quantitative Surveys

In order to understand when to use quantitative surveys, you must first understand the pros and cons of this type of survey.

The Pros:

The data from quantitative surveys is usually easy to collect and analyze.
The simple format of quantitative surveys allows researchers to distribute them more broadly and reach a larger audience.
Without open-ended questions, quantitative surveys are usually faster to complete, which can improve the response rate.
Quantitative surveys are useful when researching sensitive subjects because they can allow the respondent to remain completely anonymous, without the need to contribute any personal or identifiable information.
Quantitative surveys are more mobile-friendly than qualitative survey questions because the respondent does not need to type out lengthy answers.

The Cons:

Quantitative surveys do not allow researchers to probe for deeper or unique answers to survey questions.
The results of quantitative surveys can be misleading. Despite the seemingly objective nature of quantitative surveys, researchers can interpret the data based on their own views and then state conclusions in a way that sounds factual since they are based on numbers.
Since quantitative survey questions have predefined responses, there is no opportunity for a respondent to volunteer unexpected information.
It can take longer to plan a good quantitative survey that will collect the data needed to understand relationships or behavior.
Survey responses must be carefully considered so that respondents are able to select an answer they can relate to.

Creating a Survey with Quantitative Questions

Quantitative survey questions will yield data that you can use to better understand your target market. The results can be compiled into a research report to provide statistical information and detailed insights. This information is typically used to understand prevalence and quantify phenomena, along with then being used to broaden research efforts and better understand the market as a whole.

In order to formulate the right type of questions, you first need to understand the goals of your research project. In quantitative research, researchers often start by stating the objective as a question and then designing survey questions to find the answer.

For example, a researcher might ask: “How do the study habits of college freshmen compare to the study habits of college seniors?” In order to answer this, the researcher would need to gather information about both college freshmen and college seniors in order to draw conclusions.

Remember: you need to create quantitative survey questions in a way that allows them to be translated into numerical data. This means that you will need specific, numerical answers to each question.

Quantitative questions frequently ask “how” or “what.” For example:

What is/are…?
How many…?
How often...?
What percentage…?

Below we provide some example questions that a researcher might ask in order to understand how study habits change throughout the course of a college education. For the purpose of this exercise, assume that the researcher has used pre-screening questions to sort the respondents into two groups - college freshman and college seniors who are attending a 4-year university for the first time.

Establish Demographics

In order to understand how demographic factors influence responses, you will need to gather some basic demographic information:

What is your age? [Dropdown]
What is your gender? [Multiple choice]
How many years have you attended this college? [Dropdown]
How many people in your immediate family (parents and siblings) have attended college? [Multiple choice]
What is the highest level of education attained by either of your parents? [Multiple choice]

Understand Study Habits

The next part of your survey will focus on gathering data that you can use to describe the study habits of these two groups.

How many hours per day do you study? [Multiple choice answer]
How often do you attend a study group? [Multiple choice answer]
How likely are you to join a study group for a class that you struggle with? [Multiple choice]
How many study groups are you currently a member of? [Multiple choice]
Which of the following study tools do you use and how often? [Matrix]
How do you rate the following study tools? [Matrix]

Deeper Questions

Despite their objective nature, quantitative survey questions can help you understand how your respondents feel about their experiences, that is, it helps you quantify their feelings Here are some ways you can use quantitative questions to gain deeper insights:

Please select how much you agree or disagree with the following statement: My current study habits are effective. [Likert scale]
Please select how much you agree or disagree with the following statement: I know which study tools and methods are appropriate for each of the courses I’m taking [Likert scale]
Please select how much you agree or disagree with the following statement: I think that I study more than other students in my year. [Likert scale]

Once you have your survey responses, you can begin to analyze the data. After this, you should have a general idea of the landscape of freshman and senior habits. This data can help you create a research report or lead to further surveys to further explore or better understand your findings.

Power Your Quantitative Survey with the Right Questions

Quantitative survey questions can power your research project by helping you gather and analyze large amounts of data with relative ease. This data can help you establish a good understanding of your subject matter and establish objectives for future research efforts. For this reason, most researchers include a large percentage of quantitative survey questions in their surveys.

Many surveys contain a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions, with quantitative questions forming the bulk of the survey. This is helpful because quantitative questions allow researchers to easily analyze and define findings, while qualitative questions can reveal deeper insights, contextual information, and unexpected findings.

Gain further insights by pairing some of your quantitative survey questions with a few, carefully chosen qualitative questions. By pairing questions in this way, you get the best of both worlds — numerical data that is ready for analysis and the potential for new discoveries by way of personalized responses.

Frequently asked questions

What is a quantitative survey?

A quantitative survey is one that asks close-ended questions that can be assigned a numerical value in order to allow for analysis via tables and graphs.

How does a quantitative survey differ from a qualitative survey?

Quantitative surveys seek to answer questions about “who” and “what,” why qualitative surveys are concerned with understanding “why.” Quantitative surveys do not have open-ended responses, while qualitative surveys can have a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended.

What are some of the benefits of quantitative surveys?

