In an industry with set-in-stone practices and a tried-and-true approach to research in its 120 years old history, how does a market research company step out of bounds while remaining competitive?
We sat down with Dobrinka Vincetijevic, our Shopper Insights Director, for a chat on what flared EyeSee’s start, how our approach to tech reshaped our approach to tech, and ways even the most demanding clients push you forward.
Take it one tech at a time
EyeSee began as a start-up – not the kind that starts in a garage but in a colleague’s mom’s living room! And in those early stages of the company, there was only one guy who covered everything regarding research and data analysis and just one salesperson from Belgium. Fast forward, after many milestones later, there are now 7 offices around the globe from Mexico, Singapore, And New York to Paris, London, Belgrade and Gent!
From the very start, the vision was always to make behavioral research accessible to any company. Traditionally, this type of research implied neuromarketing studies that were – and still are – quite expensive, hard to conduct and take quite a long time to do both in terms of collecting data and analyzing it. Determined to overcome this challenge, EyeSee’s idea was to make the behavioral research approach global, fast and accessible.
And so, we developed an Eye Tracking app that enabled research studies just via webcam and gave us more valuable and reliable behavioral data that we wouldn’t be able to get had we just surveyed the respondents. And then came more tech-enabled and advanced behavioral methods like Facial Coding, RTM and Virtual Shopping that only further powered our drive to uncover more predictable insights at every consumer touchpoint.
The client is always right (and you can learn a lot from them)
Clients have always been our number one catalyst when it came to innovating and perfecting our tech. For example, when it came to virtual shopping, with every client, study and research question that came along, we perfected and tweaked our virtual testing environments to look as closely as they could to the real thing.
From developing interactive 3D packs on virtual shelves, implementing limited budgets for responders to emulate a real shopping trip to even adding ambient music to the virtual stores, each client slowly helped us build realistic shopping environments with distinct consumer features and touchpoints.
Growing pains are a transformation in the making
A huge part of growing is allowing room for experimentation, and our team went through quite the internal transformation and restructure – and while there are still different departments, we saw value in introducing more multidisciplinary teams, the so-called Pods. The idea was to have a team fully dedicated to one client – with all its expertise, knowledge and capacity.That can also be a multiclient team that would focus only on social media, for example. We started to ‘re-pack’ ourselves internally in a way that would allow us to be faster and more agile.
AI is so much more than a buzzword and its versatility never ceases to amaze. Since we are always looking into integrating AI and other tools in smart ways, we are used to operating in in a ‘Beta’ version – there is always something new that is being launched or that needs to be optimized and you think, ‘this is it!’ but then clients or other things challenge you and then you go back and try to change it. So that platitude that ‘the change is the only constant’ is very much alive and well in EyeSee!
Want to read more about how EyeSee grew? These are the 10 formative milestones that have defined our path to impactful behavioral insights!
Let’s try something: google ‘sample size’ – what did you get? One of the first search suggestions that come up is definitely a ‘sample size calculator’. But let’s be honest, how applicable is it for real-life research needs?
To oversimplify, generally, the bigger the sample size, the better – more respondents, more answers, more predictive insights. But is that move always business savvy?
Let’s take a look at some cases where being smarter and creative adds value when picking the right sample size:
On your mark, get set, go psychometric
Ask any researcher, and they will tell you that the guiding light to picking the right sample size is choosing the margin of error (be it 99%, 95%, or 90% – in commercial research, 90% is typical, while in academics, 95% and 99% are the usual go-to’s). Typically, a larger sample size means a smaller error if all other variables are stable.
Following the basic psychometric principles, you would opt to have (at least) 5 times more respondents than the number of items. While traditionally, the item is a survey question, it can also be the number of SKUs on a virtual shelf. For instance, if you have 100 SKUs – the rule of thumb is to have 500 respondents.
But for shelf studies, even 300 may be enough when researching the impact on brand and category, which is most often the case. With more respondents, valid and robust insights could be made on an even more granular level of analysis.
Not every glove will fit the different methods
Of course, apart from the margin of error, the sample size also depends on the methodology used. While some surveys can include a minimum of 50-75 respondents, Virtual Shopping exercises with a standard-sized shelf need as many as 300 to collect accurate results. To further prove this, a standard (before cleaning the sample) for Facial Coding is 80, while Eye Tracking requires 60 and still yields highly predictive insights.
Why the vastly different numbers? Well, both Facial Coding and Eye Tracking provide results that are universal for humans and highly biologically determined. This means that we can use smaller samples to determine the way that people perceive specific stimuli. In other words, adding more respondents to the study will not significantly change the results, nor will it enhance the results.*
Moreover, methods such as RTM, MaxDiff, Conjoint, Findability, etc., require a certain number of people to fully complete the exercise as a minimum to get the insights we need, which can change the starting sample size.
It is also essential to keep in mind the analyses that need to be done so that the final output is robust enough at the most granular level of analysis required for the initiative. For example, as our Shopper Insights Director Dobrinka Vicentijevic explained – if you are doing segmentation and want to get 4 segments of consumers with different characteristics, you would start from the group you expect to be least represented and build the sample size from there. If the smallest group you expect to analyze is represented by around 10%, then you will need 1000 people to get 100 of them – and the same logic can be applied to other methods, starting from their minimum sample for the subgroup.
However, Milica Kovac, EyeSee’s Senior Product Manager, underlines the importance of not having too many quotas and cross-quotas in online studies – it requires real-time monitoring of each and every respondent that comes into the database and knowing exactly which quotas will close when. An alternative for some studies conducted online would be a carefully planned combination of softer quotas and statistical procedures that follow. But what should you do if you need to conduct a specific analysis (e.g., brand split) but don’t have enough users?
What Heather Graham, Client Service Director at EyeSee, believes is a solution for this is knowing the brand user volume market share. When it comes to testing pack redesigns, for example, this allows us to estimate the natural fallout of users from a category-representative sample and determine just how many are needed to boost the sample. This further ensures an analyzable base size of users for pack redesigns.
