What exactly are user insights? How to do it?

I often hear people compare marketing to "telling a good brand story." If this is true, then where should this story begin? I think it starts with understanding your users. I often hear marketers talk about some pain points in their work, such as being troubled by brand positioning, lack of strategy, and no inspiration for communication. In fact, the emergence of these problems can mostly be attributed to the lack of effective user insights . So, what exactly are user insights? How to do it? How is it different from marketing research? What should we be trying to understand when we gain insight? This article will discuss this with you. 1. Definition and Mission of User Insights First of all, let us use the term "user insight" to discuss its definition and mission.

In the discovery marketing SDi theory, we collectively call the work of understanding users "user insights", the core of which is the understanding of user consumption habits, consumption characteristics, potential needs and lifestyles. In practice, this section will involve some classic methods, such as the most familiar questionnaires and focus group interviews, so some business books and experts will call these "marketing research." Language is powerful, and an expression always corresponds to a cognition. SDi chose to use "user insights" instead of "marketing research" mainly because: Generally speaking, when we talk about research, there is always a subject-object relationship in our consciousness, such as A researching B, or A researching B, but if you want to understand users, you cannot set yourself as an "outsider." In user insights, we should mobilize our perception as much as possible to achieve a deep understanding of users' lives, rather than seeking to use a report that is logically perfect but lacks empathy to guide our work. So, based on this definition, what is the mission or task of user insights?

We believe that the most important "main tasks" of insight are, first, to explore and clarify "value discovery" for the brand, and second, to guide and optimize the brand's "value expression." Let’s first talk about the first task – clarifying “value discovery” for the brand, using the example of the baking industry, which I have been paying more attention to recently. We chose a brand - 85 degrees C.

85 is a very interesting brand. It was the first to try cross-border business and was the first to combine freshly baked bread, exquisite Western pastries and bar drinks. The highly differentiated business strategy once helped the brand take the lead. Therefore, I define the "value discovery" of 85°C as "light street supply" - because it provides users with an ideal place where "when you are tired of shopping, you can come and have a bite to eat, drink and take a rest." From this we can also recognize that 85’s main competitors are not other bakeries, but brands that provide similar “light street supplies” services, such as street coffee shops. If 85°C were to launch a user insight campaign today, its first priority should be to figure out what challenges the brand’s core values are facing? How to rediscover and clarify core values through insights? For example, insight personnel may notice that with the widespread rise of e-commerce and O2O (especially food delivery services such as Ele.me), users' time, consumption characteristics and the cultural context behind shopping and its associated "light supplies" have changed significantly. What impact do these changes have on consumer minds and brand value?

For example, the emergence of a large number of other brands that meet similar needs and are also committed to "light street supplies" (such as the flourishing CoCo and Happy Lemon), as well as the "arms race" launched by many convenience stores for cup hot coffee (such as FamilyMart's Paike Coffee, which has a fierce advertising campaign with the theme of "I'm on the street corner, encountering a cup of beauty"), will have a strong impact on the existing value of 85. Based on these changes in the market and competitive environment, what is the unique value of this brand today? Ultimately, through a careful insight campaign (which requires combining information from the market, user behavior and cognition, and rationally deploying observation, investigation and experimental methods), insight personnel must be able to discover and point out what the core value of 85 Degrees C is today? What exactly should brands do for whom in the new era? This is what we just said, user insights help brands clarify the task of "value discovery". The second task of insight is to guide and optimize the brand's "value expression". This may be an independent task or a deepening of the first task. In practice, it can be further subdivided into "optimizing communication expression" and "optimizing product expression".

For example, Nunwood Consulting Company once did an insight project to optimize the advertising strategy for Scottish tourism, which is a typical example of "optimizing communication expression."

In this project, Nunwood Consulting conducted a series of user interviews and focus groups in six regions in three countries. The questions covered: What is the current consumer impression of Scotland? What aspects of this country are most attractive to visitors? What aspects are particularly attractive to consumers in each target market country? (In other words, factors that have a common appeal) The insights revealed consumer characteristics that many brands had overlooked in the past (for example, a large number of travelers travel “randomly” without prior planning), as well as unmet potential consumer needs (for example, compared to sightseeing, tourists want more cultural and social participation, such as communicating with local residents, making unique discoveries, being surprised, and even longing for personal learning experiences in culture, etc.)

