Customer + Consumer Insights Services

Actionable consumer insights are drawn from numerous types of data. Demographic data helps create a picture of the consumers who make up a market: their ages, incomes, genders and other facts. Behavioral data gleaned from transactional and website analytics reveals how they interact with brands and what they purchase. Psychographic, or attitudinal, data uncovers consumers’ values, feelings and motivations; qualitative research such as one-on-one interviews and focus groups are often used to yield this information. Together, these types of data give brands an understanding of who the consumers are, what they do and why they do it. 

Understanding the consumers you want to reach — who they are, what they do and what drives their behavior — is vital to creating a customer experience that keeps them coming back. Insights into consumers’ priorities enables a brand to tailor its touchpoints, marketing campaigns, service offerings and products to better meet consumers’ needs and eliminate pain points. Without this information, organizations often waste resources on media, features and services they assume consumers care about rather than on what shoppers really want.

Consumer and customer insights can be characterized as descriptive, diagnostic, predictive or prescriptive. Descriptive insights are largely quantitative and reveal how people behaved. Diagnostic insights look behind the behavior to discover what led to it. Predictive insights forecast future behavior based on past patterns, and prescriptive insights draw on all of the above to suggest what an organization should do to improve performance and meet goals.

People don’t always behave in rational ways. Behavioral science strives to understand why they make the decisions and act as they do. Businesses that have empirical insights into the emotions, biases and context driving purchase decisions can refine their messaging, strategies and offerings to align with consumers’ motivators, habits and existing behavioral patterns and forge deeper, longer lasting connections. 

To turn consumer and customer research into real business impact, brands must start by grounding the work in their challenges and goals. At Material, we begin every engagement by understanding our clients’ needs and desired outcomes before conducting research or analyzing data. This upfront alignment ensures that the insights we uncover are relevant, actionable and tied directly to meaningful business results. 

Interpreting the findings requires the same focus. We prioritize the initiatives that will drive the greatest impact and define them as specifically as possible. Clear KPIs are established and tracked, and we encourage an iterative approach – continually refining actions over time to maximize performance and long-term value.