Market Structure and Landscape Studies

There are diminishing performance differences between products, and shortened time to market by competitors and fast moving consumer trends often quickly negate any significant advantage. Where differences exist, they are likely to have been built on an ethereal basis, around branding, image, and associated equity, appealing to understated needs and emotions.

A thorough and current view of the total market through strategic market structure and landscape research--the underlying attitudes, needs, emotions, and beliefs that ultimately define consumer behavior--provides an increasingly important roadmap for strategic development, innovation, and brand planning, and can aid marketers to maximize product and brand differentiation and refine consumer targeting.

To some extent, these issues have traditionally been addressed via attitude and usage and segmentation studies. However, a more detailed and holistic understanding is required to maximize the value of this type of research; an approach that encompasses not only attitudes, needs, key drivers, triggers, barriers, brand image/equity, and current buying behaviors, but also the consumer perception of the brand landscape. These factors all contribute to the level of consumer involvement, which underpins loyalty, brand, and channel decision-making as well as the desire for and acceptance of new products.

Our unique approach to market structure and landscape research employs state-of-the-art proprietary components combined with deep experience and practical knowledge to mine the consumer perception of the landscape, resulting in unified and actionable strategic research. Such studies are necessarily extensive, requiring a minimum sample size of about 600 interviews, which often range between 75 and 90 minutes in length. They commence with a similarity sort (the basis of the landscaping exercise) of current products in the category and potentially allied categories to determine how the market is perceived through the consumer's eyes. The task involves each consumer sorting up to 150 SKUs or products--usually in the form of pack photographs--into groups based on their similarities or dissimilarities. This often results in a different taxonomy than accepted trade classifications. Via the use of proprietary multi-dimensional scaling, structure maps are generated to show the perceptual brand landscape and how and why the SKUs cluster together (based on usage, occasion, ingredient, pack type, form, brand, etc., often in combination).

In addition to providing a baseline profile of the current market, the landscape map is also a powerful source from which to identify and profile the white space within the structure. White space is perceptual space where few or no products exist and yet, through the determination of customer attitudes, needs, and beliefs facilitated by the research, where there is potential opportunity to either reposition an existing brand or to explore and develop new product ideas. White space evaluation is enhanced via a task involving the positioning of new product ideas, typically ten or twenty, into the perceptual landscape. This determines the extent to which the new ideas occupy the discovered white space (versus gravitate toward existing clusters) or define new space. Additionally, via the use of purchase interest measures and proprietary adaptations of TURF and Shapley Value analysis, the optimal combination and reach of the new ideas can be determined.

Once the perceptual structure of the market is established, a considerable number of analytic opportunities are afforded via the application of advanced multivariate analyses:

• Establishing the consumer perceived organizational structure of the market against the trade classification
• Determining the specific consumer need states relative to available choices
• Identifying the barriers and triggers (emotional and functional) to interest in and usage of the various product categories and brands
• Providing a detailed understanding of current consumer attitudes and needs within a defined market and how they condition behavior
• Defining product use and how product/brand selection and purchase relate to occasion, setting, mood, etc.
• Developing an attitudinal and need state segmentation underpinned by behavior and profile data
• Assessing brand/product imagery and performance within the established market dynamics
• Identifying, profiling, and sizing white space opportunities
• Examining where new product ideas might play in the market structure
• Providing the basis for innovation strategy

Except in fast-changing markets with new brand entries or a changing consumer base, market structure and landscape studies generally have a lifespan of at least three years. Several brands within a company's portfolio can share in the investment and learnings to maximize the value of the resulting strategic roadmap.