Q: We just found from an omnibus survey we subscribed to that close to 40 percent of the market for our product category is made up of non-users. Sorry that we can’t tell you the product category. Anyway, we want to be the first to enter this non-user segment.
We plan to do a qualitative research to find out what will motivate non-users to become users. We requested our research agency to do an IDI (In-Depth Interview) and to focus on what will make non-users of our product to start using it. It was obvious to us that our IDI respondents should be non-users because they’re our target market.
Our brand manager in charge of this project told us that in your Applied Marketing Research seminar you dropped a comment saying that the target market consumers are not always the target respondent of your research especially for a new product test. She could not explain why you said this because she recalls that you said it in passing. May we please know who our IDI should interview to find out what would be the motivator for using a product among non-users?
A: We’re not sure if your brand manager heard this comment of ours during our Applied Marketing Research (AMR) seminar. This is the sort of issue that the AMR seminar explains as fully as possible because it’s an important question. It’s more likely that she heard it during one of our maybe PMA conference talks.
Anyway, here’s our MRx for this request and its underlying diagnosis. The key consideration is not who the target consumer is. Rather, you should ask yourself: “From whom can you learn the most about the usage motivator?”
You have two candidate IDI respondents here: the category non-user and the category user. Now ask your qualifying test question of each candidate.
If your IDI interviews the non-user, is it from this respondent that you can learn the most about usage motivation? It is clear that being a non-user, this respondent is not a good source of the usage motivator. How can she? She hasn’t used the product. It’s the usage experience that will allow her to know about usage motivation. So being the target consumer does not qualify her for the best respondent position.
Now, that leaves the category user as the likely better IDI respondent. Before you judge her as “the better respondent,” ask your qualifying test question: “Is the category user the IDI respondent from whom you can learn most about usage motivator?” Because a category user has had the usage experience, she obviously would or should know. We prefer the word “should” because between a user who’s been one since a long, long time ago and a fairly recent user, who do you think would have the more “accurate” memory of what drove or motivated her to shift from a category non-user to a user?
This is almost a giveaway quiz question. Of course, the respondent with the more accurate memory is the preferred IDI respondent and that’s the fairly recent category user who just as recently left the non-user status. She’s the consumer from whom you can learn the most about usage motivation.
Here’s a case example to drive home the central point in the argument. Just about six months ago, we had a client who’s into the pawnshop business since it started. However, he heard that the leading pawnshop has been very revenue productive by extending its business into domestic remittance. So he decided that his pawnshops would extend to domestic remittance too. But he wanted to test first the idea with his pawnshop customers who he’s targeting for the remittance service.
In the meeting on this plan, we asked: “Who among your database of customers do you want tested?” At first, he said: “Just get a random sample from my database and do the test with them.”
We directed the discussion to the issue of from which customers will he learn the most about also becoming his remittance customers? Pawnshop customers who are not yet into remittance or those who are already into remittance? His initial choice was those pawnshop customers of his who are not yet into remittance. He said that those already into remittance are probably remitting via his competitors or through the leading pawnshop who’s already profiting from domestic remittance.
Then we went into the diagnosis of the choice as in the above. His final choice? “OK, interview my pawnshop customers who have recently gotten into remittance even with my pawnshop competitors. In fact, there’s more to learn from those doing their domestic remittance via my pawnshop competitors because I will learn the motivation that’s directly pertinent to my parent business and if there’s any area of dissatisfaction there, then that’s where I can position my remittance service’s market entry.”
Keep your questions coming. Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or drnedmarketingrx@gmail.com. God bless!