Yeah, statistics are cool, but do you know your consumer?
But then there are times when the sample size is not dictated just by the analysis – but by the end-user of the study results. For example, in category management studies (planogram and decision tree studies), the main KPI is sales potential.
So, when the client knows that 1% of real sales growth brings millions in revenue to the company, showing that 15% in sales growth is statistically irrelevant due to a small sample size is simply not the way to go. That’s why the sample is increased for the sake of usability and reliability of the obtained data for such studies.
However, if the incidence rate of a particular consumer group is extremely low – instead of increasing the sample drastically to naturally capture enough consumers from that group, an adequate sample is taken for all other required target groups instead. Then the number of people with extremely low IR is boosted as a separate sample.
Be savvy when choosing the right research design
A monadic research design entails a study in which the respondent evaluates only one product, concept or ad – rather than comparing it to different test stimuli. In doing so, you can ensure that the data you get is not influenced by any other stimuli.
But there is a good reason why sequential (monadic) designs also exist, and the insights they unlock can be priceless when compared to the standard monadic approach – especially when testing the sales potential of new products. Not only does it require a smaller sample, but by having the same people make two shopping trips, one in a competitive environment before the new product introduction and then another one with the new product launched and implemented on the shelves or webpages, it captures the all-important switching behavior and potential cannibalization effects.
Why are we talking about the design so much? Well, sample sizes are a part of the research design and having a comprehensive understanding of the design characteristics opens up room for sample size optimization!
Key takeaways:
Don’t throw psychometric principles out the window – but leave space for optimization and sample tinkering to boost the reliability of research findings
Different methods have their own rulebook –their requirements can be vastly different, so it is vital to have an in-depth understanding of each one
Know who your audience is – both in terms of who will use the data and the target audience you recruit
Be picky about research design – it is not impossible to answer more questions with a seemingly smaller sample size
*For a more detailed breakdown of choosing a sample size for these methods, check out this Proof of Method!
What does 2023 have in store – for consumers, brands and marketers? Let’s talk about it! From Bangkok to Los Angeles and Amsterdam, come and connect with EyeSee’s very best at upcoming industry events all around the globe! After the very product chats we had at IIEX APAC, Quirk’s LA, and Annual Category Management and Shopper Insights Conference, here’s where you can find us in the next few months:
Quirk’s Chicago | March 27-28
Coming to Quirk’s Chicago? Drop by our booth #708 for a chat with Laura Hoste, Cliff Kane, Heather Graham – and find them on the conference stage (more info about the speaking session featuring te latest findings of the Pricing study in inflation coming soon!)
From the get-go, EyeSee’s mantra was to make consumer insights accessible by jumping outside of the traditional research bounds and going completely online. Starting with a webcam-based eye tracking tool, all the way to today’s custom virtual testing environments enabling the most predictive insights – our team of experts developed a whole different tech-enabled mindset that continues to guide our approach to research a decade later.
So, we sat down with Aleksandar Velikić, our Head of Growth, to understand how you keep the spark for innovation alive, what goes into empowering your team to grow further and unconventional ways to support organizational transformation:
What makes market research tech-enabled?
In a broader sense, a tech-enabled company is any company whose key output is technology, which bases its competitiveness on the use and innovation of tech and gathers experts.
From the very beginning, we have been utilizing tech to improve, speed up and make consumer research accessible at EyeSee. Exactly ten years ago, we developed an application within which we can map and monitor eye movements of study respondents via their computer webcams. This was a huge step forward in the industry – until then, it was necessary for respondents to personally come to a central testing location in order to be a part of a research project.
Studies for commercial clients became faster, and the quality of the results was improved due to the larger number of respondents being included by conducting research this way. For example, you can get an eye-tracking test and a report in about two weeks, while previously, such research would have taken up to several months.
After eye tracking, we developed other methods, such as facial coding and virtual shopping – and clients recognized this. Today we cooperate with global brands, such as Microsoft, Google, L’Oréal, Heinz Kraft, Danone, TikTok and others – all from several hubs in London, Paris, New York, Singapore, Mexico City, Ghent and Belgrade.
Our interdisciplinary R&D team is the second largest team at EyeSee, and as it turns out, even our more traditional competitors are slowly establishing the so-called automation or innovation teams as well!
How to reel in top-notch tech experts?
You draw in a tech-savvy workforce, like any other, with a human approach to work – provide proper working conditions and opportunities to be a part of exciting projects in which they see purpose and a chance to do something that will make a difference. Right now, paralyzing and demotivating myths about developers, such as exorbitant salary expectations, and the pressure on recruiters to “sell” the team or company to candidates, are circulating within the industry. These have proven to be quite harmful since it prevents us from considering the necessary conditions for tech experts and the new benefits we can offer them.
Three years ago, our technology team had only 3 developers, while today, there are about 30 members who work on the frontend and backend, we have a machine learning team, DevOps, a team of QA testers, several project leads and other experts trained to function according to agile, iterative principles. And in the future of EyeSee, this team will only continue to grow!
Therefore, you appeal by building a healthy company that reflects its attitude toward employees and has a non-toxic work culture. And if, along the way, you are offered to work on something thrilling, like eye tracking and facial coding, knowing that the fruits of your labor will interact with the world’s biggest brands in the US, EU and APAC – I must say that it’s not too bad of a deal!
How to retain them and stay competitive?
The post-pandemic time has pushed many to think in the direction of life changes. Our motto has always been: “Anyone who wants to explore other options should do it”. We trust our colleagues that they can decide for themselves what is best for them at that moment, and it is up to us to constantly optimize the environment in which they work while members of our team. EyeSee, under the pressure of client demands and growth, is continuously being transformed organizationally. And so, many are motivated to change, grow and continue to stay in such a dynamic environment.
