ONLINE SURVEYS: UNEARTHING CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE IN THE FOOD AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRY
In the world of food and beverage industry marketing, knowing what tantalizes your consumer’s taste buds, what your consumer craves, and exactly how they’d like to be wined and dined is a gold mine of consumer intelligence that will arm you with powerful actionable insights to woo and win over your target consumer. The question is, how do you acquire this wealth of consumer intelligence in the ever-changing food and beverage landscape?
Among the plethora of market research methods including Focus Groups, In-depth Interviews (IDI), Ethnography, Market Research Online Communities (MROC), Creative Testing, Online Discussions, Shop Alongs, and Home Use Tests (HUT) – Surveys are the quickest, scalable and most efficient method to get to the bottom of the seemingly endless pit of consumer intelligence in the food and beverage industry. Surveys, disseminated to a predefined group of respondents involving anywhere from 100 to 5,000 research participants, enable a comprehensive collection of data and a streamlined analysis of data sets on any given topic.
Among the four main survey data collection methods: Face-to-face Surveys, Telephone Surveys, On-ground Surveys, and Online Surveys, the latter secures the top spot as the most efficient and cost-effective method of data collection, making it an excellent market research method in unearthing consumer intelligence in the mammoth and multifarious food and beverage industry.
WHAT IS AN ONLINE SURVEY?
A market research Online Survey is essentially a list of questions disseminated online, either in the form of open-ended or multiple-choice questions, that directly ask your target demographic about their perspectives, likes and dislikes relating to your business’ product, service or industry. These questions are curated to derive key consumer intelligence, so that you can develop a business model and marketing campaign that ticks all your consumer’s boxes.
What’s more, considering global internet penetration is on the rise, with the World Bank reporting a steep incline of internet users from 3.18 billion in 2015 to a whopping 4.8 billion users in 2020, what remains starkly evident is that the phenomenon of globalization is transforming our world into a global village, allowing worldwide communication at lightning speed. This means Online Surveys, as opposed to On Ground Surveys, are not only more economical, convenient, and far-reaching but quicker than ever before in delivering insight-based research findings and are dominating the survey data collection market across industries.
Leveraging Online Surveys to probe the ‘why’ of consumer behavior and preferences specifically in the food and beverage industry will give you more bang for your buck considering Online Surveys will provide a quantitative and statistical representation of consumer tastes in an industry characterized by an abundance of diversity: a myriad of cultures, cuisines, ingredients, and flavors. Through online surveys you’ll be able to gather consumer insights in quick time, providing you with the wherewithal to inspire your target consumers’ appetite for your business offerings.
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF ONLINE SURVEYS
(Evans & Mathur, The Value of Online Surveys, 2005)
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: INTUITIVE ONLINE SURVEY DESIGN
In crafting your Online Survey to garner consumer insights into the food and beverage industry, we employ intuitive design principles to optimize your Online Survey response and completion rate. Considering the average human attention span has reduced from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2022, designing Online Surveys that take under 5 minutes with easy to understand questions, prioritizing a responsive design for mobile-friendly submissions, and incorporating aesthetically pleasing visuals in the Online Survey will heighten its chances of securing a higher rate of response and completion.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF SURVEYS
We take on a strategic approach in crafting and curating survey questions based on the class of insights you’re looking to unearth. The following are different types of surveys that’ll take you to diverse destinations along the consumer journey to help you understand the layers of nuance associated with selling, branding, packaging and marketing your goods / services:
- Customer Experience Surveys: Provides valuable insight into customer motivation, answering the question: What fuels a customer’s travel along the purchasing journey to move from interest in a product / service to the actual purchase?
- Product Surveys: Reveals consumer impressions of products pre-launch, allowing you to perfect your product by the time it goes to market.
- Brand Surveys: As the name suggests, these surveys will help you understand what your consumers’ perceptions are of your brand, shedding light on the strength of your brand identity, brand awareness and brand recall.
You can leverage any of these types of Online Surveys to gain deeper insights into your target demographic within the food and beverage industry to keep up with changing consumer trends and stay ahead of the competition. Get in touch and we’ll take care of all your Online Survey market research needs.