Advancing Market Research through fun

Sometimes when we send out surveys to the public we often lose sight of who the right target should be. In other words, we need to target the right persons who could provide us with an adequate response that will gear a better, more efficient decision making.

To ensure this; we have to track what stories users create every day from their interaction with their environment and use these stories to know which users to send some certain questionnaires or surveys and get better responses…

For example, users who often go to the car wash are creating stories about car washing one or more days in a week. However, some don’t go; hence if those users go to a car wash any time; they should update their story around it or better still just indicate that they went to have their car washed for that day…

With that, companies that want to target solutions to these users will know what kind of users to send surveys to and ignore the rest or outliers; i.e someone who rarely visits a car wash…

where companies could be getting it wrong is having some selected group of respondents designated to answer these market surveys, questionnaires and so on. Although if on the part of those selected individuals, they are able to further step out to discover or interact with the actual story owners, then businesses can have no faltered results or biased responses but responses that will better affect the business process.

The way to take in these stories will actually be the real innovation- for example, we have had social media platforms; an innovative and fun way that behind the scene captures these moments or stories of users. It Is a fun way or should I say one of the many fun compared to saying to a user “please if you go anywhere just share the story or moments you experienced”. It should not be by compulsion but fun- remember; the user doesn’t even need to know he is doing that just because you need it, rather he is having fun while you are trying to do something from that story or moments ….

What other innovative ways can we ask a user to record his or her daily stories or moments for this accurate market discovery or better-implementing solutions for advancement…?

This is where brainstorming comes in…

Can we reward them when they do? we have people who have become influencers as a result of just telling others how they spend their day. This is quite impressive and has gone a long way in creating brand faces for companies.

How about the actual, deep-level customer who uses these products, how do we capture their story?;

The ones buying the sugar to drink their garri, buying dry fish from the market, going to the cobbler to fix a pair of sandals or getting to the salon to make hair.

Can we capture more adequate stories during these events-

behind the fun, can we mine gold?

It is more important to be aware that harnessing these stories behind the everyday events of individuals the deep-down level customers will go a long way to have more efficient delivery of advancements in products, inciting new products into the market or solving issues with products… it will save cost while targeting the right persons during research, surveys or questionnaires and so on…

To be continued.