Quantitative surveys are easier to distribute to a large audience, allow for easier data collection and analysis, and tend to have a higher response rate since they are faster to complete.

What are some of the drawbacks of quantitative surveys?

Some of the limitations of quantitative surveys include the potential to misinterpret results and that they provide little opportunity to receive unexpected answers. It can also be challenging to design a good quantitative survey since the answers are defined rather than open-ended.

What is the benefit of including a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions?

Many surveys contain a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions because it provides researchers with plenty of numerical data to analyze, while also providing the potential to dig deeper and get some unexpected responses.

by lorraine

Diving Into the Customer Loyalty Survey for Business Growth

There is nothing quite as sought after in the business world as customer loyalty. A customer loyalty survey can help businesses achieve this lofty end.

There is more to customer loyalty than just returning customers, as this concept goes beyond customer retention. Thus, customer loyalty also has its own methods of measurement and attainment.

This article presents a deep dive into the customer loyalty survey, not simply shedding light on its particulars, but how it can help you grow your business by creating customer loyalty within your target market.

Defining Customer Loyalty

Before jumping into the customer loyalty survey, let us cover its underlying theme of customer loyalty. This term is used to describe an ongoing business relationship in which customers consistently choose a company’s product/ service over that of its competitors.

This concept is the driving force behind repeat purchases from customers, even in a competitive market, i.e., one in which competitors offer similar price points, promotions and experiences.

Customer loyalty is not merely customer retention; rather it is the most powerful form of it, as it signifies the segment in your target market that exhibits loyalty to your brand. That means that this group of customers provides more than just a few occasional buys from your business.

Rather, these consumers have a more personal connection to your brand, a tie that keeps them returning to your business on a regular basis. This is established by way of building a promising reputation or having impacted your customers in a considerable fashion.

This is to say that loyalty takes several factors to build — it cannot be achieved by one good customer experience. That is because the nature of loyalty is ongoing, so while you may have provided one positive experience, it is not guaranteed to retain your customers, let alone build a sense of trust, which breeds loyalty.

Why are Consumers Loyal to a Brand?

From the above section, we can deduce that loyalty comes from a brand’s environment. This environment has to provide multiple points of customer satisfaction.

This multi-faceted approach can help build customer loyalty over time. Here are a few concrete reasons as to why consumers are loyal to a brand:

They associate it with positive experiences, such as online experiences, interactions on digital, phone or brick and mortar channels with brand representatives.
They feel that they are getting something of quality from your brand in particular.
The price ranges, discounts and promotions fit within their budgets and lifestyles.
Customers feel connected to a brand due to its values and associations.
Customers are intrigued by the content a brand provides as an auxiliary, whether it is on social media, websites or video content.

Why Your Business Needs Customer Loyalty

Your business needs to establish at least some degree of customer loyalty within your existing customers. Loyal customers can help your brand stay afloat even in times of crisis.

In fact, a negative experience can be a covert blessing — if you correct an issue a customer has, it reinforces the positive nature of your brand and customer experience (CX). Thus, it will strengthen your brand’s relationship with customers, paving the way to loyalty.

Here are the key reasons as to why your business needs customer loyalty:

It represents a steady pool of income as opposed to one-off purchases.
It prevents existing customers from leaving your brand, either by way of website bounces, not completing a site purchase, doing window shopping or turning to competitors.
Customer acquisition is more expensive than customer retention.
A 5% increase in retention may lead to a profit increase of up to 95%.
It is easier to cross-sell and up-sell to existing customers than new ones. (A brand is 60-70% likely to sell to existing customers and only 20% to new customers).
Loyal customers are more likely to recommend your brand, taking on a crucial marketing effort themselves.
Loyal customers tend to spend more on a brand than first-time customers.

There are several other benefits that conjure up the need to attain customer loyalty. The above lists only a handful of chief reasons.

How to Measure Customer Loyalty

The most effective way to measure customer loyalty is via the customer loyalty survey, a type of survey specifically designed to gauge the degree of loyalty (or lack thereof) customers harbor for your business.

The true value of a customer loyalty survey is that it can take up a variety of formats, all while allowing you to ask all the questions you need.

The following list enumerates how to measure customer loyalty. Although some of the following items exist as measurements, they can also be used as surveys themselves.

Customer Lifetime Value (CVL): The measurement of how much value a customer will add to your company during their lifetime. The longer a customer makes purchases from a business, the greater their CVL becomes.
1. To calculate: Multiply customer value by the average customer lifespan to get the approximate value you can expect from an average customer during the course of their business relationship with you.
Repeat Purchase Rate: The percentage of your entire customer base that partakes in repeat business with a company. Also called the repeat customer rate, reorder rate, or customer retention rate, it falls between 0% to 100%.
1. To calculate: Divide the purchases from repeat customers by all the buys on a site during a given date range.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): This is a type of customer loyalty survey, also useful for measuring customer satisfaction. This score-based survey shows how likely customers are to recommend your brand or offerings. It asks respondents to rate their likelihood of recommending you on a scale of 1-10. (1-6 range = detractors, 7-8 range = passives & 9-10 range = promoters).
1. To calculate: Subtract the total number of detractors from the total number of promoters to determine how many people are likely to recommend you. ‘
Customer Loyalty Index (CLI): A standardized customer loyalty survey used to monitor customer loyalty over time. It relies on multiple factors like the NPS, upsells, and repeat purchases.
1. It achieves this via three core questions: How likely are you to recommend us to your friends and family? How likely are you to buy from us again in the future? How likely are you to try our other products?
2. To calculate: Find the average of the 3 responses, with each response range being that of 1-6; 1 is a strong yes while 6 is a strong no.

