If you’re experiencing stretched marketing budgets and research cutbacks, you’re not alone. Julian Dailly explains how you need to build knowledge quickly and efficiently to make business critical decisions in the current climate.
Savanta Essentials is a practical range of cost effective, fast turnaround research solutions to solving key business issues
Savanta has been tracking small, medium and large businesses response to COVID-19 since the start of the first lockdown in March to understand the impact that it’s had on businesses. Whatever your industry sector, across the last six to eight months, the negative impact of COVID-19 on businesses, both large and small, remains high, with between 70% – 80% saying the impact on their business has been negative at any given time.
And unfortunately, if that wasn’t enough, Brexit is just around the corner. And it’s already impacting businesses negatively; nearly half (46%) of medium and large businesses already feel that Brexit is impacting their business negatively, and the same is true of just over one-quarter (28%) of small businesses.
COVID-19 (and Brexit for that matter) has and will continue to have a dramatic effect on consumer behaviour as lifestyles remain in a state of flux. As a result, business models are having to adapt ever more rapidly to the changing environments in which they operate.
A recent Savanta survey, in association with Next 15, highlighted that just 15% of brands say that their business models will remain the same over the next 12 months, with one in five saying that plans will change dramatically. These changes in business models are not just centered around ways of working, a key transformation is how brands take products to market, where 36% believe there will be significant changes. Ultimately, how businesses reach their customers has and will continue to be a major challenge for brands going forwards.
It’s these changes, in the way brands engage with consumers, that make the value of research even more important. Our recent Intelligence Capital™ report (launched alongside the Market Research Society (MRS) in May), revealed that 61% of insight professionals from client-side organisations believe that insight rarely feeds into strategy. In addition, only 14% think that data and insight results in action based on evidence. The stark results should be a major concern for brands.
Commissioning research is often overlooked as a means to help inform decision making, due to other budget priorities, but unfortunately this can be a false economy. To avoid losing out on a key opportunity to make better decisions, a change in mind-set is needed to ensure research is central to driving strategy. This has never been clearer than at the present time where an understanding of changing business models is urgently required.
Whether it’s to retain a number one status or survive in-market, brands have a constant need to innovate. And whether you’re a marketer, brand manager or insight professional, the need for quick answers to understand consumers’ emotional engagement with your brand’s products or services is vital. If you’re at the ideation or innovation stage, honing the perfect proposition, understanding consumer needs or a gap in the market, there is a need to be informed, quickly and with minimum expenditure, to facilitate the decision-making process. However, in the current climate, activities may not warrant (or more often budgets don’t allow for) a full in-depth evaluation.
Introducing Savanta Essentials:
During this disruptive climate, when the only certainty is uncertainty, how can brands use insight to be extra-agile without over committing time and money to individual insight projects? The answer: Savanta Essentials.
Savanta Essentials is a suite of tools we designed to provide a cost-effective approach to research. It provides a standardised offer, using pre-scripted questionnaires to ensure quick access to consumer panels delivering actionable findings, combined with benchmarked data, within as little as 24 hours. Tools include:
The key benefit of Savanta Essentials is that we do the legwork. We build a research toolkit that suits your needs, using quality data and methods, in no time, without breaking the bank.
For more information on how our Essentials range can help you please get in touch
To download our Essentials summary, click here
