Consumer Immersion: Qualitatively Exploring Consumer Expectations

Being completely dependent on demographic profiling is a passé. In today’s individualistic society, an "17–23-year-old single, Indian male" are wooed by the products and marketing communications that satisfactorily address the needs of his cohort's lowest common denominator. This would apply to every age, gender, geographic subgroup, marital status, and race, throughout the world. The underlying reason: more personalization, involvement, attention, and appreciation. And the key driver is technology. Thus arises the need for connecting with the consumers at a more personal level, and would be better than through the means of consumer immersion. The by-product of such an exercise would be able to build trust since, in a society divided by technology, the connection is perceived as an emotional driver.

In the view of the above, it’s important to note that consumer immersion enables marketers and other relevant stakeholders to fathom the consumers’ needs, lifestyles, their perceived relationships or connections with the product or service. Albeit it is relied upon along with other qualitative research methods, consumer immersions facilitate the generation of crucial insights so that the right strategy could be formulated. So in a world which is engulfed with a growing sense of invisibility, individualistic consumers today feel the need to be in control, even though they would never call this out loud while a qualitative research tool is being applied.

It is pertinent to cite an example of one such consumer immersion where an indirect result was the sense of control and the direct outcome was that several flaws were avoided before a particular product was rolled out.

Car maker Volvo claims its cars are "designed around you"’. Andreas Strasser, head of research and automotive strategy at Volvo, says "that means understanding [the consumers’] needs, even if they can’t articulate them properly – that’s key to us delivering a product that is more than competitive". Once the company identifies an opportunity for a new car, Strasser’s team and the product definition team start to define it and understand what customers would want from it. This involves extensive desk research followed by extensive qualitative research.

The exploratory research includes consumer immersion. Those involved in the project, including engineers, visit customers around the world in their homes – to look at their lives, talk about their relationship with their car and drive around with them. The customer interviews are led by local moderators. The team learns a great deal using this approach. On one project they flagged and avoided several design errors that Strasser says would almost definitely have been made if they had relied on other data. "Certain preconceptions of what was important to consumers were harboured by us, which were ultimately invalidated … If we hadn’t understood the aforesaid … we wouldn’t have noticed until the first customer clinic, after 18 months we still would have been making and delivering the wrong car."

Qualitative research has resulted in findings that consumers tend to purchase cars they emotionally relate to—ones that represent their lifestyle and personality. Thereafter they seek out data to substantiate their decisions. Various aspects of a car are certainly important but not to drive a purchase decision, rather, it validates the aspect which was instrumental in choosing the car. In view of the above, many consumers, particularly young adults, enjoy being part of the process of creating the products they’ll own. They prefer possessing something that’s one-of-a-kind to their needs - and their tastes. Communicating who you are through what you own has been found to be a shorthand way to connect with others. So, consumer immersions also aid in a deeper relationship with the brands that have facilitated the experience. The very investment of imagination and time results in a connection to the brand at an emotional level.

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