How to Create a Customer Loyalty Survey

You can create a customer loyalty survey in a number of manners and styles. If you want to use the NPS score, create an NPS survey. If you prefer the Customer Loyalty Index, then use its model in your survey.

But if you are considering creating a general customer loyalty survey, consider the following:

Firstly, you should target your customers only.
Filter the survey so that only existing customers qualify as respondents by way of your demographics and screening questions.
You can hasten the amount of time it takes to reach a certain amount of respondents by sending customers a survey after they made a transaction, that way you’ll know that they are indeed customers.
Then, in the questionnaire section of the survey, add questions that focus on customer loyalty and its subtopics.

The following gives several examples of the types of questions to incorporate in your customer loyalty survey.

General Customer Loyalty Questions

Do you trust [name of brand] when it comes to [industry needs, specifics]?
Do you consider [brand] to be high-quality?
Which experience has left the best impression on you?
Have you bought from us before, if so how many times? (Add an option for regularly)
How likely would you be to recommend our company to your friends or colleagues?

Customer Loyalty Based on Company Performance Questions

How would you rate your experiences with our [sales rep, customer support rep, etc.]?
Was our [customer support, tech staff] able to help you resolve your problems today?
How quickly do we answer your concerns?
How would you rate your satisfaction with our products or services on the following scale?
Are you satisfied with the support you received today?

Customer Loyalty Based on Competitor Landscape Questions

How likely would you buy from a competitor if their products(s) were cheaper?
How likely would you switch brands if [competitor] had cheaper products/services?
How would you compare us with this brand? (Leave an open-ended response field)
How would you rate our products/services on a scale of 1-10 in comparison to [competitor]?
What do you believe we offer better than our competitors?

How to Analyze a Customer Loyalty Survey

After you’ve completed your survey research, it’s time to enter the analysis phase. If you want to analyze survey data like a pro, there are several things you should scrutinize.

Firstly, compile the survey data into different forms so that can easily detect patterns and trends. For example, you may want to consider using cross-tabs, charts, tables, graphs and spreadsheets.

The way you choose to lay out your data will depend on your own needs and preferences.

To delve into the subject of loyalty, start by looking at customer satisfaction questions and surveys. These will help you determine if customers are generally satisfied with your brand or certain aspects of it.

Then, pay attention to questions that relate to your company performance, as these will spell out the need for changes or whether your brand is in good standing. These can also relay opinions on trust.

Following this, look at the general customer loyalty questions; these can give you a broader understanding of how your customers feel about your brand. A high level of positive answers points to customers set on the path towards loyalty.

Finally, assess how your customers rate you in comparison to your competitors. Based on your findings, ask yourself, do your competitors pose a real threat? Will they hamper your customer loyalty? If so, consider the ways in which you can improve your products, services and experiences to gain an edge over them.

The latter of this is going to be a more ambitious pursuit as it will involve innovating and potentially rebranding. But surveys can help on those fronts as well.

Investing in Customer Loyalty Surveys

Customers who intend on shopping from you are the lifeblood of your business. This is because, as aforementioned, they will be the last to stop patronizing you, should a PR issue arise.

As such, investing in customer loyalty sets you on the road to growing your profits and thereby, scaling your business. Loyal customers are not just repeat customers; they are living, breathing marketing conduits for your brand, as they are likely to recommend your brand and write positive online reviews.

In order to invest in customer loyalty, you must invest in the customer loyalty survey. This will help you gather the exact thoughts and opinions of your customers in relation to your brand. It will also allow you to grasp how you stack up against your competitors.

Frequently asked questions

What is customer loyalty?

Customer loyalty indicates an ongoing relationship in which a customer consistently chooses a company’s product or services, rather than purchasing from a competitor.

What are some of the reasons why customers are loyal to a brand?

Customers may become loyal to a brand when they feel that the brand is of higher quality, has a better price point, resonates well with their lifestyle, offers a positive customer experience, or because they are in line with the brand’s values.

What are some of the tools used to measure customer loyalty?

There are many tools that are used to measure customer loyalty, including the Customer Lifetime Value (CVL), Repeat Purchase Rate, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and the Customer Loyalty Index (CLI).

What is the Customer Loyalty Index (CLI)?

The Customer Loyalty Index (CLI) is a type of customer loyalty survey that is used to measure and understand how customer loyalty changes over time. The survey contains just three questions with 1 - 6 as scaled responses. The final score is the average of these 3 responses.

