Our work in consumer products and services is quite diverse — but all our clients demand reliable and accurate information, insights and recommendations.

We are often called on to conduct focus groups to understand consumer attitudes and preferences towards brands or to better understand consumer behavior in a product category. We also offer special qualitative methods called ideation to develop new product ideas.

Quantitative research such a telephone survey is used to understand how many consumer think and act in a certain way and where these consumers are.

We use advanced statistical methods including cluster analysis to segment customers in groups to properly tailor marketing programs. In fact, Market Decisions has been using psychographics (segmenting customers by attitudes, beliefs, interests and values) to profile groups of customers since the late 1980’s. An example of this approach can be seen in Market Decisions’ report, The People of Maine, where segmentation was used to help leaders understand the basis for public opinion on various issues.

Our use of a specially designed survey instrument and a sophisticated analytical tool called perceptual mapping with multidimensional scaling allows clients to visually see the competitive map as consumers see it. In this approach, respondents make comparisons, evaluating similarities and differences in a series of paired questions. The responses are then mapped and the position of competitors are descriptive of perceived differences. For an example of such a map, click here.

More of our clients are also interested in Internet surveys and online focus groups. While online research is not as statistically accurate or fully representative as random telephone surveys, they are excellent at obtaining directional information from hard to reach groups of customers. Market Decisions uses proprietary software to conduct on-line focus groups. These are ideal in situations where customers are dispersed and for examining visual content such as websites, advertising and even TV commercials in an interactive way.

We also have extensive expertise in advertising testing and tracking. Market Decisions has been involved in communications campaigns that have become cases studies for effectiveness. Focus groups or in-depth/qualitative or executive interviews are used to test initial ideas and then we conduct pre and post advertising tests.

In Maine we use our quarterly shared subscriber survey, The Maine Survey, as an economical means to pre and post test advertising awareness. Elsewhere we rely on our own proprietary design telephone survey.