The Three  "E's" of Consumer Research

My last Views, July 5, 1995, dealt with my thoughts on the maximization of an idea before the "final" evaluation to determine if the product was market ready. These thoughts stimulated questions among some readers about how I viewed the consumer research involved in the development of an idea to a market brand. The following is an attempt to summarize my thoughts and to keep them to one page:

I am a firm believer in the fact that the development of an idea is an iterative process whereby we use the "Plan-Do-Evaluate-Act" principle in each step of the process. Each major step of the process is followed by "Confirmatory" research. I like to break the research down into three major categories: Exploratory, Experimentation, and Evaluation. [Note: I believe that the research in these three areas requires very different methods and research mentalities.]

I have written about my thoughts as they pertain to the Exploratory Research phase in a previous Views article, and I will be writing about the Evaluative phase in a future article. Today, I will focus on the Experimental phase which I believe to be unfortunately the most ignored area of product development research.

Experimentation -- In this "development" phase, I break the product down into its sub-components and work to maximize the synergy of the components. The basic components would be the following five "P's."

Positioning -- What is the vision we wish to communicate? What is the "reason for being?" What is the "reason to believe?" What are the key thoughts, words and phrases?

Product -- Not only should we work to maximize the performance of the product, but we should insure that all the elements of the product reinforce the positioning. This means that we should look at and research all the aesthetics of the product, to insure they work in harmony. The most common aesthetics research for this type of research is "Acceptability and Theme Support."

Package I believe the package is one of the most overlooked and important elements of a brand. I recommend that we view the package from two perspectives: functionality and communication.

Functionality -- Does it protect the product? Does it make the product easy to use? Is it easy to handle? Is it durable? etc.

Communication -- At this point, I'm restricting my thoughts to communication to the consumer. All elements should point to and reinforce the central theme of the brand, even down to the words, art and colors used on the package.

Pricing -- It is important to identify the flexibility of the consumer's acceptable price range. Does the acceptable pricing allow for the needed profit margin? How does the perceived value relate to the consumer's alternatives?

Elrick & Lavidge's new research method, SCOPE, is ideally suited for much of the research. SCOPE provides readily available participants at relatively low cost for low base experimentation.