Value chain thinking places the consumer and their needs first, with everything else secondary to those demands – its a paradigm shift from supply push to demand pull.

It is important to differentiate between customers and consumers. The consumer is the person who will ultimately consume your product, and the customer is how you reach the consumer – for example – a retail outlet.  It is the consumer that determines what attributes are valued, however, in order to gain access to the market, suppliers must also meet the needs of the overall retailer.

What is consumer research?

Consumer research identifies why consumers buy goods or use services, and what their future buying habits may be. Therefore, determining the motivations of consumers, reasons why they choose to buy a particular product or service, and the things that influence their brand choices.

This form of research can be conducted through various techniques and strategies, including focus groups, in-depth interviews and surveys.

It is essential that consumer research focuses on both consumer attitudes and behaviour.  Focusing only on attitudes risks the research only reflecting how consumers believe they act, whilst they actually behave very differently.

How do I undertake consumer research?

The following are issues to consider when undertaking consumer research:
 
1.  Identify the factors that influence shoppers’ purchasing decisions. 

How do consumers decide when to buy the product and, having made the decision to purchase, how do they decide which product/brand to buy? 

The research should distinguish, as relevant, between:

• branded and private label
• meal occasion (e.g. mid-week snack, weekend evening meal and special occasions)
• shopping mission (e.g. main shop, top-up shop).

2.  Determine the importance, relative and absolute, of different product attributes. 

What value do consumers attach to them and why? 

Depending on the product, this might include:

• price, promotions and premium branding
• taste, texture, nutritional value and freshness
• packaging (appearance; product information/endorsements; benefits in convenience of use, eg pack size)
• new products (range extensions or new ranges)
• convenience of preparation/cooking or interesting preparation suggestions
• sustainability of production, processing, packaging, distribution and disposal
• provenance.

What changes to the existing range would stimulate consumption or increase expenditure on the family of products?  Is there anything about the products that deter consumers, for example, how much ends up wasted, or inadequate packaging (amount, design, information)?

Existing research

It is useful to conduct an audit and assessment of existing consumer research.  Issues to consider include:

1.  The examination of research already used by the chain should incorporate specific examples which highlight whether consumer research:

• is used to make strategic and product-specific decisions
• covers consumers’ various attitudes and behaviour
• continuously monitors consumer segments, or only tests new product ideas once they have been developed.

2.  The analysis should assess how the research is used to inform:

• category strategies, product specifications and product performance measures agreed by retailer and supplier.
• Innovation programmes, including:
  • new product development, both in monitoring attitude/behaviour changes to identify new opportunities and in testing specific new product ideas
  • extending further upstream, eg reflecting consumer insight in agricultural R&D, and in process and systems innovation.

Examples of consumer research

Attitudes of UK supermarket shoppers towards wine purchasing

    Executive summary (.pdf) 169KB

    Full report (.pdf) 417KB