What is a customer loyalty survey?

A customer loyalty survey is a research methodology that seeks to measure how loyal a group of customers are to a particular company or brand. A customer loyalty survey is distributed only to existing customers.

by lorraine

Survey Panels Vs Organic Sampling: Which is Better for Market Research?

Survey panels and organic sampling are two of the major methods used to collect survey data. Since getting survey responses without the assistance of software is an almost impossible feat, these two methods have reigned supreme.

Both of these survey response mechanisms are unlikely to wane anytime soon, due to the prevalence of online surveys. As a matter of fact, the online survey software space has risen by 8% between 2015 and 2020.

With online surveys granting market researchers and marketers a large sweep of survey types to conduct, the point of contention becomes: which type of survey response collection data is better, survey panels or organic sampling?

This article will explore both forms of data collection so that you can objectively decide which to opt for in your survey research campaigns.

Defining Online Survey Panels

Survey panels, also called online panels or research panels, all denote a data collection method in which responses are collected by way of pre-recruited and pre-screened respondents who agreed to take part in a survey.

This method helps businesses in that it assures them that a group of people will take their survey; usually, members of their target market are called upon to take the survey.

There are a number of ways survey panels can be assembled. One such method involves mail-in recruitment, which has significantly declined in the digital age. Another relies on phone calls via Random-Digit Dial (RDD), a method in which respondents are chosen to take a survey from random telephone numbers.

When it comes to recruiting survey panels digitally, they are garnered through an opt-in format such as a signup page or through an email invite that routes users to the survey page. All of these recruitment manners have low participation, as few people opt into panels.

That is why some brands and market researchers resort to compensating their pre-screened panelists.

The Pros and Cons of Survey Panels

Now that you understand the basic methodology behind survey panels, you ought to consider their pros and cons before fully forming your opinion on whether to use them or not.

The pros of online panels:

They provide a network of respondents for continuous survey participation. This is especially useful if you need to conduct longitudinal studies.
They are inexpensive and create fast studies.
Returning to the same respondents, allows you to detect changing opinions over time, allowing you to see how your target market changes its opinions.
They allow you to create informed custom polling questions based on previous research.

The cons:

Repeated survey participation causes panel fatigue, a term denoting the decline in the quality of survey data, due to the boredom or exhaustion of a panelist. This creates them to inaccurately provide responses, either due to skipping questions, ticking off the “don’t know” option or rushing through a survey.
They occur in non-organic (unnatural) environments — inauthentic environments create inauthentic responses. This is because a survey’s environment can affect its’ respondents’ mindsets.
Web panels gather respondents either on desktop or mobile, creating scenarios in which participants are dependent on device types. As such, the survey experience is not very adaptive.
Panel conditioning: Repeated survey participation can change respondents’ true attitudes, behaviors and knowledge. This makes it difficult to differentiate between actual changes and changes in reporting behaviors.

Random Device Engagement (RDE): A Precursor to Organic Sampling

Before you analyze the organic sampling method, you should understand what makes it tick. That is because organic sampling is reliant on the delivery structure known as Random Device Sampling (RDE).

This framework implements intent-based behavioral targeting, typically used by advertisers, to narrow down random respondents in a digital setting, such as on websites, mobile sites and mobile apps.

Thus, it provides a solution for randomization and capturing the correct audience.

Random Device Sampling works by tracing the unique IDs of respondents, which are used to track them across devices. RDE, therefore, institutes a mechanism that is both random and organic.

Organic Sampling Defined

Also called random organic sampling, this method refers to an RDE-based response collection method in which a survey is deployed randomly to users who are already in apps and other digital spaces.

Since surveys are randomly transferred, this method allows respondents to take the surveys while they are in their organic environments. These are the spaces that users spend time in organically, meaning they chose to take part in those environments, rather than being taken there via a promotion, incentive or signing up at a web panel.

Organic sampling works by giving optional invitations (or call-outs) to users in organic settings, so that they would partake in quick surveys. These invitations (along with the surveys themselves) are natively integrated within the digital environments (ex: apps) that the users are in.

This makes several benefits possible.

The Pros and Cons of Organic Sampling

Powered by Random Device Engagement, organic sampling has many upper hands. However, like the panel survey method, organic sampling also presents certain disadvantages that you should carefully consider. You ought to weigh them against one another before deciding whether or not to use them.

The Pros of Organic Sampling

An organic environment allows you to avoid panel conditioning, allowing you to extract genuine responses from participants.
It targets respondents’ unique IDs so that they can be traced even while shuffling between devices, preventing the same participants from taking the same survey twice.
Using respondents’ IDs allows you to create respondent profiles, which build an overview of the respondents’ behaviors demographics, which are critical data to possess.
In turn, the respondent profile helps prevent fraud, as multiple accounts or bots won’t able to submit their surveys.
It yields high response rates (higher than RDD and survey panels).
It creates a seamless UX across all device types, rather than being tied to just one with little wiggle room.
It provides vast coverage, as RDE integrates natively with a bevy of digital and mobile platforms. That entails greater accuracy.