The above insights were eventually transformed into new value expressions - for example, in the past, advertisements for Scottish tourism would usually feature a "breathtakingly beautiful" landscape, coupled with the image of a quiet, relaxed traveler. The new advert uses a series of visually open photos, with the slogan "Scotland, welcome into our lives" to emphasize the sense of cultural and social integration, and a series of delicate short stories to highlight the cultural discoveries and surprises that tourists may gain here, such as: "I chatted to a lovely local 'gardener' and it turned out she owned the castle." as well as “Accidentally getting stuck in a herd of sheep – slowing your life down in that uniquely Scottish way.” etc. We can also see many representative cases about using insights to optimize product expression. For example, Kimberly-Clark discovered that mothers who used Huggies body wash had difficulty holding the bottle—it required two hands to open and squeeze out the liquid (and they often had to hold their children at the same time). So the new product was designed with a bottle that could be held tightly and a large lid that could be easily opened with the thumb. For example, a cleaning product manufacturer wanted to understand why its bathroom cleaner was not selling well. Through user interviews, they quickly discovered that the dull color of the packaging gave people the impression that it had no cleaning power. In addition, by observing user usage scenarios, the brand also found that many people have a "hobby" of using old toothbrushes to clean bathroom tiles. As a result, the product packaging was quickly replaced with bright colors and a brush was fixed on the top. 2. Key points of user insights Now that we understand the definition and mission of user insights, let’s talk about the specific implementation of insight work, starting with understanding the “key points of insights.” What exactly should we ask about user insights? What exactly do we need to know? These two seemingly basic questions are often the biggest confusion in actual work, and are also the questions I have been asked most often in the past. Before answering, please review the “insight task” part above. In reality, we don’t know what to ask or what to understand, which is largely due to the lack of clear goals. As we just mentioned, the most important goal of insight is to help brands clarify “value discovery”, which is a goal we must always keep in mind in our work. This is just like a chef who must always keep in mind the final meal he is going to present, so that he can find all the "ingredients" he needs in the process. Based on the goal, the next step is to search for the "ingredients". The four points in the picture below are what I think are the four most important "ingredients" in user insights. They are crucial to task accomplishment. Successful user insights are usually based on sufficient and in-depth collection of these four aspects of information. Let’s look at each one separately:

1. Different brand perceptions The complete expression of different brand perceptions should be "users' perception of different brands (categories)". If we want to clarify the brand value, or in other words, to "discover" it with a fresh perspective, we must first understand the users' existing impressions, attitudes and perceptions of their own brands. In addition, we also need to know the users' impressions, attitudes and perceptions of our categories and other brands that create similar values and meet similar needs as us. For example, in the case of Scotland travel, the insight personnel must first know what impressions and attitudes travelers have about "traveling to Scotland" and what information they are familiar with (cognitive situation). How does this differ from "traveling to France"? What are the differences from the overall "European tour"? Which concepts are more consistent with tourists' impressions of them? What are the core factors that will lead tourists to have a more positive attitude towards traveling to the target country? (Like "very convenient" or "very cost-effective", etc.).

For example, in the insight project I did for the lifestyle app "Youyan", the brief I received at the beginning was "How to launch an Internet product that can meet the lifestyle and cultural consumption needs of the mainstream urban population, especially the new generation of consumers?" It can be said that I was under a lot of pressure when I first received this topic, because I had to clarify what such a product is? What to do? What functions are provided? The possibilities for creating value are so broad that the seemingly "wild" degree of freedom actually brings great difficulty to insight projects.

I pondered over this, in order to figure out "what kind of product is more likely to meet users' expectations for literary and artistic, lifestyle-related Internet products?" I finally decided to start with categories, adopting the insight approach of "from category to brand". Through questionnaires, focus groups and social media content analysis, I will understand users' perceptions of the four major categories of "lifestyle new media", "literary and artistic vertical e-commerce", "literary and artistic, lifestyle communities", and "O2O information services", covering representative brands such as Douban, Yitiao, and Where to Go on Weekends.