During organizational transformations, horizontal moves are also one of the ways in which employees get a chance to try something completely different. For example, throughout EyeSee’s history, our colleagues have moved from creative teams to tech teams and vice versa, providing novelty and a different set of long-term business goals.
One of the tools we have been using since this year are retention interviews, during which we want to identify what it means the most to employees and why they are part of the team. To our surprise, many responses relate to conditions that have nothing to do with money – such as stress reduction, relief, human connections and support. Basically, our strategy is not to retain anyone but to move forward together – for some, this means staying at EyeSee, and for others moving to another environment. Both choices are correct.
Also, the average employee at EyeSee (27-33 years old) has “aged” in the past 10 years, so priorities change even at different ages. Juniors and younger people, perhaps, tend to lean more towards material means in the beginning, and later, when families are created, some non-monetary benefits, support, health and vacation days become significantly more important factors.
Want to read more about the practices that shaped EyeSee? Check out the 10 turning points that defined our approach to consumer research!
Written by Mirna Djuric, Innovation Director at EyeSee.
Get access to the full plant-based study report at [email protected].
Vegan-friendly products are gaining popularity despite the almost equal and opposite force of the increasing popularity of keto and other high-protein diets. How will we combine the two? Cue: alternative protein.
We’ve seen sales of alternative protein products increase steadily over past years, but how is the category developing – are vegans finally getting options for a variety of diets or are regular meat eaters dipping their toes into vegan foods?We ran a passive tracking study following the online behavior of 75 meat eaters over a period of 3 months in the United States. With their permission, we recorded their browsing histories and selected food-related online behavior. Here’s what we found.
More about Passive Tracking:
Passive Tracking is the first step in the holistic understanding of the consumers’ path to purchase. This exploratory phase provides us with valuable insights into consumers’ natural behavior (not claimed) when searching the category and brands online. After consumers’ consent, we are able to analyze respondents browsing history in the past 30, 60, or even 90 days. Passive Tracking provides answers to some of the most common client questions related to category online behavior:
Which touchpoints are most frequently visited when searching for category online – retail websites, expert websites, brand/corporate websites?
What is the typical number of visits?
Where do visitors come from (which websites)?
Where do they land on the retailer’s website?
What are the most relevant search terms and queries in the category?
A whopping 43% of shoppers are interested in plant-based
That is to say that plant-based products are a far cry from being a specialty food intended for vegans, but quite the contrary – it is an everyday food choice among many others regular consumers make. To confirm this finding, we asked 1000 respondents directly through a questionnaire whether they have tried these products and if they are willing to – recording a similar result, we found that ~35% of consumers have already purchased and consumed plant-based products, while another 40% are willing to do so. Great potential is still out there to grow the category further. Given our findings, there are reasons not to keep plant-based products anymore in specialty aisles, moving them to the regular aisles next to their animal-based counterparts would benefit consumers and brands alike.
Speaking from a climate change perspective, animal products are among the top 3 culprits contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, and after all, we don’t need a handful of people doing the change completely, but we need billions doing it partially – these findings suggest we may be on the right course.
A reason to curb optimism: plant-based related online behavior, albeit widespread, is still under around 1.5% of all meat and food-related visits these consumers had. This is quite a small percentage that will hopefully grow in the future, but for now, we can consider this a trial behavior among meat eaters.
Shoppers both learn and buy the category at the same place – retailer website
Retailers’ websites are the most visited addresses related to plant-based products. 65% of the sample we followed visited an online retailer in search of vegan/plant-based products, with little research beforehand or after the visit. Retailers’ websites are probably very good at both informing the consumer and selling the product at the same time. If brands are looking for where to start reaching out to shoppers, their own PDP on popular retailers is already a good choice.
Around a third of the sample visited any food-related blogs searching for information on plant-based alternatives, and even fewer went through search engines like Google or Bing. Given the nature of visited blogs (most of them recipe blogs), consumers most likely encounter a product on a retailer’s website and search for recipes and inspiration on blogs.
Restaurants are still growing in representation, with only 10% of the plant-based visitations, but it is comforting to know they are being explored for plant-based options too. We may expect this will grow as the category gains importance.
Dairy is still king in the plant-based food category, but full meals out-beat meat
Meals like soups, chilis, curries, and burritos are even more frequently searched for than meat substitutes, which may be an effect of familiarity. These are still majorly the same meals we’re used to with one or two ingredients switched out. A plant-based burger patty, sausage, or chicken nuggets may be expected to have a too different of a flavor, so it may be saved for latter trials.
Dairy is still the most frequently searched and a good entry point to the category. This may well be a spillover from brick-and-mortar, where dairy plant-based products were the first ones to earn a spot in regular aisles. From what we see, they carved themselves a space next to animal dairy in consumers’ minds too.
Mainstream brands should step up the plant-based game
Plant-based specialty brands are still the most popular, there is space for mainstream brands to innovate in plant-based options.
When looking at which PDPs shoppers visited for plant-based products, the top of the table is still reserved for native plant-based brands. Not as unexpected, keeping in mind that although many brands invest in plant-based products, not many of them are mainstream USA brands, according to the FAIRR report.
For brands considering entering the category with new products – think about known (familiar) products where only one ingredient is animal-based. Personal health is still more important than environmental impact (based on researched topics in the sample), so when it comes to communication, it should be emphasized first.
And, of course, if unsure how will the targeted audience react, testing is the way, regardless of the product’s development stage. Testing can help while still prioritizing ideas, selecting concepts for further development, and of course, when the product is fully developed, including packaging.
In conclusion
We can safely conclude baby steps toward the popularization of alternative protein options have been made: a significant portion of people have already tried them together, with a big portion having a low barrier towards the category. This gives a good reason for developing more plant-based options targeted at mainstream shoppers, the whole category is ready to exit specialty aisles as well as decrease the premium pricing it often encompasses.
There is a way to go still: although wide, interest in plant-based protein is not deep, which we can expect to change in the future as options grow and more mainstream brands innovate in the category.
