Importance of Research for Building Successful Brands

Regardless of which development phase a business or a brand is in, regardless of the size of the business or the strength of the brand, regardless of the sector we operate or plan to operate in – B2B or B2C, research is a vital part of every business strategy. In the hands of skilled and educated teams, it can be an excellent tool in everyday work, especially in the marketing sector.

When you want to identify market trends, better understand your consumer, or bring and important decision which will influence the further development of the business operations, market research is probably the best solution. Research helps us not leave the results of our work up to the luck factor, to test our “instinctive” assumptions and hunches and finally – to make fact-based decisions.

It is precisely numerous instances of research that show that the companies which are customer-oriented, that is, those who revolve around the customer and do everything, including thorough research, to draw the customer’s attention, win their heart and stay there, are in fact also the most profitable companies. On this mission, research agencies nowadays offer wide portfolios of methodology designed so as to, depending on the company’s needs, bring to the table the data and insights regarding, it seems, the majority of the questions that we can’t answer or are not sure about the information we already have. This is the moment when the expectations we form when it comes to research come into play.

The quality of the obtained research results depends on many factors and is often questioned during the discussions which use them as the basis for decision-making. The necessary, but the sufficient conditions for research to be put on stable foundations are: to dedicate enough time to define the goals of the research as clearly as possible, as well as the selection of the most adequate methodology for responding to them, with a mandatory consensus on what it is supposed to achieve concretely, and perhaps even more importantly – which answers it is not supposed to provide. The reliability and the professional approach of the agencies to which research is entrusted go without saying in this case, including the readiness to recognize the flaws in clients when it comes to understanding the matter and to use their expertise to define everything together in advance. Furthermore, what’s most important in the research itself is for the results to be as accurate as possible and to be usable, that is, to be such that concrete actions can be taken based on them. Only research carried out this way helps the creation and building of successful brands.

Perhaps all this seems simple, or is even considered understood, but from years of experience working in various positions in the marketing sector and company management, I would say that’s not the case. The complexity often takes the form of one research not being able to meet all the goals or the obtained results being able to be interpreted in several different ways. On the other hand, companies often display a tendency to over-rely on what the consumers say in interviews, without taking into account the circumstances under which the surveys are done and the natural inclination of people to give favorable answers. In other words, what the consumers say in surveys and focus groups is often the opposite of what they think and feel and how they finally act when making a purchase. In such situations, there’s a risk of having the research results qualified as wrong.

Here I see the key role of agencies to educate companies about the manner of using the results, and I am very encouraged to see that, nowadays, with the available technologies, it is in fact increasingly easy to test the concrete habits of the consumers, especially when it comes to purchase. Technologies bring a considerable added value to research, through the possibility of finding, on a considerably lower scope and, consequently, with considerably lower investments, concrete answers as to whether our solutions match the customers’ needs precisely.

* Article written for a special edition of Mark Club by: Katarina Sibalic, Marketing Director, Strauss Adriatic

Strauss Adriatic d.o.o. Šimanovci

Strauss Adriatic

Katarina Šibalić

Mark Club

development of business strategy

B2B research

B2C research

identification of market brands

market brands

consumer desire research

brand building