InsightsNow!

Bridging the innovation gap between brands and consumers.

Step into an aisle of any supermarket and you’ll understand the scope of the problem. Consumers have too many choices. They’re faced with a growing number of SKUs that lack differentiation, in product categories that lack excitement. Coupled with too many competitors and choices, consumers become disconnected.  This leads to commoditization, in which consumers make choices based only on pricing. It’s time to solve this endemic problem. We can bridge the gap by changing the focus of CPG innovation from incremental feature and attribute development to Behavior-Driven Innovation (BDI). With BDI, the innovation focus is on changing behavior with products that elicit the emotive connections that drive behavior and make products successful.

Consumer science and behavioral frameworks

InsightsNow’s proven approach to research is grounded in the science of consumer behavior, uniquely applied using behavioral frameworks. The insights generated through these frameworks illuminate consumer choices based not just on functionality, but also on how products fit into consumers' lives emotionally and socially. BDI also enables researchers to better understand how consumers differentiate products based on emotional expectations, such as how they think the product will make them feel, or social expectations, such as how a product supports a social identity.

Exploring the science of behavior

As behavior-driven product researchers, InsightsNow strives towards a broader understanding of how product qualities and features contribute to and fit with functional, emotional and social expectations. Exploring how brand messaging impacts these expectations and how product design lives up to them, we find innovative ways to achieve market differentiation. New opportunities to deliver a differentiated product experience emerge when we understand what experiential qualities elicit specific feelings. By incorporating behavioral insights into the innovation and development process, companies build the bridge to the consumer. InsightsNow recognizes that to help companies reach consumers, researchers need to become more strategic in the innovation process. They need to bring a wealth of consumer information to the table earlier and open it up to the entire team. Researchers must identify “emotive outcomes,” the different ways emotive connections drive consumer behavior. Consumers seek and repeatedly use products to which they feel most connected. InsightsNow can identify the emotions driving these behaviors by integrating science and innovation. This can propel innovation by focusing marketing and product development around common feelings that elicit behavior.

Consumer Behavior Framework™

InsightsNow has developed a structured approach for innovation guidance called the Consumer Behavior Framework. It guides the innovation process by linking marketing and product development decisions to specific emotive drivers of behavior. Moving from consumer qualities to situation context to experience to behavior levels, it identifies how functional, emotional and self-social identity expectations lead to or evolve from product experiences. This leads to a more strategic innovation approach by shifting the focus from learning needs, wants, benefits and desires to discovering how to elicit emotions that drive behavior.

Approaching innovation using a behavior-driven strategy

InsightsNow believes that in order to increase new product success rates and accelerate time to market, CPG manufacturers need to invest more time upfront in a structured strategic development approach to product innovation. This approach, called Behavior-Driven Innovation (BDI), provides a structured framework for strategy development that is easily integrated into traditional innovation and development processes, such as Stage-Gate™.

Integrating BDI with the Discovery Phase

The BDI strategy is defined by linking business and innovation goals and focusing on areas most attractive and fitting with corporate strengths. It also establishes which consumer behaviors the innovation will strive to elicit.

Using BDI in Scoping Phase

Here, BDI is used to develop insights into the “consumer strategy” through marketing research. Researchers locate unfulfilled and important jobs-to-be-done for the product, and segment consumers based on how and why products are used and the emotions that impact those experiences. These insights drive the innovation process, identifying product opportunities to elicit specific emotions that make consumers ready to act.

Business Case Phase and BDI

During this stage, BDI helps define a behavior-driven product strategy and a matching research strategy. Brand owners characterize the consumer target, define the opportunity, determine product positioning, and establish success criteria. Behavior-driven methods apply marketing research to define targets and focus on eliciting the biggest emotional impact with the widest emotional REACH. The research strategy includes effort, timelines and costs expected for the product build stage. It outlines the development of a refined product concept and the translation of consumer language into technical requirements. This translation also informs research tactics, using relevant behavioral insights to guide developers rapidly through the product build stage.

Using BDI during the Development Phase

BDI's structured approach to strategy development pays off through a process of rapid, iterative development. Early investment in strategy creates huge efficiencies, shortening timelines, reducing costly rework and minimizing the number of research iterations. By applying Behavior-Driven Innovation, CPG companies dramatically increase the odds for success. They can extend the competitive landscape, offering new opportunities for market differentiation. BDI helps companies better connect with consumers, bridging the gap between consumer and brand.