For clients, EyeSee is about scalable behavioral research. But building a company with 144 diverse talents means there’s much more to it. We started EyeSee exactly one decade ago and there was a lot of transformation and learning in the process. Here are 10 books (in categories such as startup, the idea, behavioral research, and growth) that helped and guided us to where we are today.
Check out the 4 chapters:
The lean startup and 4 steps to an epiphany (bonus Plan B)
Most innovations or startups don’t fail because of technology, they fail because of product-market fit. Our initial business plan was two pages long and fitted on one slide. The idea was simple: you make something that has a high impact (in our case, web-based eye tracking that measures gaze and is one of the conditions of purchases – ‘what is not seen is not bought’) and scalable – fast, cost-effective, and global.
Before EyeSee, all eye tracking research was done in a central location which is expensive ($50,000-$200,000) and time-consuming (6-8 weeks). Our goal was to have eye-tracking results in 2-3 days and at about 10% of the current price.
The client? Creative agencies. We provide them with the tools to make their ads more effective. The idea was pitched to two creative agencies. Feedback was the same; if we were able to provide eye tracking at the promised speed and cost, the agencies would test all the campaigns they have lined up. Great news! We then developed the product, and they haven’t tested a single campaign so far.
Which brings me to the first book, ‘The Lean Startup’, which is about the build, measure, learn. Client take is valuable, but until they use the product (and for that to happen, you need to build and invest in it), feedback is arbitrary. Our first Minimal Viable Product (MVP) was projected to take about 2-3 months to develop, yet we built it over the course of 2 weekends. Often the main discussion when working on MVPs comes down to the number of features. What I found to be the most helpful came from the author of ‘The Lean Startup’ (Eric Ries), who said: “You take your first idea for an MVP, then cut that in half, and cut it in half again – and there you got what actually is an MVP”. Startups typically have too many specs and wait too long to show the product to clients. It makes sense as founders tend to be passionate about the product; however, the process should not revolve around their expectations but rather around the client’s willingness to buy and how wide the market for the MVP is.
What did the first MVP look like in EyeSee? Almost the same as “Halo world”. We had a program running on Linux – you’d open the program, we’d show you the slides with instructions, you’d access the webcam, do the eye gaze calibration, and then we’d test by showing a couple of (randomized) images that changed every 7 seconds. Eye gaze was saved in .csv file with a time stamp, X and Y coordinate. For every ten sessions, about one worked. Good enough to test potential and show to first clients.
We quickly pivoted several times thanks to build-measure-learn; methodologies, solutions, and targeting of clients were tweaked. First, eye tracking was launched, and then we added facial coding (based on a request by one of the biggest Food& Bev companies in the world), followed by virtual shopping (that was requested by a large healthcare company). The market demand also impacted our product rollout – ads were first, followed by pack and e-commerce tests.
The idea and the basics: statistics and social science (but especially psychology)
One of the frequently asked questions for new solutions is, “Where did the idea come from?”. Before EyeSee, I was on a Ph.d. trajectory in the field of Decision Science and Entrepreneurship. After the first conference in the field, I decided to quit. The papers and methodologies used were not fit for the research questions; on top of that, the sample sizes were too small. Disillusioned, I didn’t want to have anything with academics. One year after quitting, I saw an eye-tracking study and had three thoughts (a) that is interesting research – it is an objective measurement (no biases as in surveys or focus groups) and has a high impact (if shoppers don’t see the new pack design, shoppers won’t buy the product)… (b) too bad it is so expensive because of the central location, (c) what if we could do it with people’s own laptop and webcam to make it faster and cost-effective.
The interest in eye tracking comes with a fascination with consumer decision-making. As a tween, I once asked my mom how much she paid for items in her cart. She didn’t know any of the prices. Moreover, I am pretty sure my mom didn’t know whether the brand was relatively expensive or cheap. Decision science is rooted in psychology; why a particular decision was made and what influenced the choice – can be explained by sensory theory, learning mechanisms, etc.
My mom’s shopping choices are a good example of subconscious or so-called System 1 decision-making. Buying groceries is strongly influenced by the subconscious; if shoppers were to evaluate the cost-benefit of each product, they would spend hours per category. Looking at behavior in stores, shoppers spend closer to 7 seconds per category and scan products in a split second. If your product needs to win in a small window of time, a confusing five-claim pack design won’t do the job.
To better understand the processes behind decision-making in a straightforward way, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman is a perfect read. You could also check out his earlier works with Tversky (e.g., ‘Choices, Values, and Frames’) or ‘Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment’, which are insightful, although much more dense and academic. As for the psychology field, basically, any introduction to psychology (incl. cognitive psychology) will provide a strong basis. My personal favorite and bonus recommendation is ‘On Intelligence’ – written by a computer scientist that provided an engineer-like perspective on how our brains work.
When it comes to good research, at the very core of it is statistics. Storytelling without a strong basis in statistical relevance can make you feel good but is more likely complete BS. Being knowledgeable in statistics helps you create decent research designs and determine appropriate sample sizes. However, this is one of the know-hows market researchers today lack the most. For HBS school examples, ‘Algorithms to live by’ or ‘Fooled by randomness’ are interesting starting points.
The business impact: decoded, seducing the subconscious, and growth
A lot of basic research approaches are not yet employed to address consumer insights (e.g., what matters for a pack design? What makes ads successful?). There are a couple of books that make the leap toward the shopper and ad effectiveness. One of them is ‘Decoded, the science behind why we buy’ and to none’s surprise, starts off with Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and 2 theory. The following two examples illustrate the content of the book perfectly.
The left graph indicates that the color of the price tag can influence the perception of whether a product is low or high-priced (obviously, it will depend on competitive prices). On the right hand, you have 2 shapes of bottles; although they have the same volume, people perceive bottle A as the one with the higher volume. Good to know if the volume is an important driver in your category.