The Cons:

It relies on non-probability sampling, wherein some of the members of a population have been excluded and this amount cannot be calculated, which limits how much you can determine about the population from the sample.
It will include biases based on the populations you have preset to include in your sample, even if you assign quotas.
Organic sampling and RDE are at the mercy of the websites and apps that they can be integrated with. It is possible that your targeted sample pool visits apps and other digital places that your RDE survey isn't integrated with.

Which Sample Pool Method Reigns Supreme?

While random organic sampling has made a mark in the survey realm, due to Random Device Engagement, it still faces its rivalrous counterpart: survey panels.

Other forms of survey sampling methods have been on the decline, yet survey panels are still in use. While they may appear to have fewer advantages and more disadvantages, survey panels still provide value to researchers.

As such, it is entirely up to you to decide which survey sampling method is best for your market research needs. Random organic sampling is our survey sampling method of choice, as it continues to rise above survey challenges, provides solid results and does so in a short span of time.

Frequently asked questions

What is an online survey panel?

Also called online panels or research panels, an online survey panel is a way of repeatedly collecting data from pre-recruited respondents via digital surveys.

What are some of the benefits of an online survey panel?

Online survey panels allow companies to quickly and inexpensively collect data from a group of people since the recruitment and screening process only needs to be performed once. Since responses are collected from the same group over time, they are able to show if and how opinions or behaviors change over.

What is panel fatigue?

Panel fatigue is a concern associated with survey panels. It occurs when panel participants become bored or tired of replying to surveys. This can result in the overall inaccuracy of the data collected from that participant.

What is organic sampling?

Organic sampling, or random organic sampling, refers to the process of distributing surveys to a random group of respondents. The respondents are typically sourced from websites or apps where they are given the option to participate in a survey.

What are the benefits of organic sampling?

Organic sampling can help prevent some of the pitfalls of survey panels including panel fatigue and panel conditioning. Organic sampling also tends to yield higher response rates and can help prevent fraud or data errors.

by lorraine

How Market Research Can Build Consumer Loyalty

Consumer loyalty is the principal objective of any business, a purpose more that should be more sought after than sales alone. This is because consumer loyalty is the main driver behind repeat sales.

This end cannot be reached overnight and to the surprise of many brands, it cannot be reached simply with a quality product. Instead, it takes several factors to build consumer loyalty.

This article explores consumer loyalty, why it is crucial, how it can benefit your business and mainly, how market research can help you achieve it.

Defining Consumer Loyalty

Consumer loyalty can be defined in several ways, some are more specific than others. While it may sound self-explanatory, for the purposes of market research, this concept is specifically defined as: the measure of a customer’s likelihood to patronize a business repeatedly.

As the name suggests, this phenomenon stems from a feeling of loyalty to a brand, the kind that chiefly results from product satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and a good customer experience (CX). However, there are many other aspects that play a role in consumer loyalty.

These can be difficult to obtain as brands cannot fulfill all of their customers’ wishes. They certainly cannot achieve this feat if they do not know all of their customers’ pains, needs and concerns.

This is where market research comes into play. You can conduct market research in a number of ways.

What Brands Gain from Consumer Loyalty

The goal of consumer loyalty is crucial to obtain and not just for the evident reasons. There are key facts on consumer loyalty that bear statistical importance. As such, brands need to approach this topic seriously.

Firstly, customer Loyalty is the main contribution to customer retention. A mere 5% increase in retention raises profits by 25-95%. This is not only because retained customers make repeat purchases, but also because repeat customers spend more money.

Consumer loyalty breeds brand ambassadors, and 83% of consumers will recommend a brand they are loyal to.

Aside from these statics of customer loyalty gains, you ought to know how customer acquisition — the act of gaining new customers measures up to customer loyalty. While acquiring new customers is key to business growth, customer loyalty still reigns supreme in comparison. This is because:

Acquiring new customers costs about five times more than retaining existing customers.
Selling to loyal customers has a 60-70% success rate, while selling to new ones has a 5-20% success rate.

How to Build Customer Loyalty with Market Research

Market research is an umbrella term that covers various methodologies to determine the success of a new product or service through researching one’s target market, competitors and the general state of an industry.

By examining your target market, i.e., customer base, you can learn about its preferences, needs and pain points. Tapping into the minds of your target market will allow you to serve them best, whether it is through new products, product upgrades, online experiences or general CX (customer experience).

Market research involves using primary and secondary research, that is, self-conducted research and research that has already been conducted and made available, respectively. The following delineates the attributes that foster customer loyalty, along with how market research can build them up.