Taking the category of "literary and artistic vertical e-commerce" as an example, what is the overall impression, attitude and cognition of consumers towards this sector? The answer is – not very good! For example, in focus group interviews, some people talked about the inflated prices of products on such e-commerce platforms, but the sloppy customer service and after-sales service; some talked about how such e-commerce platforms often use beautiful pages to build "flower racks", but the products sold are actually far inferior to what is presented on the pages; and another common problem is that users are generally worried about buying counterfeit goods and are concerned about the security of funds and personal privacy during transactions.

The social media analysis conducted at the same time also allowed us to see some details about how users view and use such products in real scenarios. For example, on Zhihu, when asked "What do you think of literary and artistic e-commerce?", a user said frankly: "I've always used it as a catalog index. If I like something, I'll go to Taobao to buy it. It's usually a lot cheaper..." Taking all these into consideration, after completing the cognitive scan of the four categories respectively, we finally found that only "new media" and "O2O information services" are the categories whose users have a higher degree of value recognition and a clearer value awareness. This provides a "navigation" for Youyan to choose what product form to create for users. (Note: For details of this case, please see "How New Brands Make a Counterattack in the Category from the User Insights of Youyan APP", which can be obtained by sending "Youyan" to the official account "Yujian"). 2. Consumption behavior characteristics Consumer behavior characteristics are the second important aspect of insight content. By focusing on consumer behaviors that are related to the value created by the brand and meet similar needs, insights personnel can gain a better understanding of user lifestyles. To illustrate this point, let’s take the example of a “community bakery brand upgrade” project that I took over this year. In order to find out "what role do community bakeries opened around residential areas play in users' lives?" I conducted consumer observations in 13 typical communities (divided into three levels: high-end, ordinary and old communities) in four cities.

During the process, I continued to collect "ingredients" and took a large number of photos reflecting community life. For example, the middle photo above is of a third-tier city in the south early one morning. We can see that a "cyclist army" is pouring out of a typical community environment. These "consumers" are in a hurry. Simple, fast and steaming hot breakfast is most attractive to them. Although the decoration is slightly upscale, bakeries that have little freshly baked bread and cannot convey the sensory perception of "eating something hot in the morning" are insulated from their needs. Please pay attention to the aunt in the circle who went out earlier than the "cycling army". She was holding two bottles of cooking oil in her left hand and had another three bottles hanging on her body! Returning with some difficulty from the small supermarket that was having a sale. On the right side of the picture above, on a Saturday afternoon, a father is anxiously waiting for the cake he ordered in a bakery. Due to the small environment, he can only put all the bags he bought from the market on the table. Among the messy items there is a comic book "Father and Son" (probably bought for his child or prepared to read with his child). This scene truly reflects that the community bakery is such a "consumption by the way" venue dominated by meeting family needs (there is rarely any proactive purpose-oriented consumption). All of these observations help us think about who exactly are the consumers of community bakeries? How do they “use” community stores? To what values would they be more sensitive? And what are the core factors in their brand selection (such as whether the store is located on the consumer's main life line), etc. 3. User Insight Methods and Implementation 1. Quantitative and qualitative - two components of insight

