What do you ask when you research your consumers?

Posted on September 3, 2007 - Filed Under Innovative marketing strategies | Leave a Comment

As disciplined marketers let us turn to research and how well we know our consumers. Because we all do research our consumers to know them better, to know who they are and how best to talk to them â€“ what to tell them in order for them to feel that we understand them and for them to stay with us.

And we do research them geographically to know where they are, and demographically to know how many are male vs female and what is their predominant age group, and what is the life-style they have all of this to get a clear image in our mind as to who are they, identify them in every possible detail.

And then we come to their media habits and we do ask them on how much and what TV station and programs they are most interested in, what newspapers and magazines they read and which radio stations they listen to when going to work in the morning. And we come to the internet and the question is what do we ask them about it. Do we just ask them if they use it or not and if only for emails or also to surf. Do you stop there?

Because as we know unless we ask them the right questions there is no way for them to give us the right answersthe ones we are really interested in: Do you ask your consumers if they blog and where? Do you ask them if they podcast? Do also ask them what they go online for for information, to purchase, for entertainment and where and which sites. Because if you are to reach them where they are and you have to know these things. And unless you ask them and they are not going to tell you.

So unless you include these questions in your questionnaires you would be missing a big part of the puzzle and they might be spending a lot of time online, but answering you questions they would answer only those which you ask them. And we do not want to misinterpret their media behaviour because we did not ask.

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