Moving Away from a Narcissistic Market Research Model

Why are we still measuring brand loyalty? It isn’t something that naturally comes up with consumers, who rarely think about brand first, if at all. Market research and marketing nomenclature has long centered around brand awareness, consideration and NPS, but customers don’t think along these lines. There’s a big disconnect here that is negatively affecting consumer understanding, and successful business decision making.

It’s well past time to shift the conversation. It’s a hard move. Brands want to know about themselves, but the consumer doesn’t care about the brand – they care about their own needs. We’ve talked about this approach to market research as Brand Narcissism, something we cover in our book and describe like “being on a date with someone who is wracked with insecurities” who is asking questions like “Why did you first decide to go out with me?”, “How would you describe me to your friends?” or “How do I compare to the other people you know about?”

While marketers probably do have these types of questions, related to their brand, that is not the way a consumer thinks when they are making a purchase decision. Researchers can easily corrupt their insights by continuing to pursue these navel-gazing questions. The purchase funnel we’ve relied on for so long, bears little resemblance to the way consumers are behaving and thinking about shopping in today’s world.

While the consumer landscape has been changing for decades, brought on by technology, category disruption, socioeconomics and more, the evolution of the past three years is impossible to ignore. Digital behaviors of all kinds were accelerated, and the way we shop and consume was permanently altered by the pandemic. One of the most prominent changes was a move toward what we call “Shopper Promiscuity”, or the willingness to try new brands, new products, and new categories. In this new state of mind, shoppers prefer to explore and try new things. Nothing loyal about that.

For brands, this means that they are now operating in an era of constant acquisition. While our research shows that susceptibility to the whims of promiscuous shoppers varies by category, the forces – such as innovation, unlimited access to information, the need for personal expression and reprioritization – that are driving the behavior are universal.

At a basic level, this reality means we need to revisit how we ask questions in our research is vital to collecting good insights. We won’t find out anything new that drives good business strategy by asking the same questions or by using the same approaches that we always have. There are a few things you can do to overcome these hurdles, including utilizing multimodal research techniques and newer methodologies, like neuroscience, that can help answer tough questions in new ways. For example, if you need complex answers for a study, you could include both quantitative stated data and neuroscience or qualitative interviews. New technologies allow us to do this more efficiently and cost-effectively than ever before.

There are many other things you can do to rethink research. We suggest shaking up the way you approach brand trackers, evaluate audience understanding, bring together data streams and much more. First and foremost, put Brand Narcissism in the rearview mirror. It is a barrier to smarter thinking about shoppers and risks delivering outdated metrics. Brands that think like their shoppers do, and don’t take them for granted, are the ones who stand the best chance of being successful.