Research Glossaries

Online Communities is the method of grouping consumers or businesses online whilst they carry out market research activities. Clients can then access each community, showing different perceptions, insights, and feelings throughout a short or long period.

In-depth interviews are an excellent way to probe people’s deepest thoughts, feelings, and emotions. They provide brands deep insights to help optimise their messaging, come up with new product ideas or service extensions and understand their barriers to behaviour and behaviour change. The key advantage of an online in-depth is that only the people involved are the interviewer and the interviewee. In this environment, the interviewee is a lot less likely to feel any pressure to conform to group opinion, all the answers they give are not influenced by opinions.

A Customer Panel, also known as a Consumer Panel is a group of individuals volunteering and selected to provide input on products and services for research purposes. Consumer panels are a useful technique to gather customer feedback, test hypotheses, trial new products and services, discover customer behaviours and gain insights.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measurement looking into the customer experience of a brand and predict business growth. The metric is proven and widely known for transforming the business world and provides brands with the core measurement for customer experience management programs the world around.

Brand Essence is the core values which distinguish a brand. These values will be consistent over time, whereas the execution characteristics of material pieces like the packaging, marketing or the advertising of the product or service can change. By clarifying and setting up a brand essence, it allows the owner of the brand to have a model which all marketing and NPD (New Product Development) will be able to follow and cohesive with the brand’s image.

The ICO is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals. The ICO is in part responsible for GDPR (General Data Protection Legislation). We live in a data-driven world and GDPR is here for the benefit of everyone in regards to accessing and influencing how companies use your data. This includes advice on nuisance calls, your rights to get copies of your data and have them changes and deleted etc). For further information about your personal data rights at the ICO or at ITPro.

Ad Hoc Market Research Surveys report on a specific marketing purpose or areas of enquiries by collecting data at one point in time from one sample. Ad Hoc Market Research Surveys are a one-off, arranged on an as-and-when basis to address a research need that the company need. Where responses and attitudes require tracking over an extended period, continuous market research surveys are more apt.

We are proud that we have become a part of Laria (Local Area Research & Intelligence Association) and the Social Services Research Group.

The Social Research Association is the leading voice for social research. They are a UK professional membership body;  led by social researchers, for social researchers. Promoting high-quality standards of social research, seeking to represent, support, connect and inform our members and the wider social research community. The quarterly magazine is called ‘Research Matters’.

Brands are constantly changing in both the way they are being portrayed and the way it’s perceived by consumers. Brand Tracking is the best way to continuously measuring brand equity and the health of a brand.

Competitor analysis is a vital part of the strategic planning process.

Whether you’re a start-up, SME or large company, only good can come from analysing your competitors.

Eye-tracking research is a qualitative/ethnographic discipline within market research. It can be used in many situations to gain a deeper insight into customers and how they interact with communication, brands and packaging. It is highly accurate and goes beyond verbal responses and doesn’t rely on what people tell us.