Understanding the two basic insights of "quantitative research" and "qualitative research" is the prerequisite for us to enter into specific work. In actual projects, these two aspects need to be connected. For example, in the middle article we mentioned that a household cleaner brand wanted to figure out why its products were not selling well. The initial quantitative research did not provide a pertinent answer. The insight personnel then turned to qualitative analysis and, through communication with customers, they quickly realized that the problem was that "the color of the packaging was as dull as chalk painting, which easily gave people the impression that it had no cleaning power." Of course, through quantitative research, insight personnel also discovered the phenomenon that "many people like to use old toothbrushes to clean bathroom tiles." Finally, the solution of “replacing the packaging with bright colors and fixing a brush on the top of the product” can be said to be the result of the integrated use of quantitative and qualitative methods. Talking about this, I remembered that a colleague asked me about my opinion on "data-driven marketing" not long ago. I told him that unfortunately, I still have many doubts about this concept: Many brands, especially start-ups and small and medium-sized brands, do not have much data accumulation, and lack the funds and capabilities to break through data barriers. This is the reality that "data is good, but it is difficult for me to use it." The value of data to marketing often does not depend on the data itself, but rather on the marketing decision makers’ ability to interpret the data. A key point relevant to this article is that big data itself is more of a quantitative research tool. It may indeed make some achievements in understanding who consumers are, what they do, what characteristics they exhibit, etc., and may even partially replace offline quantitative research. But in the final analysis, it is still difficult to replace qualitative research on the question of "why". In other words, relying solely on big data, it is difficult for us to analyze deeper issues such as consumer motivations, brand awareness, user pain points, and potential needs. In addition, since big data generally focuses on users' active behaviors (such as searching and sharing), users' behaviors at a single node (such as placing an order) cannot accurately reflect the full picture of their lives, and it is difficult to drill down to 1,001 life scenarios that are not reflected on the Internet (such as the actual usage scenarios of the product). Especially in categories where the target population's Internet usage habits are not prominent, there may be a high risk of "generalizing and distorting data." By inserting this digression, what I want to emphasize is that insight should be comprehensive and one should not be overly obsessed with a single method. 2. Three methods of user insights So, how do we avoid sweeping insights in practice? Next, the second “drawer” of the “User Insight Toolbox” shows us three insight methods – observation, survey, and experiment. It should be said that taking these three methods into account as much as possible in one project can overcome the above problems well.

Whether it is a questionnaire, focus group, media scanning or other specific methods, they can basically be classified into these three methods. Observation, investigation and experiment can be summarized in simple language as "take a look", "ask" and "try it". They are the three most basic methods for us to understand and grasp something. Let's try to use a case to explore how these three are integrated into a project: Brand A is a "high-fidelity audio" company. In order to further "increase market share", the brand's insights began with "who are our consumers?" Through "sales data analysis" (from stores and e-commerce platforms), the brand found that its customers are mainly unmarried men under the age of 35. Note that when a brand gets this clue, inexperienced insight personnel are often prone to come up with the following problem-solving ideas: Since our typical customers are unmarried men under the age of 35, we should focus on gaining a deeper understanding of this group in order to create products that better meet the needs of this group and find creative ideas that can better impress them (this is also the textbook standard advice of many big data vendors). This insight idea seems to be correct on the surface, but precisely because it does not fully utilize multiple insight methods, it is very likely to block the brand's innovation space. A better option is to introduce observation and investigation methods at this time. For example, send insight personnel to the brand’s offline stores to unravel the “mystery” of typical customers—why are they unmarried men under the age of 35? Is this group more sensitive to "high fidelity"? Or do married men have a lower demand for this value? Or is there some other reason that we don't know yet? For example, is it because of the increased workload that men over 35 have to give up their beloved "toys"? A similar approach may enable insight researchers to identify that the real reason married men do not buy is not the reduced demand for the value of "high fidelity", but the impact of "differences in factors recognized by couples". More specifically, by interviewing customers who gave up on buying and communicating with store clerks, the insights team learned that men generally like large black speakers and would display them in their homes as "trophies", while women generally hate their appearance - considering the actual placement in the living room, women would try to convince their husbands not to buy a speaker that has good performance but is "ugly" and too "expensive" in appearance. At this time, these observations and surveys helped the brand develop new ideas - is it possible to have a product line that takes into account the needs of both men and women in the target market? —A large sound system that looks like furniture, saving women the trouble of hiding it with vases, tables and chairs. Based on this idea, brands can also introduce experimental methods, combine insights into potential customers (especially those families who have given up on purchasing), and conduct product and advertising appeal tests in order to find the "expression" that makes it easier for the target market to perceive this value, and ultimately meet customer needs for "increasing market share." 3. Comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of three insight methods Observation, investigation and experimental methods each have their own advantages and disadvantages in practical application. The advantage of the observation method is that it is easy to implement. However, many decision makers ignore the value of the observation method. They can obviously get innovative clues by just going to the market and taking a look, but they always like to look for answers in data reports.

