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Implicit Explicit Test eBook Release

New White Paper on Applying Neuromarketing to Enable Better Product Marketing, Development and Innovation

Behavioral research firm InsightsNow releases white paper exploring neuromarketing techniques and The Implicit/Explicit Test™ 

20 October 2020 – Portland, OR – InsightsNow, a behavioral research firm, has released a new white paper focusing the science of human behavior in the applied field of neuromarketing research, specifically on applications relevant to product developers, marketers and innovators. The paper also covers the company’s proprietary Implicit/Explicit Test™, a methodology that identifies what mode of thinking is being applied by a given research study participant at the point of response. The paper, “The Implicit / Explicit Test: Applying Neuromarketing to Enable Better Product Marketing, Development and Innovation,” was created to provide information on the limitations and usage of neuromarketing research tools and clarify common points of confusion and misconceptions. 

“There are many complexities associated with neuromarketing tools we currently use in the market research field,” says Greg Stucky, Chief Research Officer at InsightsNow. “Here we outline how to apply behavioral frameworks, and new ways to do implicit testing, to get to the real truths behind consumer behavior – so that marketing and products can meet greater success with target audiences.”

The paper covers: 

  • Behavioral frameworks from InsightsNow called Modes of Thinking™ and Behavior Pyramid™ that illustrate pathways frameworks for application of neuromarketing techniques. 
  • Prime target response techniques such as Fast Direct, Implicit Association Test (IAT), Indirect Priming, and Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP). 
  • Neuro-physiological techniques such as Biometrics, Brain Scans and Facial Expression Testing. 
  • The InsightsNow Implicit/Explicit Test™— a patent-pending approach to implicit testing that begins with a calibration of the cut-off time for a fast, implicit reaction for each person.  
  • Specific behavioral research solutions based on the information provided in the paper for marketers and product developers.  

You can access the paper “The Implicit / Explicit Test: Applying Neuromarketing to Enable Better Product Marketing, Development and Innovation,” by InsightsNow’s Dave Lundahl and Greg Stucky here.  

 About Author Dr. David Lundahl, CEO & Founder, InsightsNow 

Dr. Dave Lundahl is passionate about fostering innovation to create a cleaner, healthier, happier world. He is an entrepreneur—founding companies that follow this passion by providing consumer insights for faster and more successful innovation. Dave has held many industry leadership positions, written for various publications, and is sought for speaking engagements on topics that align with his passions. He served as a professor working in food product innovation at Oregon State University before starting InsightsNow in 2003. Dave holds a Master of Science degree in Statistics and a Doctorate in Food Science & Technology.  

 About Author Greg Stucky, CRO, InsightsNow 

Greg Stucky has focused his career on the development of new methods, techniques and services for research innovations. His deep experience in the application of consumer behavior to product innovation has garnered industry attention and awards, with work featured in Harvard Business Review, The LA Times, ESOMAR World, and other industry publications. Greg has pioneered cue signals research, an approach where identifying product cues which motivate specific behaviors helps develop successful new products and brands. At InsightsNow, he is responsible for the growth of new business initiatives. Greg holds a master’s degree in food science and technology from Oregon State University.  

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SSP Virtual Fall 2020 – Align Research with Changing Consumer Behaviors

One of our favorite events is the biennial Society of Sensory Professionals (SSP) Conference, and we will be there. However, instead of heading out to see all our clients, colleagues and friends face-to-face, we are heading to our home offices to see virtually everyone we’ve been missing October 28 through November 5. The event theme this year is 20/20 Vision and Beyond and we hope to explore, along with you all, the sensory field in some deep and interesting ways. We will be leading an interactive learnshop on how our field is adapting to COVID. To find out more information about the conference, please visit: https://www.sensorysociety.org/meetings/2020Conference/about/Pages/default.aspx.  

Things we are looking forward to at the conference include the SSP Scavenger Hunt, where teams will search for common items around the home office. The team that completes the list first wins the game, and we hope we can be on the winning team! Also, we always enjoy the poster sessions, and are confident the online version of the poster sessions will be just as captivating. The event culminates with the SSP Evergreen Award presentation. After the awards presentation, we get an update on the state of the SSP, plus get to meet the new slate of officers who will serve on the Executive Committee for the next two years. 

What we are most looking forward to at the SSP Conference is our very own Sarah Kirkmeyer, InsightsNow’s Senior Director of Client Partnerships, who will lead a highly interactive learnshop on “Tracking COVID-19: How Sensory Scientists are Adjusting Research to Align with Changing Consumer Behaviors.” We all know the global pandemic has significantly changed human behavior, and Sarah has assembled a fantastic group who will help us all explore options that can truly work for consumer research right now. It’s true that Sensory Scientists have had to adapt in many ways to gain understanding of the impact of our current times, with product and consumer insights being more valuable than ever! Everything from consumer trends to business process, to cultivating hope during the pandemic will be covered in this workshop. Come join us to participate in expanding our understanding of the impact of COVID-19 and the challenges and opportunities facing the Sensory Science community.

