As we begin to navigate the New Normal, consumer behavior is evolving at an accelerated pace. Are brands in a position to keep up? The key to keeping the pulse of the market is real-time insights platforms.
If the events of recent times have shown us anything, it’s that everything we know can change in a matter of days. Moreover, those seismic shifts can challenge many things that we’ve previously taken for granted–from the way we live our day-to-day lives, to the ways we decide to structure our futures.
Living through the pandemic has brought us into a new age—where convenience is key, and the ability to adapt is crucial. And more than ever, consumers are making decisions that are based around adapting to those changes, and ensuring that the futures they are building are adapting with them.
A New Reality With New Needs
For consumers, the changes that have been created as a result of the pandemic have touched their lives at all levels. From the way they interact and communicate with friends, to using new and ingenious ways of simplifying tasks that we had never before imagined doing from a distance. These global shifts have also led consumers to interact with commerce in a whole new way.
As consumers’ behavior and attitudes are changing, brands are now being challenged with new ways to keep up with those changes as well. And while the need for those insights keeps accelerating, budgets are not increasing at the same rate.
Meeting Consumer Needs in a Changing Marketplace
Market research now requires new levels of ingenuity. Where businesses were once able to rely solely on annual studies to understand trends and consumer behavior, they now need an approach that is much more agile. In short, those insights need to become more frequent, accessible, and real-time.
Fortunately, real-time insights platforms are becoming a widely recognized tool to assist companies in courting these changes, while giving them deeper insight into how to best adapt to consumer needs. ESOMAR in its latest annual report has shown that the demand for these platforms has seen an increase of 30% in a single year.
So what does that mean for brands? There is more of a need than ever to start adopting these platforms, and businesses are sitting at the precipice of a great opportunity to meet consumer needs as they need them.
Advantages of Real-Time Market Insights
With survey platforms that offer real-time consumer insights, some distinct advantages allow businesses to incorporate customer voices at a deeper level of the organization’s decision-making process.
- Increased efficiency: Using a survey platform gives businesses more freedom to focus on the studies themselves, rather than time spent on administrative concerns. Mitigating the need for an administrative intermediary to handle fees, processes, and more, businesses have much more flexibility and control over how they manage their research projects. This gives them the distinct advantage of launching more surveys at the moment they need to.
- Rapid results: Survey platforms make it possible for research teams to get responses from consumers in real-time. There is no need to wait for days or weeks to make a decision. With insights coming back in a matter of hours, brands can get answers when they need them most, putting them in a prime position for up-to-the-minute decision-making.
- Optimized agility: Survey platforms create the added advantage of increasing the cadence of research. This is huge for research teams who are working through sprints. Instead of testing everything at the end, when there is little room to make changes, different components can be tested at every step, so brands can ensure that every step is being made in the right direction.
Stay Ahead by Staying Connected
As we continue to navigate the market in the “new normal”, companies are increasingly being called upon to adapt their decision-making processes and stay connected to the accelerating flow of insights in the market. Now, more than at any time in history, it is essential for businesses to gather information, and better understand customer attitudes and behaviors.
Our smart, Zinklar insights platform is designed to bring businesses right into the palm of consumers’ hands, and keep them ahead of the game.