In this regard, Miller Light has done such a project abroad: insight personnel observed and recorded drinkers' conversations and drinking habits in bars across the country. An important discovery was that the brand was preferred by groups of drinkers, while its competitor Budweiser was mainly sold to customers who were alone. Clues like these that can create value for later dissemination are not difficult to find as long as you look carefully. The disadvantage of the observation method is that it is not easy to interpret the underlying causes, and it must be linked to qualitative research. For example, to understand the reason for the difference between Miller and Budweiser, it is necessary to analyze consumers' different perceptions of the two brands, which requires further investigation methods. The survey method can solve both "quantitative" and "qualitative" problems. It is the most commonly used or most reliable insight method. However, its disadvantage is that it places high demands on insight personnel: How to design a questionnaire? How to conduct a focus group interview? The seemingly simple job actually requires rich experience and professional ability. It can even be said that completing these tasks in each project is like playing chess, which requires not only a deep understanding of chess theory, but also an innovative consciousness and imagination. The outstanding advantage of the experimental method is that if sufficient conditions are provided, we can see direct feedback from users. This method has outstanding advantages in Internet projects. For example, in the past, when we were optimizing the website experience, we would ask product managers to test the new pages that we were going to update with 10% of the traffic first. After a period of time (usually 2 to 3 weeks), we would use the "Net Promoter Score" to evaluate the pros and cons compared to the old version. Now I’m encouraging more and more brick-and-mortar brands to adopt a similar approach. For example, when I was working on the "Community Bakery Brand Upgrade" project mentioned in the previous article, through observing consumer behavior in different cities, we discovered a "universal" pattern that is "universal" in the north and south: every afternoon (especially 3-5:30), the "parent-child time" when parents bring their children to buy bread has a very prominent impact on a bakery's entire day's turnover.

Based on this, we realized that designing a more reasonable consumption route for children and improving their in-store experience is actually crucial to the entire project. To this end, we combined further investigation methods to summarize several operational optimization items, and then recommended that customers try them out in a small number of stores with similar locations, consumer composition, and consumption characteristics. In this way, we can identify which operational methods are more effective through the "10% traffic method". Similarly, the disadvantage of the experimental method is also very obvious, that is, many things cannot be tested, or it is not appropriate to use the experimental method. For example, many agencies like to suggest that brands do “taste testing,” which is understandable, but overemphasizing its importance leads to the misunderstanding of treating “taste” as a determining factor in consumption. In reality, the impact of factors such as taste and texture on consumer decisions is usually lower than we expect. For example, if exactly the same food or beverage is labeled with different logos, sold through different channels, or uses different packaging designs and communication methods, or even just has different spokespersons, the impact on consumer decisions will not necessarily be less than "taste". The implicit logic here is: unless you can identify a certain factor as the decisive factor in consumer decisions, and your experiment can be highly close to the consumer's actual consumption (usage) scenario, you can adjust the weight of the experimental method higher than the other two methods. In addition, things that belong to the core expression layer, such as the brand logo, slogan, and positioning statement, are not suitable for the experimental method. I have heard that some companies would invite users to "brainstorm" slogans, vote on slogans, and even discuss "positioning". In fact, these are all amateur practices that force the objects of insight to "transform" into experts. Insight personnel should keep in mind: It is best not to let customers think for you about your work, even in a small part, otherwise they will no longer be customers. Regarding the logo, if you put the new and old versions together and ask users to vote, nine out of ten times they will say the old one is better. The reason is simple: the old version has deep user knowledge and emotional connections with them. For this reason alone, it is impossible to make a wise choice through experimental methods. 3. 6 tools for user insights

