Millennials, Moments and Life Slices

At Market Strategies International, we are always working to stay at the forefront of research innovation. We fund our own studies, explore innovative techniques, and design and pilot new uses of technology in our research. The smarter we are and the faster we move, the more confidence we bring to our clients’ decision-making.

I want to share three exciting new initiatives designed to help drive your most important business decisions: a groundbreaking generational study, a new shopper experience technique, and an innovative technology for in-the-moment research.

Building Brands with Millennials

Let’s start with a sneak preview of our recent, self-funded research on the drivers of loyalty among Millennials. One part of this major study was designed to help us understand what informs and influences Millennial shopping habits.

The word clouds below illustrate generational differences in how different sources of information inform shopping habits. While “product” is key to both groups, Millennials are influenced by much more than product knowledge. They are more likely to put their social networking skills to use, seeking out the opinions of family and friends and placing their trust in those opinions.

Unsurprisingly, “Generation Share”—what we also like to call Millennials—values social media and blogs during product research. We will be sharing more in a future article, including the identification of the key social media networks and blogs that are must-resources for brands looking to succeed with Millennials. It’s fascinating stuff, and we will delve much deeper into which brands are winning with Millennials—and why.

Visualizing the Path to Purchase with LifeSlicer

A new tool in our Path to Purchase research utilizes an innovative qualitative technique we call LifeSlicer. The LifeSlicer is a small, unobtrusive, wearable “life-logging” camera. When worn by a shopper, it takes a still image every 30 seconds, effectively seeing what the shopper sees and documenting the shopping experience without the distraction of a researcher shadowing the shopper’s every move. The LifeSlicer captures a whole timeline of images and sends it to the cloud where it can be accessed by an iPhone (soon to be accessed by laptop or tablet). Below are a few images from a recent shopping trip.

With LifeSlicer you get great in-the-moment understanding of shelf design and communication, POS experiences, even parking facilities and many more factors that impact the average shopping trip. LifeSlicer provides a complete visualization of the shopping trip as experienced—in the most unobtrusive way—by the shoppers themselves.

The LifeSlicer also has enormous potential for lifestyle and A&U research. For example, the device could be worn over a longer period, such as a weekend, to capture lifestyle activities and need states by segment. As long as the camera is upright, it is taking images. Adding these images to other research helps bring consumers’ experiences to life in the way they were actually experienced. Additionally, having consumers provide commentary can help explain reactions, emotions and other key influences in their shopping habits. It is one of our favorite new research tools and is bringing new understanding of consumers to light.

Capturing Instant Response with “In-the-Moment” Store Kiosk

Another tool with the potential to generate unique insights is our “In-the-Moment” Store Kiosk. It combines built-in storage, telemetrics and cloud storage to provide an instantaneous snapshot of a consumer’s intellectual and emotional response. This Kiosk is placed at a strategic location (e.g., in a retail store or hotel lobby) and allows customers to provide instant feedback on their experience. It’s fun, it engages customers and it shows that a brand really values their feedback. We envision three main purposes: CX feedback, affective facial responses, and promotional content (that is, when not being used for research purposes, the Kiosk can display advertisements, promotions, etc.).

Our team is continually scanning the market for new and innovative uses of technology, identifying those that we believe show the most potential for helping our clients make confident business decisions. And we welcome potential partners—clients with interesting challenges who aren’t afraid of fresh ideas and novel approaches.

For more details about the Building Brands with Millennials study, LifeSlicer and our In-the-Moment Kiosk, contact Paul Donagher at at [email protected] or 501.217.3228.