|
Maximising Brand Potential
The average consumer has 10,000 brands in their passive memory. Use DeltaQual to bring yours to the surface.
Research confirms what marketers have always suspected – most consumers shop on auto-pilot and breaking through the clutter of habitual pathways is a never-ending challenge.
But there is hope. New findings from ACNielsen’s consumer research experts means it is now possible to identify just where – and when – consumers are likely to respond to new stimuli.
Known as ‘Delta Moments’, these inflection points offer the maximum opportunity for informed decision makers to build mind share and brand potential for the products and services.
Understanding the significance of Delta Moments – and knowing how to use them to your advantage – lies at the heart of ACNielsen DeltaQual.
Omega Rules: The Key to Defining Brand Leadership
“I always buy brand X …unless guests are coming!”
“I buy the cheapest brand on special, as long as it’s not X!”
“Brand 2 works for my family, but if Y is on special, I buy that!”
Underlying repetitive purchase patterns are a set of cognitive decision rules – the
‘programme’ behind ‘auto-pilot’ purchasing. We call these Omega Rules – the mental check-lists that keep consumers on-track and help them decide between alternatives.
Often these rules are quite mundane (e.g., pack shape) or social (e.g., acceptable to friends) and do not represent deep emotional commitment to the brand. Brand leaders must understand Omega Rules as they provide guidance on key marketing tactics that will reinforce the habits that give them leadership.
The DeltaQual Breakthrough
Most current brand research focuses on two areas:
- Measuring and mapping feelings and motivations of consumers about brands; and
- Measuring and charting brand behaviour and sales.
DeltaQual provides the link between the two, offering maximum potential for driving behaviour change. DeltaQual is based on a number of recent advances in cognitive psychology which reveal that although consumers have 10,000 brands in their heads, they waste little time thinking about them. Instead, they evolve simple rules to navigate through the world of brands. These rules tend to be simple, few in number and rather hierarchical. They can be rational or emotion based, and once they have been developed the consumer is on ‘auto-pilot’ when placed in a buying situation.
Breaking through this highly structured consumer mindset is the key to DeltaQual, which identifies ‘moments of change’ when habits are most likely to be reviewed.
With such information, it is possible to:
- Understand how habits are formed;
- Identify the key criteria underlying ‘auto-pilot’ purchase; and
- Develop a range of triggers and motivators that will lead to change.
Three Vital Steps
- DeltaQual begins with a clear analysis of the rules that underpin consumer choice – a map of mental check-lists held by consumers.
- This is followed by generation of actionable insights into the moments when brands are most likely to be re-evaluated – a realistic assessment of opportunities to change consumer behaviour.
- By integrating these steps, it is possible to understand what really drives behaviour – knowledge that can be harnessed into powerful marketing and business development strategies and tactics.
Enriching Other ACNielsen Information
DeltaQual has been explicitly designed to complement our proprietary brand health management system, ACNielsen | Winning Brands, as well as our Retail and Consumer Panel information. DeltaQual’s emphasis on providing new insights into purchase triggers and consumer decision rules further enhance ACNielsen quantitative data on promotional effectiveness, category trends and brand health issues.DeltaQual also provides key inputs for ACNielsen | Winning Brands Workshops.
Making it Work For You
DeltaQual goes beyond why one brand is preferred over another. It explains how consumers arrive at their preference, how entrenched their habits are and how much hope there is for other brands.
By using DeltaQual, you will have a better feeling for the scale of the task ahead and the degree of difficulty in bringing about change.
DeltaQual leans heavily on techniques drawn from anthropology, neuro-psychology and behavioural science to access hidden drivers of consumer behaviour. It works by defining the total range of opportunities to build brand re-evaluation, creating a ‘road map’ of decision making, which in turn identifies times when habits are most likely to be reconsidered or challenged.
With DeltaQual, it is possible to:
-
Improve marketing communications – Gain tactical advice you can use right away.
-
Develop positioning strategies – Understand which consumer touch points are most important, and why.
-
Engage with customers – Build a behaviour narrative of your target market.
-
Plan for the future – Increase your chance of success through situation and brand deconstruction, critical incident techniques, analogy collages, active challenge interrogation and surrogate shopping projective.
While Delta Moments are often fleeting and elusive, in some cases they may be more numerous and accessible than you realise. Finding just one Delta Moment to increase the likelihood of switching can bring major long-term financial benefits for your brand. |
Back to Top
|
