SKIMspiration blog

“Alexa: do you remember the last consumer tech “must-have product” to hit the shelves?”

According to the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), it was the iPhone (2007) and iPad (2012). And now voice-controlled smart speakers, like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, have achieved that coveted status. CTA predicts 56.6 million smart speakers will be sold in the US next year; two years ago that number was just 7.2 million!.

Voice technology is set to fundamentally change the environment in which consumers make decisions, and who (or what) influences that decision. To stay ahead of the competition, brands will need to exhaust every opportunity to optimize their position in this new “4th sales channel” of voice commerce. 

Do you know how voice searches for your product category begin?

As telecom and technology markets are continually disrupted, our approach to their specific market research challenges needs to evolve with them.

What are you to do when you’re facing intense price competition, losing volume to the competition or launching new product innovations? Today’s digital consumers have more telecom and technology product options than ever before. For marketers in these industries, historical data will only take you so far when optimizing your product portfolio.

And the challenge only becomes more complex when you consider how today’s empowered consumers make purchase decisions differently than they did just a short time ago.

Discover the approach PepsiCo Benelux took to optimize the immediate and long-term impact of its promotions.

While short-term impacts on cash flow are often front of mind for the fast-moving consumer goods industry, after-sales dips and other aspects of sales recovery can prove detrimental to a brand’s financial health in the long run. Shopper insights managers looking to develop a promotions strategy with sustainable impact on sales and revenue growth, must be equipped with market research insights that address both the short-term and long-term impact of promotions.

Getting Started with AI: Speed + Quality

From Uber’s self-driving cars to Amazon’s warehouse robots, artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be reaching human-level dexterity nearly everywhere. You might be wondering like us: how are brands actually taking advantage of next-gen automation innovation in market research today? Can artificial intelligence identify better insights cheaper? Will computers and robots render human researchers useless? As market researchers, who also happen to be human beings, we’ve been exploring many of the same questions!

Danone, one of the world’s leading food companies, recently sought to understand consumer consumption drivers for a new product category. 

eCommerce success in the consumer goods category doesn’t happen overnight — it’s a journey

Defining a set of marketing guidelines that drive a measurable increase in sales is an incredible feat, never mind doing so for 2.5 billion smartphone users across the globe.

Yet that’s exactly what our client, and consumer goods giant, Unilever is tackling with the challenge of developing a consistent and cohesive set of mobile ready hero image guidelines for all brands, in all countries to follow with all retailers. When co-presenting with us at the OmniShopper International Conference, Oli Bradley, Unilever’s global e-commerce experience design director, shared details on his eCommerce journey. Here’s what we learned:

The increased adoption of voice assistants is forcing many of our clients in the consumer goods category to ask, “Alexa, how are you affecting consumer decision behavior?” From search through the path to purchase, the implications of voice-enabled technology are far reaching for brands. Now recognized as the “fourth sales channel,” voice tech represents an evolving channel, requiring new insights. You know you want to gain consumer preference in this lane, but what questions should you ask?

Remind yourself why the right customer decision journey framework matters—and which one you should be using.

Today’s consumer path to purchase has evolved a great deal. To succeed in the omnichannel world, you can’t afford to rely on outdated assumptions regarding your consumer’s decision journey.

Every customer’s decision journey is unique, especially in an omnichannel world.  Customer journey mapping allows marketers to understand the different stages customers go through before, during, and after purchase. It also examines how to influence customers at the various stages of their journey.

Whether you’re a CPG brand manager or a B2B marketer, your customer’s decision journeys are complex, dynamic, and easily disrupted by new options and inputs – online and offline. Today’s omnichannel world has created a new path to purchase for consumers, business professionals, and healthcare decision makers. Their decision journey is influenced by technology and media that didn’t even exist a few years ago, but do you know how, where, and when?

Setting the right price is one of the best ways to positively impact a company’s bottom line. Yet, price-setting is not always top-of-mind nor owned by a single department within a company. This holds true across industries, whether it is consumer goods, healthcare, telecom, finance or technology. Sometimes Marketing takes responsibility for pricing, while other times Finance takes on the task. Often, we find that there exists no pricing strategy at all in companies, and thus, no clear ownership of pricing responsibility.