Lagler Research Consulting | Kernkompetenzen

Methodologically flexible.

Individually designed.

The philosophy of Lagler Research Consulting is to develop the right research design for your specific concerns - that's why I design studies flexibly and in cooperation with the best research partners.

Core competencies:

Image Analyses / Brand Perception

Image analyses / brand perception research

You want to know the target groups' perception of your company's image.

You don't just want to fix this to numbers and conscious customer assessments of the company, you want to look deeper into the unconscious attitudes of your customers.

Qualitative image analyses show how your brand and that of your competitors are positioned in the minds of your customers - consciously and unconsciously.

Background

In order to examine the image and evaluation of a company's products and services, often quantitative customer satisfaction surveys are conducted, which primarily depict rational and conscious attitudes. Such research provides a solid basis for customer-centered developments of products and services.
Yet the deeper, sometimes unconscious perceptions of companies or brands have major influences on customers‘ decisions on a company or product.

A brand perception research with a qualitative design and projective techniques can bring these unconscious attitudes and perceptions to light and it can also identify where these attitudes come from and what psychological needs lay behind them.
In combination with quantitative customer satisfaction surveys, a qualitative brand perception research can show what is behind the numbers and fill those 'hard' figures with 'soft' contents.

Method

For brand perception research I work with a qualitative approach - most often with focus groups. This method makes use of the strength of group dynamics, which is particularly evident in projective techniques described below.

Techniques

In order to reveal brand perceptions, I mainly use projective techniques. With these indirect questioning techniques, respondents project unconscious feelings and desires onto other people or objects.
- Example: “Suppose Company XY is a person. Who would this be? What are their positive and negative characteristics? What are your values? What is important to that person? ... ".
By using such techniques, participants do not get into internal conflicts and do not give socially desirable answers since the real reason for suing this technique is usually not apparent to the respondents and thus there is no rational censorship.
In addition to the above technique, I also use Collage Techniques or the 'Semantic Field' that is based on the Limbic Map® from Häusel.

For Image Analyses research, the Sensor Market Research Institute is my preferred partner institute. I have had the opportunitiy to learn the craft of brand perception studies from Dr. Beatrix Brauner (founder and CEO of Sensor) and successfully collaborate on a large number of image studies over the years.

Anchor Methoden Image

Customer satisfaction surveys

You want to know how your customers perceive your company, services and products.
You want to know which product features and services are really relevant for your customers.
You want to know what you are doing particularly well and where there is room for improvement.

And you want to compare this data with those about your competitors, in a quantifiable and reliable way.

Quantitative customer satisfaction surveys are most appropriate for those questions and Lagler Research Consulting knows how to do it - short and variable for your customers, meaningful and relevant for you.

Background and benefits

Customer satisfaction surveys are the classics of customer research and they represent the basis for customer-centered entrepreneurial actions.
The core of such surveys is the evaluation of products and services as well as the customer perception of the company based on various image factors.
In addition to evaluating one's own company, relevant competitors can also be evaluated. The comparison gives more meanings to your own data and allows for determination of benchmarks.
In addition to the evaluation, the relevance of product features or services is also of central interest. This information not only shows how your company is performing, but also in which areas you have to set priorities, which services are essential for your customers and how you can inspire them to create positive word-of-mouth.

If carried out 'correctly', customer satisfaction studies can also have a positive effect on the image of your company - they show that the opinions of customers are important to you. This effect can be intensified if results and derived measures are actively communicated to your clients.

The key is in brevity

Time is a limited resource, thus your customers shouldn't be busy with lengthy questionnaires. Lagler Research Consulting designs questionnaires short, variable and playful.
Sophisticated questioning techniques and statistical calculations decrease the need to ask too many questions directly since answers can be calculated. These methods not only shorten the survey but also lead to more valid results.

Relevant recommendations for action

The strength of Lagler Research Consulting lies in the interpretation of data, the presentation of results in a compact form, and the clear recommendations for action.

Contact us and we will give your customers a voice. We will make them happier and we will improve the performance and perception of your company.

Anchor Methoden Kundenzufriedenheit

Buyer personas

You want to get a clear understanding of your customers.
You want to portray your target groups in a vivid and understandable way as personas.
You want to know about the factors that influence the purchase.

