The most common mistakes made during brand research
Today, we will explain to you some most common mistakes which are made when you are designing and conducting brand research.
Select your research partner unwisely
If you are having a badly designed survey then it can, in turn, lead to conclusions that are incorrect, as a result of which it is very harmful to the businesses. This is the reason that it is very crucial for you to work only with some trusted research partners who have a better understanding of your problems related to business and who are capable enough to assist you to solve these problems.
The easiest way for finding these potential partners is by asking your colleagues, those colleagues on whose judgment you can rely completely upon their recommendations regarding not only the research agency itself but also regarding the particular teams within that agency.
These types of research could easily be done in the house, particularly if they are not complicated and have requirement of access to the database of your customer, for example, Net Promoter Score Study. However, the more complicated pieces like customer segmentation should always be performed by a specialist research agency.
One thing which should also be mentioned in this section is that it is a totally bad idea altogether to have an expectation from your creative agency for conducting market or brand research on your behalf. It is very unfortunate that it is a popular practice even in the most well-known companies.
Messing up of the research design
Although you are more likely to avoid the methodological mistakes with the assistance of a carefully chosen partner, sometimes they still happen. One of the most common mistakes is to carry out a qualitative study instead of carrying out a quantitative one, or the other way around.
Quantitative and qualitative methodologies are not at all interchangeable, but these should be used for different purposes. If you are desired to have an understanding of what the majority of your targeted audience thinks, you can conduct a quantitative study. For getting a deeper understanding of the problems, you can do the selection of one of the qualitative techniques. If you will do something opposite, it will lead to your wrong decisions.
It is a marketing crime to present the results of a qualitative study in percentages and numbers, as it is using quantitative surveys for uncovering consumer insights of which respondents themselves are not aware.
Other mistakes which are related to bad research design include making use of a wrong sample, for example, selection of a narrow segment when you have requirement of representative of the general population, writing those surveys which are longer than 12 minutes (after 12 minutes respondents are expected for picking their answers rather randomly, just for finishing the survey) or not randomizing the answers.
Being biased
Marketing and brand research, which is dependent on how it is conducted, is able in proving almost anything, even contradicting theses. If you are being serious about getting objective results, you are required to be careful not to let your present opinions, beliefs, and knowledge lay an impact on your design of the research study.
One example of such a mistake is phrasing the questions related to surveys in a way that would suggest "the right" answer to you (for example, "Which brand are you thinking is the best on the market for shampoo? Brand X or brand Y?"). Another example is to make use of a wrong scale, such as when you are asking questions that if you have set up the scale that ranges from $1 to $1,000 is compared with when it is between $1 and $100.
Killing & Testing of Creativity with research
However, we have mentioned it before but once more we will repeat it: It is your role and responsibility to make the judgment about whether a creative idea is good or not. Research never measures creativity, it does the measurement of effectiveness.
Research can assist you in making a decision on how an idea does its contribution in making your brand image, figuring out whether the concept is required to fine- tuning to be more identifiable or understandable with the help of your brand, measurement of whether it is indulged in the building of purchase intent, etc.
Taking wrong decision or not making it at all
Those firms which are able in affording their own research sometimes make use of the data and conclusions which are published by some other companies for substantiating their own decisions. They do so without checking how their research has been done even though it might have been carried out and have been published just for the creation of a buzz (so-called PR research).
Next time, when you read about, for example, Millennials buying only "authentic", purpose-driven, and ethical brands, and come to the conclusion and make your decision that this can be an important strategy for your company. Then you are required to check the sales results of such brands at first. If you still want some better results, then you are required to check the sales results of those brands which used to represent none of those things. You might get totally surprised.
When you are making use of the research done by someone else, it is often a mistake that is made by small businesses. Big corporations are often indulged in doing the entirely opposite things. They do a lot of research, which is often out of habit, and then they ignore it. People here are so preoccupied with their jobs that they are not having time for attending presentations of research results or they read the research reports. You should not be that kind of marketer at all.