Why did you Buy that Brand Rather than any Other One?

What a valuable piece of information!  It not only helps define the segments of purchase motivation, but think about how valuable this type of data is to the product developers within the company, especially when their brand is not the purchased brand.

Ask any brand manager why consumers purchase his/her brand, and you will get a book of reasons why, by chapter and verse.  However, ask them why their brand is not the one of choice and you will usually get a one-word response.  Now, I ask you, which do you think is most important to know:  why your brand is purchased or why it is not?

Of all consumer research data, this is probably one of the easiest and cheapest to collect.  But there is one real problem in this type of information.  Rather than me pointing out what I think it is, you think it through yourself.  But let me help by asking a couple of questions.

What brand of aspirin, if any, do you currently have in your home?
Why, when it was purchased, was that brand selected rather than any of the other brands available at that time?

What do you mean that you don't remember?  surely you must know why you purchased it and why you didn't purchase each of the other brands that were available.  I don't understand?  We always ask people why they did specific things -- days, weeks and months after the event.  Do you really think there is a time and a place best suited to these types of questions?  Why, just why, do you think we should have asked about the aspirin purchase at the time of the actual purchase?  Do you really think the reliability and validity of the data are affected by time?

That was risky of me to ask about your reason for purchase.  Maybe I should have asked how confident you would be of the validity of your neighbor's response to the question.

How often do we ask questions out of context?  Questions like these are so easy to ask at the time of purchase that I wonder why some people continue to collect data from a questionable source or should I say, at a questionable time and place?

There are many of us who think that for reliable and valid data, we should always think in terms of "Assessment in Context."
 

An apology to Sorensen Associates and the readers of the Views.  for the past three years I have been positioning Sorensen Associates as the In-Store Research experts.  Recently I came to the realization that this is only a half truth or should I say mis-leading.

    Yes, they are the In-Store Research experts.
    Yes, they have protocols for assessing purchase motivation, package appearance and communication, pricing, shelf positioning, etc.

But I have been ignoring a very important part of in-store research and that is sampling.  A majority of Sorensen Associates' work deals with the placement of home-use tests and sensory testing.  They do their recruiting in the stores among randomly selected shoppers.  Why is in-store important in these tests?  It is not the stores, it is only the fact that this is where you can easily meet and recruit large numbers of unbiased consumers.  I missed this critical advantage because I was so focused on the need for "Assessment in Context."  Think of the benefits of this type of a sample.  They are pure panelists.   They are not experienced testers.  They are not panel testers.  They are not professional testers.