Valient’s quantitative, qualitative and advanced analytics-based research methodologies are deployed to engage your target audiences, uncover unmet needs, determine drivers of behaviors and uncover actionable insights.
Quantitative Methodologies
Valient’s quantitative research methodologies incorporate sophisticated statistical modeling and multivariate analysis techniques that are designed to uncover powerful insights. These approaches help shape marketing, communications & advertising campaigns, further develop product & concepts for target markets and explore market sectors to determine barriers to entry, assess the current competitive landscape and determine optimal market positioning. Some of the quantitative methods we leverage include:
Brand Equity Assessment
Designed to optimize brand positioning and develop sustainable competitive advantages in the marketplace.
MarCom Assessment
Advanced techniques designed to understand the effectiveness of advertising & communication concept components including imagery, copy testing and key message evaluations.
Competitive Assessment
Provides your current competitive positions, those of your major & minor competitors and identifies methods to improve positioning and identifying barriers to entry and movement.
Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty & Winback
Delivers accurate key performance indicators (KPI) and longitudinal tracking regarding your relationships with current, past and future customers. Determination of key drivers of customer satisfaction and retention/loyalty is essential to enacting customer-centric relationship strategies and deploying innovative methods to winback lost or defector customers.
Market Strategy
Leveraging Valient’s complete assessment tool box including brand equity, marketing communications, price and competitive assessment, Valient’s highly skilled management consultants develop concise, data driven market strategies to elevate brands, increase sales and deepen relationships with existing customers.
Consumer Shopper Insights
Developing feedback systems from your current & prospective consumer customers is a major success factor for industry leading firms. Valient’s ability to provide geo-targeted and shopping event triggered data streams allows our clients to fine tune and alter merchandising, digital & mobile marketing & sales strategies to increase per shopping visit sales, maximize profit and grow market share.
Qualitative Methodologies
Valient utilizes a wide array of qualitative methods to engage your target audience, probe beyond the superficial, and uncover the emotions that motivate consumer and business decision maker thinking and ultimately action.
Focus Groups
Valient’s extensive network of over 60 U.S. metropolitan area focus group facilities and over 100 international focus group locations, we can provide full-service moderator’s guide development, focus group moderation, participant recruitment, incentivization and hosting services to make any qualitative project a success. Valient is a member of the FocusVision international focus group facility network that provide live broadband streaming of focus group sessions directly to your laptop or mobile device.
Online Focus Groups
Valient’s online focus group capabilities leverage the industry’s best online focus group hosting platform for small & large focus groups, in-depth interviews and large community forums. This flexible, cost-effective offering can provide you with qualitative insights from hard-to-reach business decision makers, consumers located in markets not served by central location focus group facilities and large geographic areas. Valient provide full-service moderation guide development, focus group moderation, transcription, participant recruitment, incentivization and comprehensive reporting services. Live respondent webcam simulcasting is also available on this platform. Graphic & audio stimuli are easily uploaded into this platform for all project requirements.
Online Bulletin Boards
Valient’s online bulletin board capabilities leverage the same platform as our online focus group hosting platform and provide an excellent forum for extended response bulletin board projects. Graphic and audio stimuli are easy to test using this method.
Advanced Analytics
Valient’s extensive analytic toolbox is continually updated to leverage the thinking of leading academics, social media experts and statistical software developers. Among the many advanced analytics methods we leverage include:
Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling & Analysis
Used for the creation of realistic buyer behavior and decision making models, Hierarchical Bayesian techniques are also used to produce highly accurate models for sales & marketing return-on-investment, campaign effectiveness and other complex market-based issues.
Latent Class Analysis (LCA)
Identifies unobservable sub-groups within a given population. These models are used to better understand the impact of exposure to patterns of multiple risks – as well as the antecedents and consequences of complex behaviors – so that new strategies can be implemented to specifically target these sub-groups.
Conjoint & Discrete Choice Modeling
A discrete choice model is one in which survey respondents choose among a set of alternatives. These models can include binary response or ordered response models. To ?t within a discrete choice framework, the set of alternatives – the choice set – needs to exhibit three characteristics: Alternatives need to be mutually exclusive, alternatives must be exhaustive and the number of alternatives must be finite.
Maximum Difference (MaxDiff) Scaling
An excellent approach for obtaining preference and importance scores for multiple items including brand preferences, brand images/logos, product features & attributes and advertising claims. Respondents are shown a set of the possible items in the MaxDiff exercise and are asked to indicate the best and worst items from each subset. Survey respondents typically complete a dozen or more such sets where each set contains a different subset of items. The combinations of items are designed with the goal that each item is shown an equal number of times and pairs of items are shown an equal number of times. Typically, each respondent sees each item two or more times across the MaxDiff sets. These MaxDiff exercises focus on estimating preference or importance scores for typically between 15 to 40 items though hundreds of items could be accommodated in more advanced applications.
TURF Analysis
The acronym TURF stands for “Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency.” TURF is an optimization approach for finding a subset of items that “reach” the maximum number of respondents possible. It is frequently used to determine the quantity and mix of products needed to meet customer demand within a given market.
Laddering
This qualitative approach is used to identify and understand the underlying needs and motivations of target groups with regard to their purchase and choice behaviors. Laddering is based upon a deep understanding of individual personal values and is used to determine the importance of these values and how it impacts individual decisions regarding brand, product or service purchase choice. Within this methodological framework, individual personal values that are most dominant in driving behavior for a given decision are identified. These driving values help identify the most important rational and emotional benefits to consumer and business decision making audiences. In turn, these benefits help to focus attention on the most important tangible aspects of the decision. This approach is based on the means-end theory that suggests that key values are an end. Key attributes of selecting a brand, product or service choice constitute the means that lead to functional and psychological benefits which ultimately foster (or impede) deeply held personal values. By positioning a brand in a way that triggers these important pathways of thought or perceptual orientations and by communicating to audiences in a way that triggers these important personal values, advertising can better influence audience perceptions.
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