In ‘Seducing the subconscious’, Robert Heath expands more on the ‘Low Involvement Processing’ theory in advertising. The theory brought the notion of implicit processing to consumer research, in which rather than drawing explicit verbal conclusions, we process and store data through implicit associations – often without even realizing it (so-called low level of attention). The key to successful brands is the ad’s ability to tackle those implicit associations, rather than to create high awareness. This would explain why some brilliant advertising campaigns had bad performance results using methodologies based on articulation and statements. Moreover, Heath argues that some emotional elements of advertising can elude the defense mechanisms we use to filter ads and consciously redirect our attention toward something else.
You don’t necessarily need to agree or share the same perspective as the authors; for me, it is often about sparking your own creativity and mindset. Steve Jobs once said that if all people like your brand, you don’t have a brand.
I included ‘Seducing the subconscious’ as a must-read since it tackles the underexplored area in research: how do we leverage behavioral research for (real) strategic questions?
Growth: no-nonsense decision-making and organizational development
I’d recommend looking at ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers’ about action-oriented, down-to-earth decision-making with interesting examples. His writing can be related to fundamental principles, as one of the Amazon reviews pointed out: “Effectual reasoning has three main principles: the (1) a bird in the hand, which means understanding the resources that you have at your disposal, (2) crazy quilt, which means building from the bottom up with an end goal in mind, and (3) pilot in the plane, which means that you want to be in control but not always have all the information. In his book, Ben doesn’t talk explicitly about these principles, but he demonstrates them.”
Out of all challenges we faced over the years, probably the most difficult has been building an organization. EyeSee has the potential to become up to 10 times bigger, so how do we build and energize the organization to get there? “Power to the people” sounds great, but it is difficult and there are many necessary conditions to make it work. To address similar organizational challenges, I’d recommend taking a page out of ‘How Google Works’, which features some legendary catchphrases, such as ‘Don’t listen to the HiPPOs’, ‘the rules of seven’, ‘do all reorgs in a day’, ‘don’t look for faster horses’… Again, these are not a literal guide for implementation but as food for thought.
What I have learned in the past 10 years is that when you decide and act, you can’t know for sure if you are correct in advance. What is more important is how you deal with a situation that comes as a result and adjust to ensure a favorable ending. I hope the books above help you with that!
Interested in behavioral insights and innovation? Check out the top 10 behavioral studies that pushed the boundaries of consumer insights.
A decade and many milestones ago, a practical yet innovative idea was cooked up by EyeSee founders – make it easier and more predictive for brands to understand how their consumers think and shop. What began with the goal of removing bias in market research data led to the development of proprietary methodology, tools and an entire suite of solutions that provide actionable insights across any consumer touchpoint. Market research has been around for over 120 years, but the real tectonic shift happened just in the last couple of decades – and all the new tech will only continue to transfigure both the industry and EyeSee!
Here are the 10 formative milestones that have defined our path to impactful behavioral insights – so far:
#1 Out with the old, in with quant behavioral
What initially sparked the ambition to seek outside the boundaries of research was knowing that +80% of research uses conscious measurements only – limiting the scope and depth of insights needed to make sound business decisions. This made it clear – to truly understand consumers and what drives their decision-making process, the magnifying glass must be on their behavior.
So, our first behavioral method, Eye Tracking, was developed – to pinpoint what respondents are (not) seeing and what reels in their attention when looking at a product or an ad. With it came ideas about decoding consumer emotions and the tech for Facial Coding was brought to life. Quickly after, Virtual Shopping and Reaction Time Measurement were introduced to complete our mix-method approach for reliable consumer learnings. And for all of these methods to be on their best behavior (pun fully intended), all that is needed is the respondents’ own laptops and mobile devices.
#2 Going global and growing further
And expanding our tools, tech and knowledge further powered our global expansion – with many new talents joining us all around the globe and growing our team from 4 to 144! To guarantee clients across all time zones and regions have accessible behavioral insights, footholds in New York, Singapore, Mexico City, Antwerp, Belgrade, London and Paris were established.
The truth is, each new region bears new challenges and demands – from the digital-first, mobile-savvy markets in the Asia-Pacific and rising social commerce initiatives to the undeniable global need for omnichannel optimization. So, every EyeSee hub was built with a laser focus on the locations where we identified a critical mass of novel and specific research questions, testing needs, and brand requirements.
#3 Thinking out of the box and in context
The number one question in the MR industry is: how does one ensure mighty yet accessible consumer knowledge? The answer – in-context research. While behavioral methodologies uncover the nook and crannies of behavior crucial for understanding consumers, you must make sure that what you are measuring is authentic and natural.
Guided by this vision, we thought of the tech that would be able to virtually recreate any setting or environment that consumers are familiar with and test – anything from stores, supermarkets, and restaurants to e-commerce shops, websites and fully interactive social media feeds! This could not have been possible without our ever-growing Research & Development team working tirelessly to perfect the complexities behind this tech and innovate internal tools that support client inquiries and research needs.
#4 Remote measures as a new standard
When the whole world was forced to stay indoors and find alternatives in many aspects of life and work – we moved into our home offices. The approach behind our research was always online and remote and the turbulent times only underlined the need for alternative methods to the ways everyday things were done – including research.
These pressures of uncertainty and the unfeasibility of the traditional way consumer research was conducted accelerated the adoption of innovation and pushed many brands to uncover the exciting world of online behavioral research. Now, two years later, as the demand continues to increase, more and more brands are embracing this new way of gathering vital know-how. Online behavioral research has quickly become the go-to for staying on top of trends, demands and needs of consumers – all while creating opportunities for fresh forms of cooperation with clients and allowing a more hands-on and collaborative approach to research.
#5 Exploring the unexplored and non-traditional
One of our project milestones was inspired by another milestone that happened in history in the last few years – the record-high participation of women in the Olympics. We joined forces with a social media platform to take a much-needed dive into the way gender roles in sports are portrayed in social media advertising – and, in turn, the impact it has on the brand and its consumers.