The third "drawer" of the "User Insight Toolbox" shows us six more specific insight tools, namely: life observation, media scanning, questionnaires, focus groups, in-depth user interviews and online communities. Why didn’t we throw out these 6 tools at the beginning of this article? What I want to emphasize is that before considering which tools to use in an insight project, insight personnel should first be familiar with the aforementioned two-layer structure, and then think about: Which tools to use for quantitative research? Which ones are used for qualitative research? How can we comprehensively apply the observation, investigation and experimental methods? For example, life observation (including consumption scenario observation) and media scanning are both observation methods, and at least one of them should be considered in the project; questionnaires and focus groups are both survey methods, but they are typical quantitative and qualitative tools respectively, so they are usually the preferred "golden combination"; and in-depth user interviews and online communities are basically two variations of focus groups, which can be considered according to actual conditions. At the same time, insight personnel also need to consider whether it is necessary, and how and at what stage to embed experimental methods. Finally, I would like to talk about some of my experiences with the “6 tools” based on my own practice. (1) Identifying the problem is the premise of insight design Above we talked about the two components of insight, three methods, and six tools. How can we integrate them? In actual projects this is a "vision design" question. Insight design is both a science and an art. It is a huge topic in itself. Today we will only talk about one key point - identifying problems with customers is the prerequisite for good insight design. In reality, we often see marketers starting to do insights with some seemingly plausible goals, such as "increasing sales", "repositioning", and "brand rejuvenation". Insight personnel treat these keywords that have not been "diagnosed" as briefs. As a result, when the project is just one-third completed, there are already many voices of doubt - "Are you going in the wrong direction? Why do we need to pay attention to these? Why don't we understand these? Why don't we ask users questions about this?" and so on. This is usually the result of insights personnel not conducting in-depth “problem identification” with marketing decision makers (internal managers or external customers). Even managers or customers begin insights in a state of confusion about what they “really want.” Let’s take the keyword “get rid of sales decline” as an example. If the customer believes that this is the main demand of this insight, then the insight personnel must have in-depth communication with the customer on this point. Managers generally focus on "symptoms", while insight personnel need to find ways to "derive" the causes in their minds:

