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24 Examples of Customer Research

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Customer research is the process of building an understanding of customers. This is an inherent part of business development, product design, marketing, sales, customer service and business improvement that allows a firm to stay in touch with market realities. The following are illustrative examples of customer research.

Target Market

The process of identifying your customers based on factors such as demographics and psychographics. For example, a bicycle helmet company that investigates what type of customers are willing to pay a premium for a safer helmet.

Target Audience

The process of identifying an audience for a marketing message. For example, a snowboard manufacturer with an extremely limited advertising budget that wants to reach influencers in snowboarding culture.

Customer Needs

Customer needs are the root reasons that customers purchase products and services. This can include functional, social and emotional needs.

Critical to Customer

Critical to customer is a measurement that strongly influences purchasing decisions. For example, consumers who will only purchase a vehicle that has received a top safety rating from a government agency.

Customer Motivation

The real reasons that customers buy beyond what they say they need. For example, decision makers at a business who are strongly motivated to offload stress and workload.

Customer Expectations

The expectations that customers have for a product or service. These are often assumed and unstated such that they are difficult to research. For example, a customer who expects that labels will be easy to remove from a product. Such a customer may be unlikely to state this as a need but may become dissatisfied when expectations aren't met.

Customer Preferences

Evaluation of customer preferences that impact customer satisfaction. For example, a hotel that evaluates how hard or soft customers like their pillows.

Customer Requirements

The requirements of business customers. For example, a solar panel manufacturer may analyze the common requirements in RFPs for solar systems.

Moment of Truth

Analysis of critical moments in the customer experience. For example, a fashion retailer who examines how customers react to different types of packaging.

Brand Recognition

Evaluating your target market's ability to recognize your brand.

Brand Awareness

Evaluating brand awareness such as top of mind. This is the percentage of customers who name your brand when prompted with a product category.

Customer Satisfaction

Measuring customer satisfaction with your current products and services. For example, a hotel that interviews customers on exit to discover why the hotel has been receiving poor reviews.

Price Perceptions

Evaluating customer reactions to different prices. This can discover cognitive pricing factors such as a sticky price.

Price Sensitivity

Modeling how sensitive your target market is to prices. This is often used to develop price discrimination strategies such as coupons.

Perceptions of Quality

Investigating what customers perceive as high quality and low quality. For example, customers that perceive paper packaging as higher quality than plastic for a particular product category.

Usability

Evaluating how pleasing and productive your products and services are to use.

Word of Mouth

Customer analysis using reviews, ratings and word of mouth information from sources such as social media. For example, poor ratings can be an excellent source of customer needs and expectations.

Feedback

Accepting feedback from customers and using this as a source for analysis.

Experience Sampling

Experience sampling is a market research technique that involves asking customers to keep a journal of their experiences with your products and services.

Interviews

Customer interviews such as a ladder interview or focus group.

Marketing Experiments

Marketing experiments geared at understanding customers. For example, A/B testing different prices to identify price perceptions.

Observational Study

The use of observational studies to understand customers. For example, observing customer reactions to a merchandising display.

Surveys

Surveys are a popular form of customer research because they are easy to do. Customers are often adverse to filling out surveys such that those who do may have unusual characteristics that aren't representative of all customers.

Lead Users

Lead users is the process of engaging customers who are pushing your products to their limits or who are important to the culture surrounding your product. This implies an in-depth engagement whereby lead users may feed you ideas for product functions, features and design. For example, a technology company that engages developers and business units that are actively using a technology platform to understand pain points and needs.
Overview: Customer Research
Type
Definition
The process of building an understanding of customers, their needs and perceptions.
Related Concepts

Customer Analysis

This is the complete list of articles we have written about customer analysis.
Consumer Issues
Critical To Customer
Customer Analytics
Customer Attributes
Customer Base
Customer Complaints
Customer Expectations
Customer Motivation
Customer Needs
Customer Outcomes
Customer Pain Points
Customer Preferences
Customer Requirement
Customer Requirements
Customer Research
Customer Success
Customer Wants
Experience Sampling
Focus Group
Ladder Interview
Lead User
Marketing Experimentation
Moment Of Truth
Niche
Persona
Price Sensitivity
Segment
Serviceable Available Market
Subculture
Target Market
Tribes
Voice Of The Customer
More ...
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Customer Analysis

A complete guide to customer analysis.

Types Of Customer

The common types of customer.

Customer Requirements

The common types of customer requirements.

Customer Needs Examples

A list of common customer needs.

Customer Wants

An overview of customer wants with examples.

Customer Attributes

A list of customer attributes.

Engagement Data

A list of customer engagement data.

Examples of Customer Requirements

A list of common customer requirements.

Customer Success

An overview of customer success with examples.

Customer Retention

An overview of customer retention with examples.

Marketing Analysis

An overview of marketing analysis with examples.

Customer Analytics

An overview of customer analytics with examples.

Customer Complaints

An overview of customer complaints with examples.

Customer Risk

An overview of customer risk with examples.

Customer Metrics

Several concrete ways to measure customer relationships.

Active Customer

An overview of active customers as a marketing metric.

Brand Engagement

The common types of brand engagement.

Active Users

The common types of active user metric.

Share Of Wallet

An overview of share of wallet with an example.

Customer Base

The definition of customer base with examples.

Active Customers

The definition of active customers with examples.

Critical Success Factors

A few examples of critical success factors.

Benchmarking

A few examples of benchmarking.
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