The learnings were unexpected yet compelling – ads featuring female athletes outperformed campaigns with male protagonists on almost all KPIs. Generally, across the tested ads, a definite driver of purchasing behavior was the non-traditional portrayal of gender roles – such as, women’s stamina and engagement in sports that are typically considered masculine and men shown as paternal, caring, and emotional.
#6 Seizing sustainable shopper behavior
A growing number of consumers are adamant about making the planet a cleaner place – so, what’s stopping them? We wanted to understand all the plentiful opportunities at which brands can support their consumers in their endeavors to buy, live and act greener.
The behavioral data was hopeful, showing that over 86% of shoppers are ripe to embrace the change and opt for more eco-friendly products. However, brands must help them in this by utilizing effective communication through the proper product claims, impactful social media content, and tapping into the yet uncharted categories that shoppers want to buy.
#7 Feeling the consumer’s pulse – at all times
Consumer behavior is always evolving – and at (un) certain times, it can change in completely unexpected ways. It has always been imperative for brands to keep a close eye on their behavior, but inflation has put consumers under immense pressure causing seismic activities in their sentiments. So, how are the rising prices affecting buying behavior – what can companies do in response? We took a tech-driven approach leveraging virtual shopping to find out.
By testing in virtual supermarket replicas, we uncovered that one of the factors that impact consumer decision-making is the frequency at which a category is bought – for instance, in the low-frequency category, shoppers now tend to opt for a smaller package within the same brand. But there are some wild card categories to be aware of, like Bacon and Beer, that remain untouchable under inflationary pressures – don’t underestimate the power of self-indulgence!
#8 The power of knowledge lies in sharing it
Researching the latest trends, identifying windows of opportunity, and helping clients develop only the best for their consumers is only one side of the market research coin. As much as gathering insights and learnings is critical, being able to share this knowledge is just as, and if not more, important.
So, over the last decade, we published 130+ blogs and 40+ webinars, 4 (and counting) annual publications and had 70+ speaking opportunities at global events in an effort to make actionable behavioral insights truly accessible to everybody everywhere – and will continue to do so!
#9 It takes a team effort to push research boundaries
Our innovations, tools, and tech would be nothing without the tenacious support and strong partnerships we forged with our clients along the way. Having their unique perspective, requirements and questions continue to spark our drive to create and develop solutions that are changing the research game.
Clients like Google, Microsoft, Colgate-Palmolive, Energizer have also played a crucial role in our commitment to sharing knowledge, joining us on stage and in webinars to advocate for behavioral research, and amplify the reach of smart consumer insights.
#10 The award-winning behavioral framework
The decade-old mission to help brands better understand their customers and provide them with a competitive edge was initially kickstarted in 2014 when EyeSee won Bizidee’s Belgian startup competition and got first place at the Global Mobile Innovator contest in NYC. And this was only the beginning of an array of recognitions to come! In 2019, we teamed up with Microsoft and won the award for the Global Market Research Project in the Quirk’s Marketing Research and Insight Excellence awards. A year later, our long-lasting partnership with Twitter resulted in an exciting project, ‘(Non)traditional gender roles in sports ads’, that was recognized as the Advertising Research Project of the year.
That same year, we were honored with Deloitte’s Most sustainable growth award celebrating the most consistent growth across the last several years and with Quirk’s Market Research Supplier recognition! Speaking of the Quirk’s awards, we were also finalists in 2 categories in 2022 – MR supplier of the year and Global Marketing Research Project with Colgate-Palmolive! And just last year, we were shortlisted in the LVMH Innovation Awards showcasing companies with a unique vision of the future of customer experience and had our very own Insights Director, Diego Adolfo Chávez Terrazas, become Quirk’s Fearless Leader! In addition, EyeSee continues to be among the Deloitte Technology fast 50 for the 6th consecutive year and we are thrilled to see what the next 10 years will bring – here’s to growing further and beyond!
EyeSee is turning 10 this year! To celebrate this decade of insights, innovation, and studies that pushed us forward – we have collected and hand-picked our most memorable studies and learnings over the years. From projects with clients like Twitter and Smurfit Kappa to self-funded studies tackling topics we knew were worth exploring – strap in for an insightful journey ahead as we look back at the 10 behavioral projects that helped us grow, expand our knowledge and tech and ultimately transform the approach to traditional consumer research:
1. Getting sustainable products just right
86% of consumers want to go more eco-friendly – so what’s stopping them? In this study, we set out to understand how brands could support their consumers by developing powerful communication and product claims and identifying categories that lack ‘greener’ alternatives – with quite a complex behavioral framework. The comprehensive undertaking included an in-depth look into who the green buyers are, which claims are most appropriate for use on product packs, and what makes an impactful kind of social media posts work best to inspire eco behavior and more!
2. The price of consumer confidence under inflationary pressures
With the transforming global and economic climate came shaken consumer confidence – and the high price points on the store shelves are palpable to both shoppers and marketers. The previous experiences with recession periods showcased that shoppers react differently across categories and markets making it clear that it is vital to feeling the consumer pulse in the changing setting. So to help brands operate in it, we turned towards understanding the current shopper behavior and assessing the best strategies to cope with ongoing inflation for both CPG and retailers – like, when do consumers opt to stay loyal to the brand and when do they switch to the alternatives?
3. A tree is best known by its consumer decisions
Do you know how shoppers decide which product ends up in their cart? We wanted to know too! So to do that, a behavioral component was added to well-known research tools: decision trees. This led to a complex meta-analysison over 35000 respondents from dozens of projects across FMCG industries – which also included a comparison of survey results and virtual shopping data to determine just how unreliable surveys can be in mapping out consumer decision-making. Learn just how different behavioral decision trees are different to standard studies, what it takes to extract the biggest ROI from decision tree research and who benefits the most from these studies – and why trusting what consumers say is much more dangerous than you might think!
