Unlocking market insights: the power of consumer surveys
The power of understanding your customers and enhancing your business strategy with data-driven consumer insights.
Consumer survey and market research
By understanding customers’ needs and desires, fashion companies can better develop their products, services, and marketing strategies to meet those expectations. But how can they gather these valuable insights? Through consumer surveys.
A consumer survey is a quantitative or qualitative research method used to gather data about customer preferences, opinions, and experiences. Questions are tailored to produce meaningful information so that companies can make informed decisions that lead to better customer service and product design. In particular, a consumer behavior survey focuses on understanding the buying habits, purchasing patterns, and motivations of customers. This type of research can be especially useful for understanding why customers choose certain products over others.
A consumer survey typically includes questions that assess the customer's satisfaction with a specific product or service or gauge their opinion on the overall brand experience. They also allow businesses to gain an understanding of what customers expect from them in terms of quality, price, and customer service.
In addition to surveys, market research is a valuable tool for fashion companies to gain insight into their customer base. Market research includes collecting data about competitors’ offerings as well as customer preferences and behaviors. Additionally, it can reveal trends in consumer behavior over time which can be useful to inform future decisions and strategies. Companies can rely on a variety of research methods to conduct surveys and market research.
How to conduct a consumer survey
Conducting a consumer survey requires a well-thought-out plan.
First, the company should define the objectives of the survey. What kind of information do you want to collect? For what purpose?
Then, it should determine the target audience it wants to reach. Will a specific demographic be more likely to respond? What type of question will elicit the best answers? How can you ensure respondents feel comfortable answering questions honestly?
Once these questions have been answered, the company should decide on which mediums to use for the survey. Email, text messages, social media, phone calls? It is important to consider how customers prefer to be contacted.
Finally, companies will need to analyse the results, and organize the data in a way that is useful to improve product design, customer service, and overall brand experience.
Tips for a great customer survey:
- Keep it simple and straightforward: Customers should be able to understand the questions quickly and provide honest answers without feeling overwhelmed.
- Use clear language: Questions should be concise and easy to understand, avoiding industry jargon or complex terms that may confuse the customer.
- Be respectful of customers’ time: Don’t ask too many questions, especially if they don’t relate directly to what you need to know about preferences and experiences with your company.
- Give customers an incentive to participate: This could include discounts, giveaways, or even just a thank-you for completing the survey.
- Make sure data remains anonymous and secure: Customers should feel confident that their responses will remain confidential.
How to get customers to respond to your customer survey
The real key to a successful customer survey lies in getting customers to answer the questions. Consider that medium-length general client satisfaction surveys have a low response rate, less than 10%, which can reach 15%-30% in case the company offers an inviting incentive.
Incentives are one of the elements that can encourage consumers to respond, along with the relevance of the survey. But there is another element to consider: the medium you choose.
Answering the survey should not require too much effort from the consumer, so you have to choose carefully the medium which better suits the habits of the target audience. For example, a younger target audience may prefer a system based on push notifications and apps on smartphones. Older generations may prefer e-mail or even a phone call. Whatever the medium, the important thing is that it is fast, convenient, and easy to use.
One tool, many tasks
Is there a medium that is adaptable to different target audiences, easy to use, which can incentivise responses, and at the same time is also economical for the company? Yes, it’s Certilogo's connected products.
Certilogo offers solutions to turn garments into connected products, endowing them with a digital ID that enables them to be tracked, authenticated, monitored and provide access to information and services. This enables brands to collect valuable customer data on the purchase patterns and behavior of users in real-time, and engage with the consumer to drive them to the brand's social media channels, promote special offers, and even deliver customer surveys.
By leveraging Certilogo’s Platform, businesses can gain insights into customers’ preferences and experiences with their products as well as identify any potential issues or areas for improvement. Thanks to this data, fashion companies can stay ahead of trends in the industry and provide superior customer service. Ultimately, it helps them develop stronger relationships with their customers by understanding their needs and desires.
