Is this the best way to discover the needs of your customers?..

Market research methods – qualitative techniques

Is this the best way to discover the needs of your customers?..

Our agency has made qualitative market research techniques (individual interviews, focus groups, observations, ethnography, and so on) its spearhead. Our 7-phase methodology is firmly based on qualitative methods, which are included in 90% of the projects we carry out.

We are the last market research firm in Belgium and France to transcribe and manually code qualitative interviews, ensuring an objective, factual and precise analysis. Our methods are rooted in the scientific rigour of our founder, who holds a PhD in marketing and specialises in qualitative techniques.

Contact us to find out more about our qualitative market research

Understanding customer needs through qualitative methods

80% of products launched by SMEs die within the first 12 months while only 20% of products launched by large companies fail over the same period. Where does this paradox come from?

The failure of the majority of new products launched by SMEs is the result of a combination of two factors:

  1. the absence of a structured marketing procedure to assess the potential of innovation
  2. the difficulty of determining the needs of potential customers

Neuroscientists agree that 95% of customers needs are unsconscious and cannot be expressed.

These needs, which cannot be consciously expressed, represent an unsuspected potential for the development of new products and services. They also provide a sustainable competitive advantage for the companies that exploit them. Qualitative techniques make it possible to bring them to light.

2 women opening a box with quastion marks and light bulbs

Our qualitative market research solutions

IntoTheMinds uses effective qualitative research methods to access your clients’ latent needs:

  • Face-to-face interviews and interpretation of metaphors expressed by clients
  • Confirmation of arguments through field observations (ethnographic technique)
  • Semantic analysis of clients’ speech (by telephone, on the Internet, during qualitative interviews)
  • Focus groups to confirm insights detected upstream

We provide our clients with qualitative research methods similar to those of large groups that reveal client needs. Our pragmatic approach makes it possible to offer simple decoding, accessible to all, accompanied by concrete proposals for actions to be implemented. Throughout the analysis, we take into account your competitive situation to allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition and increase your profits.

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Project examples

Guapa logoGuapa is a specialised Belgian SME (20 points of sale in Belgium) skilled in fresh fruit juices (smoothies). Before our intervention, the company focused its marketing strategy on the nutritional aspects of its products. The analysis of the unconscious needs of clients revealed that nutritional characters were secondary in the minds of consumers and that other factors of choice, more important in the client’s mind, were not yet exploited.

Smets logoAs part of a project for the company Smets‘ (active in the retail sector in Luxembourg and Belgium), we applied a qualitative technique (non-participative observations) to optimise the sales of a flagship store of 3000m².

This study was carried out in 2 stages:

  1. observation of customer flows within the store (see illustration below)
  2. view of interactions between sales staff and customers

The data collected in this way allowed us to:

  1. Identify points blocking the flow of customers within the point of sale, optimise the store layout and facilitate the movement of customers throughout all departments of the store. A post-change measurement was performed that confirmed the effectiveness of the changes made and the relevance of the recommendations issued accurately
  2. correlate interactions with sales staff and purchasing actions.
flows depicting customers' journeys in a store

Flows within the store were tracked through non-participatory observation (qualitative market research technique)