4. Hitting the mark on socially conscious advertising
Great social media content has the power to trigger a reaction in under 2.8 seconds and significantly impact brand perception. Yet when it comes to socially conscious advertising – getting the right tone and message can be a hit or, more often than not, a miss. So, our best researchers turned to behavioral insights to uncover just how crisis messaging should be done and how it affects brand equity. Check out the results of one of the most extensive mobile behavioral studies that was conducted on 1800 respondents in a simulated Instagram environment and learn how to nail your brand’s communication while tackling highly important social topics.
5. Driving sales with in-store display optimization practices
Just how powerful are point-of-sales displays in the store? Well, they can boost sales by as much as 20% when done right. We joined forces with Smurfit Kappa to pinpoint what drives in-store visibility, attention, likability and share of shoppers – by testing more than 400 POS materials on +60,000 shoppers across 15 countries worldwide. As it turns out, the best-performing display is 4 times more visible and could increase purchases 7 times more efficiently than the worst-performing ones. So, if you are developing in-store material that needs catch the attention in a crowded supermarket – these best practices are for you!
6. The secret behavioral sauce of successful innovation
Every brand knows the staggering statistic that over 90% of new products and innovations fail when launched – but the pressure to continue the development never ceases. To empower brands in their innovation endeavors, our team of researchers sought to showcase what a Market share estimation study looks like. What the study on introducing and measuring the success of a new product aimed to do was verify how the behavioral NPD solution fares against real-life sales data. If you have new products in your pipeline, this study is a must-read as it covers:
How to leverage the latest behavioral tech to ensure a successful new product launch
The new product opportunities to tap into in both brick and mortar and across digital platforms
All the crucial steps brands should take when going into innovation development
7. From in-context testing to winning social media ads
As news around Meta, TikTok and now Twitter continues to take the headlines by storm, the already tumultuous space of social media, where users scroll at a speed of 1-3 posts per second, has raised new concerns for advertisers and marketers. But, some social media best practices are evergreen. And so we have compiled a data-driven guide for making sure your ads are worth the investment and more importantly, captivating for the viewers. Since there are so many different things to have in mind when starting to test your social media ads, we have also included the most impactful things you should focus on from the start and which ones you can include if your budget allows it!
8. The precious 6-second ads w/ Twitter
Social media feeds are one of the hardest clutters for brands to break through – especially with the ever-growing percentage of mobile users. With this challenge in mind, we teamed up with Twitter to determine the optimal ad-viewing length by replicating Twitter feeds and studying user behavior in a controlled environment with reliable behavioral methods. The learnings were game-changing and led to Twitter introducing the 6-second biddable video ads on their platform! The study uncovered that these short-form and branded videos, with the sound turned off, have a much stronger ad recall on mobile than traditional TV commercials we are used to seeing – revolutionizing the way advertisers approach social media ads.
9. Wrap it up with some holiday insights
How will inflation impact this holiday season? Regardless of the current sentiment, many are expecting growth in sales numbers. And from festive advertising to online and store touchpoints, there are plenty of opportunities to get shoppers into the holiday purchasing spirit! We compiled our best behavioral learnings (did you know that using logos in festive ads boasts a 133% higher brand recall?) from multiple advertising, shopper and digital studies with a goal to help prepare your strategies for 2023 – cause we know that omnichannel optimization and a seamless cross-channel experience is something that is vital for success with shoppers all year round!
10. Twitter’s look into the powerful role of gender in sports ads
How does gender portrayal in (sports) ads impact the performance of the creative? To uncover what it means for brands to tap into uncharted territories with their advertising, we once again joined forces Twitter and explored the impact of gender representation in sports ads – and found some unexpected results, such as:
Women are taking the lead – both traditional and non-traditional gender roles in ads outperform their male counterparts
Ads with male athletes just don’t do the trick anymore! They’re less credible and empowering – men are looking for more relatable role models
Cultural relevance is crucial to a consumer’s purchase decision and correlates with performance on brand effect metrics
Co-written by Morana Kristek, Digital Insights Director, EyeSee
As the pandemic online shopping habits started settling down, shoppers have slowly yet surely started going back to trusty old brick and mortar. In many ways, it has become a cheaper and more convenient shopping experience, especially now in light of the current recession when consumer wallets are being redefined. And on top of that, the return to the stores is once again allowing the consumer the delight of touching and seeing a product before completing the purchase. Yet, with the surge in gas prices, many people might find themselves at a crossroads – is it cheaper to drive to the store or have the products they need delivered?
Regardless, what is sure is that e-commerce is not dying down – while the growth momentum slowed down compared to the beginning of the pandemic, online shopping is still on a steady rise. However, many factors are in play when it comes to the final basket size/content – be it the easiness of use of the digital channels, the shipping and payment options, individual product information, advertising, or pricing points. And on top of this ever-growing list, the average cart abandonment rate was at a staggering 70% even before inflation hit.
Free delivery drives purchases now more than ever
Various factors impact the final basket, but many of our behavioral e-commerce studies uncovered that one of the leading ones driving online consumer purchase decision-making is, by far, the price of delivery. Whileloyalty cards, special discounts and products in stock generally have some impact, free delivery is deemed the most vital driver across regions and categories. Even when looking at the elements of the product detail page, the shipping cost information consistently influenced shopper decisions.
However, every online store, e-retailer and even web page themselves have unique qualities that determine the final cart – from delivery types, different services and subscriptions to forms of payment. In short, e-commerce is maturing and transforming and in order to be sure where the hurdles (and main drivers) are and to understand how to optimize them, it is crucial to test the entire scope of online path-to-purchase. Apart from uncovering the bottlenecks in the consumer journey, you can also learn how the check-out process itself affects the final outcome of the purchase.
Digital moments of truth prompt spur-of-the-moment purchases
Impulse buying is one of the hardest behaviors to encourage in the digital environment. Online shoppers either tend to opt for ‘buy again’ options or create shopping lists leaving little space to tap into impulse needs and without the instant self-gratification and the immediacy of the purchase, it can be difficult to nurture spur-of-the-moment decision-making – however, it is not impossible.
