Why do consumers need your product or service?
Why do consumers use your product or service?
What experience will your customers have when your product or service is consumed?
Can you answer these questions in a simple paragraph that anyone will understand?
Messaging centered around need, use, and experience
can be very challenging to define because consumers do not similarly react to the same set of messages that describe one product or service.
The value of Mind Genomics is that it statistically proves that when consumers are exposed to the same set of messages, some messages have positive appeal, others are not liked, and still others are neutral. And it identifies mind-set clusters. The fact that consumers cluster around messaging is extremely important to recognize.
In a nutshell, this is how Mind Genomics works.
A specific product or service challenge is identified.
Benefits and attributes are broken down into the needs, the reasons-to-believe, the value with which consumers resonate. Benefits and attributes are typically defined using easy-to-understand categories (Taste, Heritage, Health, Appearance, Eating Occasion, Description, Humane, Culture, Trust, Quality of Life, Sex Appeal, etc.). The list of potential categories is numerous. Mind Genomics requires six categories.
Each category must be defined with 6 easy-to-understand statements, called elements, that complete a thought. Think of your product and/or service - what 6 elements can be used to address need that anyone will understand?
This step is paramount - why do consumers need your product and/or service? What emotional void is filled that nothing else can provide? What value does your product and/or service really offer?Once 6 categories and 6 elements/category are created, a total of 36 elements are available to show to web-based respondents.
Elements are systematically shown to a client approved population of web-based respondents in the form of vignettes. A vignette is 3 - 4 elements from different categories that appear together. Vignettes are like a small advertisement or barebones concept - something you might see passing a store window. Something will jump out and grab one's attention.
Every respondent will see 48 unique vignettes (i.e. no two respondents will see the same vignette). Each element will appear in five vignettes. And in 18 vignettes, elements from one category are absent. Test design ensures that an individual element is statistically independent from the others.
All respondents rate their interest for each vignette using a question (e.g. How interested are you in this product?) that is tied to a hedonic scale (1 = not at all interested; 9 = very interested).
This step is at some level a torture test for the elements. Respondents are only modestly interested, which is important. Rather than focusing on minute details as in focus groups, showing elements to web-based respondents finds what really works in an adverse situation, where the elements compete with each other.Quantitative data is reported using Excel and Power Point.
Data show the positive, neutral, and negative appeal of individual messages. And the number of consumer clusters, or Mind Sets, that exist.
