Qualitative
Case study: Hasbro
Board games sales were suffering in store versus the rest of the toy category in the crucial period running up to Christmas. That meant sales and promotional space were under pressure. To reverse this trend, Hasbro needed to present a compelling case to their trade partners.
The nanoqual methodology helped to pinpoint the key insights around purchase which were not coming through more traditional research analysis.
We conducted 320 Nanoqual interviews in 8 key accounts and supported this with 800 traditional entrance and exit interviews.
The key insight was that, unlike toys, the board game fixture was merchandised on its own, according to category rather than recipient. However shoppers were primarily looking for a solution for a recipient which meant board games were ‘off their radar’ unless they were on a specific mission to purchase them.
In the short term, this facilitated a productive, mutually beneficial conversation with the trade to reposition boards games alongside toys and merchandise them together versus recipients. Longer term, it gave a clear steer for NPD to focus on creating more age and gender specific games.
Nanoquals
Focus groups are very effective at understanding the ‘demand’ side of customer behaviour - so why people believe they want or need something.
However, often a positive result in groups is not matched by what happens in real life.
We think that this is because the limitation of focus groups is that they take no account of the ‘supply’ side of behaviour at the key moment of truth when a product is purchased.
Factors influencing this tend to be more chaotic and less logical than those deeply held beliefs and opinions which are surfaced in focus groups. The insights to understanding the moment of truth behaviour can be likened to quantum cryptography i.e. as soon as they are processed by the customer, they are forgotten.
That is why we developed the Nanoqual methodology: short (1-3 minute) interviews conducted by trained qualitative researchers at point of sale. Although structured in the sense that questions are honed around the problem being investigated, this is not the tick box of quantitative but captures the spontaneous thought processes influencing the final customer decision.
When matched back to the findings of ‘demand based’ research, a complete picture emerges which guides not only the brand strategy but the trading factors which determine success.