ISSUES

RESEARCH

“If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time”

This famous quote demonstrates the importance of an informed approach to communications efforts; if you cannot target your campaigns, your results will be expensive and ineffective. Worse, your own preconceptions will never be challenged, and you will not be able to take advantage of changes in the marketplace until it’s too late. Tucker/Hall has extensive research talent and resources which have helped companies of all industries and sizes to build deep insights about their markets and customers.

Tucker/Hall’s philosophy when it comes to research methodology is “multimodal” – a 360° approach that combines the benefits of complementary methods, provides insights that no single technique can provide, and ensures that the shortcomings of any single method do not bias our findings.

These are a sample of the many tools that we frequently apply for market research applications:

QUALITATIVE

• Structured interviews – structured interviews with senior executives in target markets can identify what drives current trends in behavior and decision-making.
• Internal research – meetings, focus groups and interviews with company founders and top management can help identify and confirm company vision, values and goals, and define internal messaging and corporate culture.
• Media / communications audits – evaluation of existing communications materials, publications and marketing assets can measure their effectiveness, lessons learned, and brand consistency.
• Ethnography and guerilla research – evaluating trade show marketing and activities, competitor events, customer interceptions, and mystery shopper research of competitors can be very valuable for refining market differentiation and market advantage strategies).
• Influencer lists – building contact lists of individuals with high influence, visibility and large networks in your target markets.

QUANTITATIVE

• Market research – spending trends, market share, national and international spending.  This will be based upon government and industry data, employment and spending trends, and possibly by leveraging third-party consumer purchasing / behavior databases.
• Customer surveys – structured survey systems can be implemented to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction, market trends, opportunities and threats, and ideas for new products and services.  Survey systems can be built to measure trends (quarterly, annual) across all of your markets, and to benchmark performance of specific markets and establishments against trends.
• Competitive landscape – relative strengths and weaknesses of competing firms and solutions from the perspective of customers.  This will be developed by analyzing competitor websites, advertisements and media and evaluation of market publications, trade journals, and other materials to determine their strategies, messages, strengths and weaknesses.
• Meta-analysis – published literature research, and combined insights from existing market studies and reports from Federal and private research sources.  We have worked with numerous industry research institutes and market research repositories, and have access to large-scale research insights which can be combined and integrated for specific insights regarding customer behavior, competitors, technology trends, and opportunities.
• Strategy and message testing – internet panels or surveys testing A:B alternatives or reactions to messages and visuals can provide statistically valid, solid confirmation of tactics and test against unexpected consumer reactions.  This method is frequently applied for refining tactics and strategies.
• Economic and demographic studies – profile your customers and markets combining private and public data.