Usability: Customers need to be reassured of the usability of your products/services. Understanding the ease of use of your offerings is thus crucial to creating customer loyalty. Primary research such as focus groups and surveys reveal the degree of your business’s usability, paving the way for understanding what works and what doesn’t.
Trust: If customers don’t trust your brand for any reason, they will not return for future transactions. To test how you fare with your customers, conducting customer satisfaction surveys, Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys and other customer loyalty surveys. To get a sense of how customers generally view brands in your niche, you can use secondary research like statistics sites, industry reports and blogs in your industry.
Customer Service: A key part of UX, customer service involves any touchpoint in which customers interact with company representatives. This includes leads speaking with sales representatives over the phone, a customer relying on a cashier or sales associate for help in-store, chatting with a rep via a site’s chat or getting phone support. You can use secondary research to get an overview of customer service in your industry via industry sites. You can also conduct secondary research on your competitors for ideas on how to boost your own customer service.
Personalization: Greeting customers by their names on your digital properties is no longer a potent personalization method. Instead, customers are looking for more targeted efforts to show that their unique needs and desires are being met. As such, brands should avoid taking generic approaches in customer messaging and journeys. Instead, brands can use secondary research to see what segments in their target market desire. In order to conduct market segmentation, you are going to need to use surveys. Additionally, to understand your customers at a deeper level, you’ll also need to implement surveys.
Social Media Presence: Social media has allowed brands to create more intimate relationships with customers. Creating social content can pique the interest of existing customers, prompting them to return to your brand at least to browse your social content. This can relieve them of boredom or curiosity, while keeping your brand on their minds. Primary research such as surveys can help you test your social media strategy to see what type of messaging and topics yield the most positive reactions.

Best Practices to Nurture Customer Loyalty

Developing customer loyalty requires market research and after you’ve gathered a substantial amount of it, it’s time to implement some best practices. You can experiment with the following options to see which tactic works best for growing customer loyalty.

Loyalty rewards programs: an oldie but a goody, this type of program helps both to attract customers and to keep the customers buying from you. This program, like its name implies, rewards your customers for being customers. For example, you can implement a point-based system based on the number of purchases customers make, which will reward customers with a discount, credit or some other benefit when a certain amount of points is reached.
Optimize your digital user experience (UX): We live in the digital age, where many purchases are done online. But it doesn’t end, as window shopping is also done in an online format. Many shoppers browse websites to get a sense of your offerings, so you should ensure your best offers are on display, along with seamless website experiences. Avoid long page load times, messy navigation or time-consuming check-outs.
Communicate with targeted solutions: Show your customers that you’ve been paying attention by only massaging them with targeted solutions. For example, if they frequent your business for one type of need, focus on those such products. Give suggestions on past purchases and cater to their whims. You can achieve the latter by scrutinizing your customers directly, by way of questionnaires.
Innovate your products: Product development can be laborious and pricey, but it is well worth it when it comes to customer loyalty. With competition left and right on the internet and in brick-and-mortar shops, consumers will look to brands that provide the best product experiences. As such, you should research your top competitors to see how they’re improving their products. You should also inquire from customers directly, what they would like to see improve from your products/services.
Hire employees who care: Since customer service is dependent on interactions with employees, you ought to hire carefully by vetting your job applicants. You should also place etiquette and politeness as top qualities for any consumer-facing role. But aside from hiring the best talent, you ought to keep your talent happy. Implementing employee satisfaction surveys will help measure how satisfied your employees are on the job. Employee happiness is sure to relay over to customer interactions.

Market Research: The Constant Giver

Since market research is concerned with staying in the know constantly on your market, customers and competitors, it is thereby a perennial tool for various business needs. As such, it is more than just a tool, as it entails using various sources of data.

Continually performing market research through both secondary and primary means will ensure you’re ahead of the curve, especially when it concerns consumer loyalty. Let’s face it, no matter how well you improve your product, service and customer experience, you are not a mind reader.

Consumers change their minds and can be swayed by competition instantly, especially in our increasingly digital world of information (think advertisements) overload. Surveys are thereby a vigorous instrument to measure customer satisfaction, calculate glitches, reveal frustrations and much more. You can uncover virtually any aspect of the customer experience through survey research, therefore empowering your business and stimulating customer loyalty.

Frequently asked questions

How is consumer loyalty defined?

Consumer loyalty is a measure of how likely it is that a customer will purchase from a business again. When individuals feel loyal to a brand, they are more likely to purchase from it repeatedly.

What are the benefits of consumer loyalty?

Companies that are able to increase consumer loyalty will see an increase in their profits. This is not just from repeated purchases, but also because customers are likely to spend more on subsequent purchases. In addition, the cost of marketing to and acquiring new customers is greater than the cost of retaining current customers.

How can market research help improve consumer loyalty?

Market research provides companies with a greater understanding of their target market and existing customers. By gaining a deeper view into their needs, preferences, and frustrations, the company can improve their products and overall experience, which in turn makes it more likely that they will purchase from the company again.

How does customer service contribute to consumer loyalty?

When customers get the support they need before, during, and after their purchase, they are more likely to consider their interaction with your brand in a positive light. They are more likely to purchase from the brand again, even if they were not happy with their initial purchase.

How does the digital user experience influence consumer loyalty?

With a great number of purchases made online, it is vital that the online experience is flawless. A well-designed website that loads quickly and offers in-site support is more likely to encourage return visits.

by lorraine

How to Conduct Fashion Market Research Like a Pro

Fashion market research provides business owners and entrepreneurs with valuable insights so they can make confident, informed decisions to guide the development or evolution of their fashion business.