And you want that information not superficially and hypothetically, but scientifically founded.

Lagler Research Consulting uses structured interviews based on Adele Revella's concept of buyer personas, to develop well-founded personas that help you to better align your products and services with customers and communicate to them in a target-oriented and effective way.

Background:

Buyer personas are semi-fictional representatives of your target groups who are established based on the precise descriptions of their characteristics, values and attitudes, as well as their motivations and decision-making criteria for purchasing a product or service. Buyer personas fulfil two main goals:
- They turn target groups into concrete and vivid people who can be visualised by the marketing, sales or product management personell. This helps your teams to put themselves in the shoes of these potential buyers and align the range of services and communication to customers' needs and interests..
- By precisely exploring customers' decision making criteria, purchase reasons and purchase barriers can be specifically addressed.
"Develop a precise description of your user and what he wishes to accomplish" - this is the central recommendation of Alan Cooper, who is considered as the father of the persona concept. This principle helped him to write the software that represented the core of 'Visual Basic' which in turn was the basis of Microsoft Windows 3.0 - the first user-friendly graphical operating system.
However, Alan Cooper's personas were basically 'user personas' that he used to get into the minds of actual users.
Based on Cooper’s work, Adele Revella (CEO of the Buyer Persona Institute) defined the concept of Buyer Personas and developed interview techniques to operationalize the concept. The Persona-approach applied by Lagler Research Consulting is based on Adele Revella’s concept.

Method:

"If we don't interview buyer personas, we don't know anything" (Adele Revella). Yet buyer persona profiles are often superficially and hypothetically created without interviewing customers.
In-depth interviews with existing and potential buyers are at the core of developing relevant personas.
In addition, information from sales, CRM or other internal sources and previously conducted surveys can be used.
Lagler Research Consulting has also successfully combined Sinus Milieu surveys with in-depth interviews to describe personas, their attitudes and values (for further information on the use of Sinus Milieus ® please see below)
Interviews should be conducted by an experienced market researcher; however, it is beneficial for members from the marketing or sales teams to be present during interviews. Their presence adds value to the interviews, increases their identification with the developed personas, and their acceptance of the methodology.
Although attitudes and purchase motivations do not change quickly, additional interviews should be carried out from time to time and persona descriptions should be updated or supplemented if necessary.

Application:

Determining Buying Insights, a central component of personas, is the uncovering of conscious decision-making criteria. This component is particularly suitable for 'high consideration‘ products which are not bought spontaneously but after careful evaluation.

Contact Lagler Research Consulting to find out whether the concept of buyer personas is the right one for you and your target groups, and how we can combine your existing informationwith interviews to create personas that will take your customer understanding to the next level.

Anchor Methoden Buyerpersonas

Mobile ethnography

You want to understand your target groups - their values, attitudes, and lifestyle.

You want to know the concerns that they have before, during, and after buying a product or service.

In Mobile ethnography studies, survey participants use their smartphones to present themselves and their living environment, and document their customer journeys as they happen. These studies provide deep and authentic insights into attitudes and the purchasing behaviours of your customers.

Background

Conventional research methods, in which consumers talk about themselves, their relationships to a product or service, and their customer journeys, often fall short. This is mainly because recalling details about a purchase process in retrospect is very difficult. Furthermore, with traditional research methods, attitudes and purchase reasons can only be captured superficially and are often distorted by the rationalisation of the research participants.
Ethnography has its origins in the sociological and ethnological exploration of exotic cultures. For this purpose, researchers left the academic ivory tower and investigated behaviour and social phenomena on site and by observing the research subjects in their everyday life.
Such a procedure of course is too time-consuming for applied market research. In addition, modern target groups cannot be found in a delimited 'habitat' and their digital information and purchasing processes cannot be observed from the outside.

Mobile ethnography in market research

Mobile digital communication technologies offer market researchers new opportunities to study target groups and their unadulterated behaviours directly.
In mobile ethnography studies, participants document their lifestyles and record their customer journeys using smartphones or PC-screenshots of relevant online contents. The information is transmitted simultaneously to the market researcher enabling them to promptly ask content-related questions.

