Top 6 Brands that Depend on Market Research

In the vast and competitive business world, certain brands excel and capture consumers’ attention, becoming leading industry players. But what is the secret behind their success? The answer is based on their unwavering reliance on market research. Let’s know the stories of brands like Starbucks, Apple, McDonald’s, LEGO, Dove, and Zappos to uncover how they harnessed the power of market research to achieve excellence.

Starbucks Coffee Company

Starbucks is the largest and most successful global coffeehouse chain in existence. However, it is no secret that they become the top coffee company in the world because of its value for market research.

Starbucks’s market research approach includes the following: 

• Tracking cultural trends
• Monitoring social media
• Gathering customers’ feedback
• In-store product testing

For the past 14 years, through market research, Starbucks has gathered consumer feedback through its platform, My Starbucks Idea. This platform enables customers and employees to submit their creative ideas to the website. These ideas can range from new offerings to minor changes in a product. Starbucks thoroughly considers all customer feedback to grow its business and improve its marketing strategy.

Apple Inc.

Apple is one of the most successful technology companies with global recognition. Thanks to product innovation and thorough market research, Apple has been able to meet the needs of its consumers.

Apple values market research and shows it by creating its own research team. Its panel is called the “Apple Customer Pulse,” an online community that analyses data and conducts customer satisfaction surveys to better understand technology consumers’ needs.

As a result, these surveys have paved the way for new product development and modification of existing Apple products. For example, Apple has expanded its screens on some devices to enhance its customers’ viewing experience.

We understand that not all brands can afford an entire market research team. Fortunately, ConsumerConnect is ready to act as an extension of your team to help execute any of your research needs. We offer various services, such as mystery shopping, global consumer recruitment, transcribe and transcription services.

McDonald’s Corporation

The world’s largest fast-food chain is McDonald’s. To remain number one in the fast-food industry, McDonald’s prioritize market research to make its customers happy.

McDonald’s market research approach is based on four questions: 

1. Which products are top-performing?
2. What are the most affordable prices for consumers?
3. What do consumers read and watch when it comes to advertising?
4. Which restaurants are most popular and why?

McDonald’s uses questions to determine whether or not its customer base is expanding. If not, the company adjusts its strategy to improve customer satisfaction and outperform its competitors. McDonald’s also gets feedback from customers to modify its product offerings.

For example, many McDonald’s customers were worried about the lack of nutritious and organic food options on the restaurant’s menu. McDonald’s considered customer feedback and changed its menu by adding healthier options, like apple slices. They also launched an advertising campaign to show that their chicken nuggets and patties are made with real meat.

The LEGO Group

LEGO conducts market research to boost inclusivity for all children to play with its toys. For many years, LEGO has mainly focused on creating toys that appeal to boys. However, the company has realized the importance of including both genders in its product line and has made efforts to make its toys enjoyable for all children.

Over four years, LEGO conducted a study with 3,500 girls and their mothers to gain insight into the children’s playing habits. It was a valuable approach to assess the potential for expansion into a new market.

As a result of the market research study, LEGO launched a new toy line, “Friends”, to encourage girls to play with LEGO toys. LEGO conducted market research to determine the best packaging colors and figurine sizes.

Dove

Dove is a beauty brand promoting self-love for a long time. Their proactive ads and marketing campaigns aim to initiate social conversations about body positivity.

So, what better way to promote these values than diving into market research? The impact of Dove’s #SpeakBeautiful campaign, which started in 2015, still needs to be evaluated by marketers who wish to make a significant statement. The campaign aimed to bring attention to the prevalence of women expressing more negative self-talk than positive on Twitter.

Through a partnership with Twitter, market research was utilized to launch the #SpeakBeautiful campaign to promote positive self-talk among female users. Before the campaign, a shocking 5 million female Twitter users had posted self-deprecating comments about themselves, which decreased to 3.4 million following the campaign.

Zappos

Zappos is one of those brands that balance the satisfaction of both employees and customers. In this post, we will focus on their customer service initiatives.

Zappos uses effective market research techniques such as customer surveys and face-to-face interviews to achieve personalization. Zappos must treat its customers as individuals to maintain their business success as a large brand. Customer surveys and in-depth interviews are designed for this purpose exactly.

Primary Market Research Goals for Top Brands

The examples of brand research presented here have two main objectives.

1. Each brand tries to meet the customer’s needs and expectations. 

To retain customers, brands must prioritize delivering top-notch services and products that meet their expectations. It can be achieved by conducting thorough market research to understand customers’ desires. Failing to do so may result in losing their business to competitors.

2. These brands aim to eliminate competition. 

Starbucks, Apple, McDonald’s, LEGO, Dove, and Zappos must stay ahead of their customers’ needs because they know customers won’t hesitate to find an alternative if they are dissatisfied with the offerings.

Market research is crucial for companies to develop innovative products, improve their existing offerings, gain better customer insights, and solve complex issues. Without it, a brand cannot truly succeed.