Valued at an impressive 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars in 2020, the global fashion/apparel industry is a behemoth industry covering a wide variety of garments and accessories.

While this sector has traditionally experienced consistent growth, the past year has been turbulent and challenging. Whether you are considering a new fashion venture or are looking for innovative ways to recover from an unprecedented year, market research is an effective way to guide your efforts.

This article covers how to conduct a combination of primary and secondary research o to power your fashion market research campaign.

Fashion Market Research Overview

Fashion market research is the process of gathering and analyzing information to gain insights into the fashion industry, which includes its top players, your competitors and mainly, your target market. Whether you own an existing apparel business or are considering an entry into the world of fashion, market research can ensure effective use of your marketing expenditure and increase the likelihood of business success.

Fashion market research is used to achieve the following:

Understand how customers relate to your brand or a competitor’s brand.
Identify areas for growth, new markets, and customer segments.
Understand how existing customers would like to see your brand evolve.
Gain insight into consumer spending when it comes to fashion needs and wants.
Collect information about consumer opinions and interactions with various fashion segments (e.g. fast fashion vs. luxury brands).
Understand how fashion marketing campaigns influence consumers’ opinions and behavior.

Undertaking a market research campaign project can provide you with the confidence you need to succeed in a highly competitive industry. The end-goal of fashion market research is to gain sufficient information to make informed decisions about your business so that it can thrive.

The Makeup of Fashion Market Research

Fashion market research is made up of two sources of information, referred to as primary and secondary research. By using both primary and secondary sources of information, you can determine several key factors about your target market and its various segments. These include:

Annual spend on fashion in your niche
A comparison of shopping experience frequencies, in-store vs. online
Wardrobe share of certain brands and/or apparel categories
Where and how your target market discovers your brand
Shopping triggers
Spending forecasts
Marketing channels
Product diversity
How in-demand your products or brand are

To reap the most insights, you should plan to incorporate both primary and secondary sources to drive your fashion market research towards success.

Primary Research for the Fashion Industry

Primary market research refers to the unique data that is gathered from first-hand sources. While it is more labor-intensive to gather primary information, you are rewarded with data that is particularly relevant to your particular business and customer base. It also puts you in control in terms of the data you collect and then leverage.

The most valuable sources of primary information for fashion market research are:

Online survey tools about existing or prospective customers, i.e., those in your target market that have not yet bought from you.
Phone, in-person, and mall intercept interviews
Focus groups:
- In contrast to one-on-one interviews, a focus group allows for moderated discussion among participants. This provides the opportunity for the group to share ideas and discuss a topic or trend, which is particularly useful when conducting fashion market
Field research:
- This gives marketers an opportunity to observe and understand how customers behave in a natural setting. When it comes to fashion market research, field research provides valuable information about how customers browse and shop, both in-store (through natural observation) and online (via session replay tools).
User testing:
- Often used to test out new design concepts, user testing gauges customer interest and reception. It is also used to test out in-store shopping experiences and changes to fashion websites.

Consumer research panels

Secondary Research for the Fashion Industry

Secondary research is performed by sourcing data from existing, published sources, i.e., data that you don’t need to amass yourself, as it has already been conducted. You should then parse through and organize the secondary data to prepare it for analysis. A strong analysis involves comparing the secondary resources against each other, along with their primary source counterparts.

Good sources of secondary information for the fashion industry include:

Market and industry research reports and white papers
Fashion industry websites
SEO, keyword, and trends research
Governments statistics
Your competitors’ websites and other digital properties such as apps, mobile sites, ads, etc.

Secondary Research Sources for Fashion Market Research

To give your fashion market research a jumpstart, we have gathered some of the most relevant sources of secondary information for the fashion industry.

Marketresearch.com Market Research Reports & Industry Analysis: A veritable font of information about the fashion and apparel industry, this site lets you search and filter to find general industry reports and more specific reports that pertain to your niche or sub-sector.
McKinsey’s State of Fashion Annual Report: A trusted global consulting group, McKinsey publishes a free annual report on the fashion industry that contains insights on the global economy, consumer spending and behavior and the fashion industry as a whole. The recently published report on fashion in 2021 pays special attention to the impact that COVID-19 has had and will continue to have on the industry in the coming year.
Statista.com Global Apparel Market - Statistics and Facts: Statista offers a wealth of information and statistics on the fashion market. You can access a variety of charts and reports for free, or purchase more comprehensive reports, such as Apparel Market Worldwide dossier.
NPD Fashion Trend Tracker: The global consulting group NPD has created a subscription-based trend tracker that provides the latest information on changing fashion trends. Use this to track change and identify areas of growth in your vertical.
NPD website: In addition to paid sources of information, the NPD Group is also an excellent source of free information about the fashion and apparel industry, published as articles and blog posts on their website.
The Business of Fashion: This online magazine collates insights gathered by journalists in over 125 countries. Subscription-based memberships are available for those who want to gain insights from a leading source of fashion industry news and information.
KPMG Sustainable Fashion report: Published by KPMG, this free report focuses on consumer perception of sustainable fashion. The group interviewed over 1,000 individuals in the world’s largest cities to understand how consumers relate to sustainable fashion and responsible buying behavior.
CommonObjective.co: For anyone with an eye on sustainability as it pertains to fashion, Common Objective is a valuable source of both free and paid information about trends, sourcing, marketing, consumer behavior, and more.

