What are the best practices for uncovering unmet consumer needs through surveys?
Uncovering unmet consumer needs is a crucial step for developing successful products and services. Surveys are one of the most common and effective methods for gathering insights from potential and existing customers. However, designing and conducting surveys that reveal the true needs and motivations of consumers is not a simple task. In this article, you will learn some of the best practices for uncovering unmet consumer needs through surveys, such as:
Before you start creating your survey, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. Your objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Your audience should be segmented based on relevant criteria, such as demographics, behaviors, preferences, and needs. Having a well-defined objective and audience will help you craft relevant and engaging questions, avoid bias and ambiguity, and choose the best sampling and distribution methods for your survey.
-
1 - Defina seus objetivos de pesquisa; 2 - Escolha o método de pesquisa apropriado; 3 - Identifique seu público-alvo; 4 - Faça perguntas específicas e/ou exploratórias; 5 - Utilize técnicas de pesquisa qualitativa, quantitativa e/ou observacionais; 6 - Analise os dados; 7 - Esteja aberto a feedbacks; 8 - Mantenha a confidencialidade e a ética;
The type and format of questions you use in your survey will have a significant impact on the quality and quantity of data you collect. You can use different types of questions, such as open-ended, closed-ended, rating scales, ranking, multiple choice, or matrix, depending on your objective and audience. Generally, open-ended questions are more suitable for exploring unmet needs, as they allow respondents to express their opinions, feelings, and desires in their own words. Closed-ended questions are more suitable for quantifying and validating existing needs, as they provide predefined options and categories for respondents to choose from. The format of questions should be clear, concise, consistent, and easy to answer. You should avoid leading, loaded, double-barreled, or jargon-filled questions that might confuse or influence respondents.
Latent needs are the needs that consumers are not fully aware of or cannot articulate, but that still impact their behavior and satisfaction. Uncovering these needs can give you a competitive advantage and help you create innovative and differentiated products and services. However, it is not easy to identify latent needs through conventional survey questions since they require deeper probing and analysis. To elicit latent needs, you can ask "why" questions to understand the underlying reasons and motivations behind respondents' answers, "how" questions to understand the current processes and pain points that respondents face, "what if" questions to stimulate respondents' imagination and creativity, "trade-off" questions to understand the relative importance and priority of different attributes and features, or "scenario" questions to simulate realistic situations and contexts that might trigger or reveal unmet needs.
-
In a quantitative survey, it is very likely for the consumer to overclaim their pain-points (just because I see a pain-point on a list, I now realize I have that pain and need a solution for that). They should always be asked about importance of pain-points in a trade-off context. That brings out the really painful ones. E.g. Would they be ok paying a price-premium if a solution for this pain-point was presented. That would get them thinking if it really bothers them and if it really is a need. That, I feel, is a great way to prioritize consumers' needs and pain-points.
-
Your depth/experience as a researcher may dictate your starting point when building questions. Some may focus on gap analysis (expectations vs. performance - or current state vs. aspirational future state). Researchers with an ethnographic bent may prefer to simply observe then draw conclusions. Still others may know the subject matter very well - and may use open-ended questions with deep probing; a very open architecture to elicit participants' thinking. Those with biometric tools in their bag of tricks may focus on emotional response to stimuli to uncover latent needs. Well-rounded researchers may deploy combinations of these (and other) techniques to more fully understand ways to address unmet needs.
Once you have collected the data from your survey, you need to analyze and interpret it to extract useful information. You can use a variety of methods and tools for this purpose, such as descriptive statistics to summarize and visualize the data, inferential statistics to test hypotheses and draw conclusions about the population, text analysis to identify themes, sentiments, emotions, and keywords from open-ended responses, cluster analysis to group respondents based on similarities and differences in needs, preferences, and behaviors, and gap analysis to compare the current and desired states of satisfaction and performance. The analysis and interpretation of the data should help you answer your research questions, validate or invalidate your assumptions, and uncover the unmet needs of your target audience.
The final step of uncovering unmet consumer needs through surveys is to validate and prioritize them. Validation entails confirming the data's reliability and validity, as well as assessing its consistency with other sources, such as market trends, customer feedback, or competitor analysis. Prioritization involves ranking the unmet needs based on their importance, urgency, feasibility, and profitability. Different criteria and frameworks can be used to help with this process, such as a customer value proposition to evaluate how well your product or service meets the unmet needs and delivers benefits to customers. The Kano model can be used to classify the unmet needs into basic, performance, or delighter categories and assess how they affect customer satisfaction. Additionally, a value versus effort matrix can be used to identify the quick wins, big bets, hard sells, or time sinks. Finally, a roadmap can be used to plan and schedule the implementation of the unmet needs into your product or service features and enhancements.
Rate this article
More relevant reading
-
Press ReleasesHow do you use survey questions to generate insights and stories for your press releases?
-
Marketing ResearchHow can you design a survey for a niche market?
-
Marketing ResearchHow can you ensure accurate consumer preferences when sampling for international markets?
-
MarketingYou’re conducting market research. How can you create surveys that yield valuable insights?