Banking on consumer loyalty? Use product insights to generate those much-needed millions

Consumer loyalty isn’t necessarily a thing of the past, but it’s also just not quite what it used to be. There’s always a shiny new brand (or a dull-but-conspicuously-lower-priced private label brand) hanging out a little further down the shelf.

With so many options, consumers no longer stick with brands simply out of loyalty or familiarity. They’ll happily go elsewhere if something fits their needs just a little more to a T.

And that’s the case even if you don’t give them any obvious reason to jump ship. Don’t expect anyone to stick around after the slightest irritation. It may be “three strikes you’re out” in baseball, but in the brand loyalty arena, you only get two—if that—before more than 70 percent of customers will abandon your products altogether.

So, if you’re racing to beat competitors to market with a new product that must generate $20 million in revenue within the first six months, you’d best avoid sinking your entire marketing budget into something that won’t delight shoppers. Instead, use product insights to match your offering to what people really want and need.

What are product insights?

Product insights are the bits of feedback you get from people who try out your product (or a prototype). Do they enjoy it? Is it easy to use? Do they struggle to open the packaging? Is there a weird aftertaste?

It’s like walking several miles in their shoes—or rather, walking several miles with their feet, wearing your brand’s latest pair of sneakers.

These product and consumer insights could come from data that’s either quantitative or qualitative. The former refers to countable data, like the average rating your customers give your candy bar’s taste. The latter comprises any non-quantifiable descriptions of your product, like the buttery texture or a sense that the inclusion of peanuts makes it seem healthier and more satisfying than similar options.

Most important, however, is that these are consumer insights you can act upon. Your shoppers might say they “love your eyeshadow kits,” but does this give you anything to really work with? It would be a lot more helpful if they told you where they apply each shade, what shapes of applicator they prefer, and which shade they run out of most quickly.

Why should you go out of your way to get product insights?

It’s tempting to just go with your gut and assume you know what your customers are looking for. But, of course, that’s a recipe for disaster.

There are several things working against you. First off, it’s such a consumer-centric era that we’re living in. People are more informed, and they’re accustomed to having brands pander to them in all sorts of ways. From increasingly personalized recommendations to virtual “try on” applications for fashion, every brand is doing whatever they can to stay one step ahead.

There’s also just such a mind-boggling array of options. Every time one brand comes up with something cool, competitors respond lickety-split with their own versions of the hot new thing. Meanwhile, private label brands are squeezing margins and winning over the shoppers who are just looking for a run-of-the-mill, low-cost alternative.

In this dizzying smorgasbord, it seems almost impossible to know why anyone would pick one brand over another. But if you don’t figure this out, your next product launch might go wildly off-course.

Fortunately, the answer doesn’t have to be a complete mystery. You can go ahead and ask people for the reasons behind their choices.  

Obstacles standing in the way of getting good product and consumer insights

“Ask and you shall receive” seems a bit simplistic, and it is. There’s a lot more to the story.

For every traditional product insight gathering method, there’s usually a catch. The data might be skewed to a certain demographic, or you might not be getting answers from people who really care about the questions. You might not even be getting answers from actual people!

Here are a few common ways companies typically acquire (possibly incomplete) product insights.

1. Mass surveys. These can reach a gargantuan number of people, but the prevalence of survey fraud in today’s day and age means that a solid percentage of these respondents are likely to be bots. Unless you find a way to weed out fraudulent respondents, your data will be poisoned by bogus answers.
2. Social listening. You can learn a lot from the people who post about your brand (or competing brands) on social media and review sites. That said, not everyone is the type of person who rants or raves online about brands. So, while you might be getting some decent insights, you’re also missing out on feedback from the people who keep their brand-related thoughts to themselves. These people also matter!
3. In-depth interviews. You won’t be able to get answers from nearly as many people as you could with a mass survey, but you have a lot of leeway to ask follow-up questions and dig into their lifestyle and daily habits. Just make sure you’re asking questions in a way that avoids the type of procedural bias known as the “interviewer effect.”
4. Focus groups. If you’re trying to discern any friction points in the usage of your product, a focus group is a way to have multiple people try out your product on the spot and tell you what they do and don’t like about it. Just keep in mind that focus groups can present a number of issues, including groupthink, limited representation, moderator-induced bias, and the impact of an unfamiliar environment.

There’s nothing wrong with running a focus group, sending out a mass survey, or using an AI tool to analyze every social media post that mentions every company selling potato chips. But you might not always be getting the best-quality data, and it could be polluted with inauthentic responses in some cases.

Is there a way to improve customer insights and get to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? There sure is! Let’s take a look at why in-home usage testing (IHUT) fueled by a pre-vetted community is a superior option for brands seeking high-quality data.

How IHUT helps you combine diverse product insights to maximum effect

IHUT involves having verified users try out your product in the comfort of their own homes. It’s a great way to set aside any concerns about getting answers from a large number of bots or having a clinical-feeling environment hamper the authenticity of responses.  

You’ll also be privy to a holistic view of your product’s performance by combining different types of insights. From sentiment analysis in open-ended interview responses to seeing how people interact with your product in video diaries, you’ll get a complete understanding of how your product functions in the context of people’s actual lives.

IHUT is like a mass survey, focus group, and in-depth interview all rolled into one, and what’s more, you never have to worry about people responding falsely, inauthentically, or lackadaisically. Highlight’s testers are selected based on their ability and willingness to provide detailed, useful responses to brands’ questions.

Even better, Highlight’s insights don’t take forever and a day to arrive. You’ll usually have some solid feedback to support your decision-making within just a couple weeks—or even a few days, as soon as respondents begin submitting their feedback.

How to use product insights as they start rolling in

Ideally, as soon as you get a good insight, product development decisions will follow. But is it really that simple? How do you turn what you’ve learned into strategies that maximize customer loyalty and attract new buyers?

The first step is prioritization. You can score a specific insight based on a number of things, including:

• How clearly it connects to a specific change to your product or messaging
• How much this change will matter to your customers
• How many customers this change will likely reach/attract
• How difficult/costly the change is to implement
• How confident you are that this change will successfully meet customer needs

Once you implement the change, it’s crucial to test it carefully. Tap into the IHUT community once again to see what people think of the new version vis-à-vis the old one. Want to know how your product stacks up against competitors? Highlight facilitates product benchmarking by sending out blinded samples to your target testing audience.

Highlight provides a suite of analytical tools to demonstrate the statistical significance of any comparison between different versions of your product or between your product and your competitors’ offerings. It’s also easy to segment tester responses by demographics and behaviors and track patterns across these groups.

Detailed, authentic insights are the foundation for a winning product strategy

In such a customer-centric time as this one, brand managers can no longer be comfortable with a product that’s “good enough.” Shoppers have endless options, and they don’t stick around just because they’ve bought your brand before.

Staying relevant in this environment means digging deeper into what motivates people and how products like yours might fit into (or fail to fit into) their lives. With IHUT, you can combine accurate metrics with ethnographic insights that help you understand the reasons behind consumer choices.  

Don’t waste your time getting low-quality data that yields misleading insights—start strong with authentic responses from real, verified users!