The advantages of mobile ethnography at a glance

Real-time insights into everyday life and consumer behaviors.
First hand delivery of authentic, spontaneous, and creative media contents (videos, photos, audios, texts).
Possibility to conduct longer fieldwork and larger numbers of cases (mobile panels running for several months).
Possibility to conduct multi-country studies.
Research participants are not affected by the presence of the researchers.
Easy capture and documentation of emotions, moods, sensory impressions in an everyday context

Main areas of application of mobile ethnography

Getting to know consumption situations and behaviours on site.
Establishing the meanings of consumption by connecting it to consumers’ everyday life.
Determination and interpretation of lifestyles, (context) aesthetics, and consumer communities.
Observation of the acceptance and use of products and services in the context of usage (innovation, diffusion, adaptation, usability).
Observation and understanding of purchase decisions at the PoS.
Exploration of virtual consumer worlds and digital purchase decisions.
Reality check and grounding for marketing / R&D / product development.

Contact Lagler Research Consulting to find out how mobile ethnography can be used for your purposes.

Anchor Methoden MobileEthno

Anchor Methoden CoCreaion

Co-creation

You want to develop a product, a mobile app or a service - and you want to do that in an agile, dynamic and customer-centric way.

In co-creation approaches, your clients are integrated in the development process, through their direct and relevant feedback or assessment of your ideas.

This allows you to develop forward-looking innovations that are really relevant and avoid costly flops and time-consuming adaptations.

Background and benefits:

Counting on constant innovations for their long-term success, many companies understand that listening to customer voices is crucial to reduce uncertainties and flops.
However, customers are often given a passive role: ‘speaking only when spoken to‘.
When customers are only asked about their needs at the beginning of an innovation process, the translation of this one-off information into solutions and technical specifications tend to be time-consuming, costly and, above all, error-prone.
On the other hand, companies often only ask for customer feedback when a product is launched or after thefirst usage phase in order to refine their communication for marketing. However, it is too late to use this information for product development.

For these reasons, customers should become active co-creators and partners by being involved in the entire innovation process. So that you create innovations that are relevant, and avoid costly flops and time-consuming adaptations.

Depending on the degree of freedom of the innovation task, the basis of the collaboration (individual customers vs. networks) and the time component (early phase vs. late phase in the innovation process), there are different approaches to customer co-creation. These include 'Idea Screening', 'Product-related Discussion forums', 'Idea Competitions' or' Communities of Creation '. The 'Communities of Creation' approach is particularly exciting from a market research perspective and has already been successfully implemented by Lagler Research Consulting.

Do you want to know whether and how a co-creation approach can be implemented in your innovation project? Contact me and let's think about how we can turn your customers into research and development partners who help you to design solutions that really meet your clients` needs.

Anchor Methoden Werbewirkung

Advertising research

You want to create a campaign, a TV commercial or new packaging.

You may have already worked out different variants or storyboards.

And you want to know what effect they have on your target groups, what they are communicating, how they fit your company, or what influence they have on the image of your company.

There are various methods of researching advertising effectiveness, ranging from quick online tests,qualitative in-depth methods, to apparatus-based measurement procedures, that generate insights forchoosing the most suitable concept and fine-tuning your ideas.

Lagler Research Consulting advises you on the choice of the most suitable method, designs the study for you and selects the best institute for carrying out the research.

In advertising research, the variety of methods is broader than in any other area. You can choose between online or offline, quantitative or qualitative, explicit or implicit methods, and apparatus-based measurement methods or direct consumer surveys.
"90% of consumer decisions are made unconsciously" - this often quoted statement is neither scientifically proven nor can it apply across the board. How advertising works depends heavily on the product category, the complexity of the product and the medium of communication.

The choice of suitable methods is extremely relevant in the field of advertising reasearch. Contact me to find out what is the best solution for your product and your questions.

Anchor Methoden Musik

Music in advertising / sound branding

You want to create an image video or a product commercial, and are wondering which music is best for it.

You want to design a new sound logo and not just leave it to the creativity of the sound designer.

Or you want to design background music or soundscapes at the point of sale in such a way that your customers are encouraged to linger and buy.
In general, you want the relevant area of Sound Branding to become part of your brand identity based on a scientific research.

