Research solutions for business growth

Segmentation divides a market or a customer base into groups of consumers who are similar in their needs, behaviour, motivation or value to the business. Unlike a classification by gender, age or income, segmentation is built on finding the factors that genuinely explain differences in purchasing behaviour and determine how an audience reacts to the product, the price, the communication or the service.

CustDev (Customer Development) is used in product work to understand users' real experience, their needs, decision-making motives and choice factors. The method is based on in-depth interviews and examines not declared preferences but a person's actual behaviour, their experience with existing solutions and the context in which the need arises.

JTBD (Jobs To Be Done) reveals what tasks a consumer faces in a specific life situation, which solutions can help and how they want to solve them. People do not buy products as such - they “hire” them to achieve a particular outcome. The object of the research is therefore neither the consumer nor the product, but the job the consumer needs to get done.

The dilemma method helps study deep attitudes and behavioural patterns in situations of uncertainty. It works when you need to understand how a person acts in a conflict of interests: between price and quality, habit and innovation, ethics and convenience. The respondent is offered a hypothetical contested situation with no right answer. Their choice and its justification reveal their true values and decision-making logic. The main advantage is that socially desirable answers are minimised.

BHT (Brand Health Tracking) monitors brand health, tracking how key brand indicators change over time and detecting shifts in consumer perception early. It typically measures a set of awareness, appeal and salience indicators for both the brand and its advertising: prompted awareness, intention to use or reject, brand and advertising appeal, brand image and the brand funnel.

Creative testing is a set of research techniques for evaluating the effectiveness of advertising materials before launch or during a campaign. Its main purpose is to determine how well the communication achieves its marketing goals: whether it attracts attention, is interpreted correctly by the target audience, builds the intended brand perception and prompts the desired consumer behaviour.

A data visualisation method based on correspondence analysis. It shows which objects, brands, attributes or consumer segments are statistically related and which, conversely, differ substantially. The result is a map on which the distance between objects reflects their statistical proximity: the closer the points, the stronger the relationship between them.

The method compares how brands are perceived as images and assesses how far the actual perception of a brand matches its target positioning and how well the brand has differentiated itself from competitors in consumers' minds. It is based on Charles Osgood's psychometric semantic differential. The brand is rated on a series of bipolar scales made up of pairs of opposite attributes, for example “modern - outdated”, “reliable - unreliable”, “premium - mass market”. This measures not rational assessments but the structure of perception and the emotional image of the object in consumers' minds.

The Kano model shows how individual product features affect willingness to buy. It rests on the idea that the link between product quality and customer satisfaction is non-linear: not all features are equally valuable to the consumer. Some are mandatory and taken for granted, others have a moderate effect on appeal, others still can create a “pleasant surprise” effect and build competitive advantage, while a fourth group can actively put people off.

MVP (Minimum Viable Product) testing evaluates the minimum viable version of a product in order to validate the key product hypotheses before full-scale development begins. Unlike an evaluation of a finished product, MVP research aims to confirm that the proposed solution really does solve a meaningful user problem, holds value for the target audience and has the potential to be developed further.

PSM (Price Sensitivity Meter) is a method for researching consumer price sensitivity developed by the Dutch economist Peter Van Westendorp. It determines the price range consumers perceive as acceptable and reveals the psychological thresholds at which a price starts to feel too low (raising doubts about quality) or too high (reducing willingness to buy).

TURF analysis is an analytical method that determines which combination of products delivers the maximum reach of the target audience with the smallest number of options. It is widely used to optimise product lines.

NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a metric that measures brand loyalty. The method is based on the customer's willingness to recommend the company on a scale from 0 to 10. Consumers fall into 3 categories: detractors (scores 0 to 6), passives (scores 7-8) and promoters (scores 9-10). The loyalty level is the difference between the share of promoters and the share of detractors.

CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) measures satisfaction with a product. The customer rates how much they liked the product on a scale from 1 to 5; a 7- or 10-point scale is sometimes used. The final figure is calculated either as an average score or as the share of satisfied customers, depending on the measurement system chosen.

CJM (Customer Journey Map) is a customer experience research method that reconstructs the full path of a user's interaction with a company, product or service. Unlike a description of internal business processes, a CJM reflects the sequence of the customer's actions, their goals, expectations, emotions and decisions at every stage of the interaction. The method lets you look at the product through the user's eyes and identify why a customer decides to continue the interaction or to abandon it.

UI research (User Interface) evaluates the quality of a digital product's user interface. Unlike UX research, which analyses the user experience as a whole, UI research focuses on the effectiveness of individual interface elements: navigation, screen structure, visual hierarchy, legibility, the placement of controls and the quality of visual communication. Its main purpose is to determine how well the interface helps the user complete target actions quickly and without errors.

The Likert scale measures consumer attitudes, opinions and dispositions that cannot be measured directly. The method is a set of statements, each reflecting a different aspect of the subject under study. The respondent rates their degree of agreement with each one on a scale (for example, from 1 to 5). The resulting composite figure is treated as a quantitative measure of the characteristic being studied - satisfaction, trust, engagement, attitude to the brand, product innovativeness or any other latent variable.

Cognitive testing is a method that checks how customers understand text-based creative: slogans, the value proposition, advertising messages and names. A product named “multivert”, for example, may be understood as a device with several speeds rather than one that can turn, drill, saw and mix. Some terms may not be fully clear, or customers may read their own meanings into them, and that can be the reason behind poor sales. We test not only individual wordings but also how the concept is perceived as a whole.