Confront New Challenges with Market Research

Fashion businesses have more challenges to consider than ever before. If your business is struggling to recover from the global pandemic, market research can help you identify new areas of growth. With a tightened budget, market research is vital to ensure your marketing and advertising spend is used wisely.

Or perhaps you are looking to evolve your business in response to the concerns of “woke” consumers, who demand a higher level of environment and social responsibility from fashion brands. Market research can help you meet these demands and shape your targeted messaging.

Even without new challenges, every fashion business fights the constant battle to remain relevant and stylish in an ever-changing landscape. Consumers on the hunt for something unique and new will continue to push fashion brands to evolve their style to satisfy their customers’ demands.

Fortunately, this demand comes with more direct access to your customers via social media. You can benefit from an engaged audience by regularly deploying online surveys to gather insights about their needs and desires, no matter how often they change.

Regardless of your motivations, fashion market research can provide you with valuable insights to help you make confident decisions in the months and years to come.

Frequently asked questions

What is fashion market research?

Fashion market research involves collecting and analyzing data in order to gain a better understanding of how an apparel business is positioned in the competitive landscape.

Who can benefit from fashion market research?

Fashion market research is beneficial for a wide variety of businesses that operate within the fashion industry. This includes established brands, fashion startups, brick-and-mortar stores, apparel chains, and artisan fashion producers.

What are some of the reasons for conducting fashion market research?

Fashion market research can help a business identify new target markets, understand how existing customers feel about their brand, gain insights into fashion spending, and explore how marketing campaigns can affect buying behavior.

How is fashion market research conducted?

After identifying the goals of the fashion market research project, the team will conduct primary and secondary research to gather information from the appropriate sources. Then, this information will be compiled into a report that contains findings and recommendations.

What types of primary research are most appropriate for fashion market research?

The most useful types of primary research for the fashion industry include surveys, interviews, focus groups, field research, mall intercepts, and user testing.

by lorraine

How Polling Software Disproves that Polls Don't Work

How the Right Polling Software Predicted the 2016 Presidential Election

Avoiding Inaccurate Data: The Sampling Error & the Margin of Error

Avoiding Polling Biases

Sampling Bias

Non-Response Bias

Survivorship Bias

Acquiescence Bias

Testing Your Marketing, Market Research and Other Business-Related Campaigns

Frequently asked questions

What is polling software?

What is a sampling error?

What is a margin of error?

How can sampling bias be avoided?

What is non-response bias?

How Surveys Help Increase Customer Lifetime Value

Defining Customer Lifetime Value

The Importance of Monitoring and Increasing CLV

How to Calculate Customer Lifetime Value

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Historic CLV:

Traditional CLV:

Predictive CLV:

How Surveys Help Boost Customer Lifetime Value

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Questions to Use to in Surveys to Increase CLV

Other Considerations for Improving CLV

Frequently asked questions

What is the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?

What are the three approaches used to calculate customer lifetime value?

How is historic CLV measured?

What is predictive CLV?

How can surveys improve customer lifetime value?

How to Conduct Market Segmentation with Survey Research

What is Market Segmentation?

The Benefits of Market Segmentation

How to do Market Segmentation

The 5 Types of Market Segmentation

Demographic Segmentation:

Geographic Segmentation

Behavioral Segmentation:

Psychographic segmentation:

Firmographic Segmentation

Using Survey Research for Market Segmentation

Frequently asked questions

What is market segmentation?

What is the purpose of market segmentation?

What are some of the applications of market segmentation?

What is demographic segmentation?

What is geographic segmentation?

Fortifying Your Market Research with the Qualitative Survey

Defining the Qualitative Survey

When to Use a Qualitative Survey in Your Research Endeavors

How to Get Started on Formulating a Qualitative Survey

Questions and Surveys to Use in a Qualitative Survey

Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey Questions:

Customer Loyalty Survey Questions:

Product Satisfaction Survey Questions:

Retrospective Survey Questions:

Event Evaluation Survey Question Examples:

Expanding Your Research Needs

Frequently asked questions

What is a qualitative survey?

How are qualitative surveys different from quantitative surveys?

What types of surveys can include qualitative questions?

How can qualitative survey questions help expand your research?

When should qualitative surveys be used?

Diving Into Longitudinal Surveys

Defining Longitudinal Surveys

The Key Aspects of Longitudinal Surveys

How They Differ from Cross-Sectional & Retrospective Surveys

The 3 Types of Longitudinal Surveys

Panel study:

Cohort study:

Retrospective study:

Which Industries Depend on these Surveys for Market Research

Types of Business Surveys that Rely on Longitudinal Studies

The Pros and Cons of Longitudinal Surveys

Pros

Cons