Our Decision Tree exercises in the digital environment have shown that the (right) positioning on Product Listing Pages is one of them – and staying above the line, in the first two rows of the page, is your best bet to tap into that impulse urge.
Another thing to consider is that if a shopper opts to act on a whim and buy something with no pre-planning, they’re much less to actually go through with the purchase if the buying process is hindered or anything but seamless. To help ease the experience further, utilize behavioral e-commerce testing to uncover the barriers your shoppers could be facing and understand how to streamline the online journey. Then you can think about mapping out the hidden opportunities that will encourage impulse decisions (such as, adding a ” Buy” or “Add to cart” button on the Product Listing Page instead of expecting shoppers to go to the product detail page).
First aid behavioral research kit for online optimization
To conclude, the online journey is getting more complex and consumers are becoming more demanding and whether you are looking to better the user experience, boost successful purchases, leverage impulse buying or diminish the percentage of consumers that drop out of the final cart – the insights you need lie beyond platform data and surveys.
As consumer behavior continues to shift and become more and more unpredictable, it has become a necessity to test in real but controlled digital shopping environments and e-commerce website replicas. Then, equipped with a stellar combination of behavioral methods, the entire online path to purchase – together with its strong (and weak) suits – can be mapped out and advanced to meet the transforming online consumer needs.
Written by Jason Bradbury, Sr. Director of Client Service at EyeSee
I am a simple individual and perhaps a creature of habit – choosing peanut M&Ms as my go-to sweet snack, relying on Cinnabon k-cups for my daily coffee fix and letting Apple technology keep me well-organized and connected.
While data (and life) confirm I am not a lone example of a consumer having favorite brands, recent research shows that these loyalties are first to go as we adjust to the mounting pressures of the global recession. Apart from tinkering with variables of pricing and volume, there are other strategies your brand might explore to preempt eroding loyalty.
In fact, there’s a good chance one of your new favorite products may just be the result of two separate brands working together – the fruit of a co-branding or licensed partnership initiative. If your goals for 2023 include:
Reconnecting with or Expanding your consumer base;
Evolving your brand identity or reputation;
Innovating the product;
And/or all the above…
…then co-branding may be the right strategy for you! However, this approach does carry certain risks and mitigating them should be a top priority. Here’s how behavioral research can help.
Know your shifting consumer and (re-frame) their needs
75% of brands could disappear tomorrow … and most consumers wouldn’t care. On top of this, shoppers are already actively engaging in brand-switching behavior due to rising inflation. By exploring collaborations within or across categories, you are opening a whole world of possibilities to either deepen the connection with existing consumers or to expand your base.
Well-known consumer products entering into a partnership with Disney is one such example. Disney-licensed characters are displayed on Huggies diapers, Band-Aid adhesive bandages and even Gucci collections! Disney characters are iconic, instantly recognizable, and intergenerational. Through these collaborations, these brands have managed to overcome their challenges in creating appeal and eliciting an emotional response, which has an enduring effect on retaining brand loyalty but also helps draw consideration among new potential customers.
The journey of successful co-branding begins with understanding the intersection of consumers and their behaviors. Pre-testing your advertising materials (online videos, TVC, social media posts, etc.) and packs can give you crucial insight into how consumers will see, react, evaluate, and if they would ultimately be inspired to purchase your co-branded product. A mixed-method approach, where behavioral methods of eye tracking, facial coding and virtual shopping are combined with surveys, can measure such preferences with as much as an 80% correlation with actual shopping behavior.
Introduce agile reality-checks to your co-branding initiative
On average, less than 20% of product and pack innovations prove to be a success. Adopting an iterative approach and testing at each step of development increases the chances of yielding a positive result.
More specifically, there are 3 main points where behavioral research can play a big part in shaping your co-branding initiative:
Screening: start testing early in the process (even concepts and drafts!) and narrow down your options. Leverage more granular sub-category criteria, including usage frequency, understanding brand awareness and openness to purchasing the product, and even filtering on geolocation. With every added testing criterion, the potential risk of a new launch gets smaller.
Test in context: use virtual simulations of stores and retail environments to tap into authentic consumer behavior with high accuracy. The same goes for e-commerce – any website or webpage, such as Amazon, Target, Kroger can be replicated. Having the ability and agility to put respondents in a context that feels familiar and authentic is key in estimating the success of the co-branding strategy.
Volumetric and Market share projection: test claims, pricing, and other aspects of launch to estimate in-market success, switching behavior and opportunities for driving share within the first year.
Make co-branding resonate: Optimize at every touchpoint
Experts concur that having a seamless and experience-driven path to purchase is more important now than ever. Shoppers’ expectations are changing – and brands must be aware of the hyper-sensitivity of their customers. Thus, co-branding can be an effective tool to not only enhance brand or product communication, but could also serve as a potential visual cue for highlighting variety or sub-line differences.
Additionally, there are many widely overlooked opportunities within omnichannel – optimizing touch points such as e-commerce pack shots being one of them. Hero images can significantly boost sales by attracting more attention. They garner 5% higher visibility than Standard Package Designs on desktop (with even greater potential on mobile because of the smaller screen size) and can increase sales by about 15%. Considering these key touchpoints when implementing a co-branding strategy can significantly boost your chances of success.
Summary
Co-branding is all about expanding opportunities to connect viscerally with the consumer. By introducing new propositions and potentially enhancing communication by leveraging the established equities of each brand, you are generating broader interest and/or emotional response, which has a positive effect on consumer retention.
Adopting behavioral methods and testing within contextual shopping environments allows more authentic and predictive insight into how your co-branded product will perform. This type of feedback minimizes the risk of unfruitful investment and represents a definite advantage – even more so under the pressures of recession, where consumers are increasingly fickle and marketing budgets precious.