I will support you with these objectives, so that you can choose the right sounds to communicate the desired messages to your target groups.

Background and benefits

Research shows that music has a high potential to improve the influencing effect of advertising. The advantages of music over textual and visual stimuli lie in several areas:
- Music activates
- Music can also reach consumers with undirected attention and weak involvement with the advertisements.
- Music has the power to influence perceptions, attitudes and behavioural intentions.
- Music can communicate a desired brand image and anchor it mentally in the target groups.

In addition to the use of music in advertising, research has also shown that background music and soundscapes have great influence on the behaviors of consumers in stationary retail shops or restaurants. This influence relates, among other things, to ...
- ... the length of stay
- ... the intention to return to the shop
- ... the amount of expenses
- ... the willingness to interact with sales staff

However, the influence of music and sounds on different levels can be both positive and negative. The 'wrong' music which does not match the product or brand can reduce the attractiveness of the advertising and the product or even the company. Music that does not match the shopping location or music which the target group does not like can shorten the length of stay or reduce the intention to return.

Therefore, the challenge is to make better use of the emotional power of music and sound by using a targeted acoustic design of communication measures.

Methods

The research questions and the methodological approaches in this field are as diverse as the applications of music in advertising.

When it comes to the effect of music in product or image videos, we talk about advertising effectiveness research, in which mostly qualitative study designs are employed.
Furthermore neurophysiological methods are also used to measure the unconscious and sometimes also physical reactions.

When it comes to general sound branding and defining the cross-media acoustic branding concept, a big step is already done with a structured process. To develop well defined sound design concepts, this process begins with a brand audit which is followed by a rough acoustic concept. These concepts in turn become the basis for the acoustic briefing to creative sound designers. In these general steps, often there is no need for primary research..
I am happy to support you as a consultant who accompanies the process and also carries out the brand audit for you.

Regardless of the context in which you want to deal with the topic of music in advertising and sound branding, just contact me and let's talk about the possibilities that market research and I, as a consultant can offer you.

Anchor Methoden Sinsmilieus

Sinus Milieus® surveys and recruiting

You want to know what moves your target groups, what their values are, what lifestyles and what leisure interests they have, how and where they live, what media they use, what their online and mobile behaviors are like ...

You want to recruit target groups from specific milieus for market research surveys.

You want to use the most recognized target group model, the Sinus Milieus®, for market research and your marketing activities.

As a partner of Integral Marktforschung and Sinus Heidelberg, Lagler Research Consulting integrates the Sinus Milieus® and Sinus Meta Milieus® in a variety of research designs.

Background

The Sinus-Milieus®, resulted from four decades of social science research, have been used successfully by leading manufacturers of branded goods, service companies, as well as political and religious institutions for strategic marketing, product development and communication since the early 1980s.

The Sinus-Milieus® group people and consumer segments based on similar attitudes, ways of living, consumer behaviours and working habits:
- Basic orientation and values (attitude towards life, family, politics, religion, etc.)
- Lifestyles and personal taste
- Communication structures
- Living and working area environments

The Sinus-Milieus® thus offer your marketing team more information and better decision-making aids than conventional target group approaches.

With the Sinus Meta-Milieus®, an international model has been developed that is currently available to be used in 45 countries. This model manages to present cross-border similarities without ignoring local peculiarities.

Most important advantages for you

Identifying and understanding your most promising target groups
- Which target groups are interested in your products and services and which ones favor your offer?
- What is important to these target groups, what do they believe in, how do they live, how do they dress, which wishes and fears accompany them in their everyday lives?
- How you have to communicate with your target groups. Which topics are important to them. Which visual language resonates with them?

Campaign control
- Which media do your target groups use and trust?
- In which regions (e.g. districts) are your target groups over-represented?

Surveying specific milieus
- People from certain milieus can be specifically recruited for: online research via the Integral Marktforschung panel, or qualitative research using special screening questions.

Understanding social trends: The continual research by Integral Marktforschung and Sinus Heidelberg provides valuable information on social trends and developments.

Use the most recognized target group model, the Sinus Milieus ®. Contact me to find out how Sinus Milieus ® can be used for your company, for your market research and your marketing activities.