By: Lee Ann Evans, Director of Research Insights
Brands across all industries and verticals use market research to help better understand the customers and to make informed decisions. Yet even with the most robust learning plan and a flawless research design and execution, context matters. To understand the internal and external context of the primary research, we work with multiple data sources to employ a sophisticated data integration methodology to gather, process, and understand the data – Data Fusion.
Through this process, our researchers merge a variety of data sets from various sources (e. g., primary research, secondary research sources, CRM, sales data, etc.) into a unified format. This gives our clients a more comprehensive and multilayered view of their customers, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of the behaviors, preferences, and beliefs their customers hold. This information can be used to develop more personalized marketing and communication efforts, predict future behavior, or understand broader market trends.
Bringing Multiple Data Sets Together for Clients
We recently consulted with a client, a disruptive leader in the Quick Service Restaurant industry, to help understand their market ecosystems and how those ecosystems impact the franchisees and consumers downstream. We started the process with a Data Audit, where we took inventory of all available data owned or licensed by the client. We then “fused” various identifiably relevant data sets (including Operator data, Team Member data, Consumer Primary data, financial store-level data, and publicly available geographic & demographic intel) to create the structure and framework for the analysis, which consisted of a series of advanced analytics (i.e., clustering, factor analysis, and decision tree analysis) to uncover the insights needed to strategically guide the client’s decision-making as they worked to improve the overall restaurant experience. By better understanding their key audiences, the client was able to make the necessary adjustments to their communication strategy to franchisees, which translated to a long-term positive impact on KPIs.
With our ever-increasing access to data sources and data fusion continues to gain importance, we are exploring the different ways that Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are intersecting with data fusion to continue to develop even more advanced forms of market analysis. Our techniques continue to evolve with the changing needs of our clients to help reveal groundbreaking insights from existing data sets.
Lee Ann Evans' experience in all operational aspects of custom market research has made her a natural fit in her role as Director of Research Insights for Aimpoint Research. She has an extensive background in market research and specializes in problem-solving and exploring holistic solutions to research challenges. She has worked in coding and data processing, project management, analysis, reporting, and research design in both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.