Starting from the structure of "Discovery Marketing Theory" (SDi), we need to figure out whether the main reason for the decline in sales is at the brand's core value level, brand expression level, user interaction level, cognitive construction level or value delivery level? In this process, insight personnel should persist in using questions such as "What causes this?" and "Do you think it is because..., so..." and proposing hypotheses to "get to the bottom" of the causes of the "symptoms" until both parties can jointly propose several "truths" to be discovered or "hypotheses" to be verified, and reach a general consensus on the insight context, before entering into substantive insight design. For example, when talking to customers: The emergence of innovative products has led to the diversion of customers. Product iteration is slow and the brand image is outdated. Competitors have increased their public relations and communication efforts and put forward more distinct value propositions. We can basically diagnose them as three different problems: "core value layer", "brand expression layer" and "cognitive construction layer". Which one is the primary and which one is the secondary? Which had the biggest impact on the sales decline? Based on the identification of the core problem, our vision designs should all be significantly different. (2) Some details about the questionnaire Designing an excellent questionnaire is an extremely difficult task and should never be underestimated. Here are some details about the questionnaire that I think are worth noting: How to receive more valid questionnaires? Studies have shown that the main reasons why users are willing to participate in questionnaires are (a) the rewards provided; (b) whether they are interested in the topic; (c) whether there is enough time for the survey; and (d) whether the length of the survey is appropriate. This means that a questionnaire about "chewing gum" will naturally be easier to collect than one about "cleaning teeth", but no matter what the survey topic is, this does not affect you from putting some relatively easy and interesting questions at the front; putting challenging questions that require thinking in the middle; and putting questions that identify user attributes (age, occupation, income, etc.) at the end. Questionnaires should have a concise introduction that announces early on that the survey will not involve a sales pitch and that the survey is of an appropriate length while emphasizing that the respondent's time is valuable. This can increase the respondents' sense of security, just like when we are waiting for the elevator, what really makes us anxious is often not the long waiting time, but the fact that we don't know how long we will have to wait. A good questionnaire has clear logic and accurate wording. For example, a question like "Is the shopping mall you often go to on weekends within 30 minutes from your home?" does not take into account that the number of minutes depends on the customer's travel method. The questionnaire should allow respondents the right not to answer, such as "I don't know" or "It's hard to say", otherwise it will easily lead to withdrawal. The language style of the questionnaire should be as close to the language habits of the respondents as possible, and try to avoid the use of professional terms, abbreviations and acronyms. Sometimes, the questions in the questionnaire will automatically trigger the psychological defense mechanism of the respondent. For example, people are reluctant to talk about their bad habits. At this time, you should be good at using the "projection method" (asking the respondent to interpret other people's behavior and "project" their own motivations, attitudes or feelings into the situation to describe their own behavior.) For example, "Nowadays, many people have the problem of credit card overdraft. What do you think is the reason?" The "goodness" of a good questionnaire is reflected in the fact that all questions asked are questions that can be asked and should be asked; we need to think about how the answer to each question can support marketing decisions - the answer is not the goal but the basis. For example, "How do you think the importance of food, environment, service, and price should be ranked for a restaurant?" How can the conclusion drawn from this question support decision-making? Admittedly, through cross-analysis you will find that young people pay more attention to the environment, while older people care more about cost-effectiveness, but how different is this conclusion from "common sense"? In addition, if the conclusion is that "environment is not important", but there really is a restaurant with a very unique environment, customers will still flock to it. Just because customers think something is unimportant doesn’t mean there is no room for innovation for a brand. Questions like these are redundant and cannot provide a basis for marketing decisions. Questionnaires should ask users more "facts" that include details. Not long ago, a friend of mine designed a question in a questionnaire, which gave N characteristics of a laptop and asked the respondents to rank them according to their importance. This is much better than the above-mentioned "price, service, environment" question which is not in the same dimension and is too broad. But I also reminded him that the result obtained by asking such questions only lets you know that feature A is more important than feature B, but you don’t know how much more important it is. A better way is to use a scale structure, for example, ask users to rate each of the five characteristics between 1 and 7 points. This way you can not only know who is the most important, but also know "how important". The combination of quantitative and qualitative research is reflected in the coordination of questionnaires and focus groups. For example, when I was working on the "Community Bakery Brand Upgrade" project, we learned about a series of user pain points through focus group interviews, and turned these pain points into "antonyms" (for example, "I always don't know the time when the freshly baked bread will be released" was transformed into "I know the time when the freshly baked bread will be released every day, and I can buy the freshest bread if I go on time"). Then, we used questionnaires to ask whether these were the aspects that users most wanted the brand to optimize. By asking users to rate these options, while identifying the needs, we also learned about the "degree of desire" of users for different needs, so that we can design prioritized optimization and upgrade suggestions for customers. (3) Some details about the focus group interview In an actual insight project, should a questionnaire survey or a focus group interview be conducted first? I think there is actually no standard answer to this frequently asked question. For example, a hotel's insight project starts with a questionnaire, asking customers to sort the importance of 11 service characteristics, and then organize a focus group to focus on analyzing the top 5 of them. On the contrary, if you still feel "less" about the brand's situation after "problem identification" with your customers, then organizing a focus group first, obtaining more information, and then using a questionnaire to reason and confirm it is a more appropriate strategy. In a project, if the focus group is A, the questionnaire is B, and the one-on-one interview is C, I personally prefer the ABA or ABC structure. In the project, no matter how careful we preset the problem, we often encounter situations beyond our expectations (if you have a clear understanding of all the problems, you don’t need to have any insight in theory), so the last A or C is to reserve a link to provide additional insights. If you can be a focus group of 8 people, don’t do 8 separate one-on-one interviews. The former’s effect is usually better than the latter. The reason is that in the focus group, one’s response becomes a stimulus to others, so that the mutual influence between respondents can be observed. The information generated under this "snowball effect" (including expressions, body language, confrontation of opinions and complementary) often brings unexpected, more unique and creative perspectives, allowing marketers to get more inspiration than statements separately. A successful focus group requires a thoughtful interview outline. Instead of conceiving this outline in isolation, it should consider how to complement the content of the questionnaire and design around "the key points of user insight" (see the first and second). The host's experience and level largely determine the information quality of the focus group. Good hosts should be curious people who are interested in people's behaviors and lifestyles. They need to understand and pay attention to the differences between people (especially people who are completely different from their own lifestyles); they must have good observation skills, be good at understanding expressions and body language; have strong expression and organizational skills, and be good at using topics to stimulate discussion. Insighters must learn to allocate their budgets wisely. Take the focus group as an example, how to increase the success rate of invitation and recruit respondents when the research topic is not very interesting? It is a recommended practice to split the budget reasonably and design multiple rewards. For example, if you also have a reward of 500 yuan per person, you can inform the respondents that you have prepared a reward of 300 yuan and a transportation subsidy of 100 yuan; in addition - "If you can come here 10 minutes in advance to get a brief look at you, you can also participate in an 'extra' lottery and get a gift of about 100 yuan." At this time, you will find that the common "traffic jams", "temporary trouble", and "the leader suddenly asked to work overtime" all magically disappeared.

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