Make sure you sign up! 

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Quirk’s Virtual – Implicit Testing – Going with the gut or mind?

The Quirk’s Event takes on its second completely virtual conference in 2020, taking place October 27-28. A main focus of this fall’s Quirks Event to keep in mind is: “Driving your market research forward”—something we have all been working hard to achieve during these times of COVID-19. To find out more information on the event, please visit:  https://www.thequirksevent.com/virtual-fall-2020/. It promises to be an action-packed two days featuring a variety of insights professionals sharing their knowledge... including two sessions you won’t want to miss from us here at InsightsNow! 

At this upcoming Quirks Event, our CEO and Founder Dave Lundahl will be speaking about implicit and explicit modes of thinking. If you want a sneak peek into this topic, you can grab our brand-new white paper, “The Implicit / Explicit Test™: Applying Neuromarketing to Enable Better Product Marketing, Development and Innovation.” Sound complicated? Well, join him at Quirk’s where he is going to do a deep dive into this topic—and tackle the battle of following what your gut or your head says you should do. There are three main takeaways from his talk, the first is how to utilize implicit testing better for research. The second takeaway is how to take implicit testing even further using a framework that’s behavior-based. Dave will go specifically into social, psychological, functional, and sensorial motivation and how these motivators impact consumer behavior. And lastly, a few different case studies will illustrate real-life use of this important research technique. 

Kayte Hamilton, a Client Partner Director here at InsightsNow, is also speaking at The Quirk’s Event. She will be taking attendees on a journey of how to gain the best, most actionable insights through qualitative and quantitative research. Kayte's talk "The Haunting of Quantitative Data about data analysis —an uncomfortable topic for some marketing professionals, will demonstrate how the numbers and the story they tell truly do go hand-in-hand to gain better insights. She will be sharing ideas on how to balance the two for the most accurate end result. You can find more information on Kayte’s presentation at: https://www.thequirksevent.com/virtual-fall-2020/sessions/dont-let-quantitative-haunt-your-qual-design/ 

We will be live at the show in order to answer any questions you have and share more information. We hope to see you there! 

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Plant-Based Ethics and Natural Products Industry Trends

What we learned at the Spark Change™ Mission-Driven Business Community Event 

Recently the NewHope Network hosted a Mission-Driven Business Community Event, as part of their new Spark Change™ series. We checked out the session, “What's Next in Mission-Driven Business? Data & Insights, ”to learn about trends that are shaping  the growth of the natural products industry. 

The session speakers, Eric Pierce (New Hope Network) and Kathryn Peters (SPINS), talked about how retailers need to be thoughtful about what products fill the limited space in store shelves.  Using the latest sales, innovation, and consumer engagement data, their session was geared to help retailers identify and prioritize mission-driven products that should be on the shelf.

The discussion touched on areas in the industry that offer the greatest opportunity for sales, differentiation points for successful product development, and how to prioritize your brand among other mission-based brands. Some identified mission-based trends covered in the session were responsible sourcing, multi-stakeholder business models, sustainable packaging, waste reduction and plant-based ethics. 

Of particular interest was the section covering plant-based ethics, where the speakers talked about the massive growth in this category and why consumers are eating more plant-based foods—for reasons like health and environmental concerns, as well as due to animal welfare issues and food safety. 

Due to this market growth and these identified plant-based trends, this has been a topic of interest here at InsightsNow as well. We have explored the area of plant-based proteins extensively in our recent white paper, “Beyond Impossible—Behavioral KPIs for Plant-Based Burgers,” and the trends in the session resonated with our own findings. You can check out the white paper here.  

Next up for New Hope’s Spark Change™ series is their Modern Health Community Event on October 7th where we will be joining along with other brands and products representing the future of wellness to take in the panels and presentations on this timely topic. 

 

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Rapid Product Development Solution Launched by InsightsNow and CuliNex

CRAEVS Solution developed to help food and beverage companies take products quickly through concept, commercialization and commerce stages. 

30 September 2020 – Portland, OR – InsightsNow, a behavioral research firm, in partnership with CuliNex, a clean label product development consulting firm for the food industry, have released a new product development solution called CRAEVS (an acronym for Clean Label Research through Agile Evolutions into Stores). The companies brought together their respective consumer insights and culinary innovation expertise to build this end-to-end solution for food and beverage company’s innovation efforts. 

 “The solution is a first for the food industry. It brings together the creativity of culinary experts, inspired and guided by consumer insights, to accelerate cost effective product development timelines,” said Dave Lundahl, CEO and Founder of InsightsNow. “The all-in-one solution not only streamlines the process from initial opportunity all the way to the store shelf to deliver cleaner, healthier food product alternatives sought by consumers, it is especially needed during current times to help companies overcome the workflow disruptions caused by the ongoing pandemic.” 

The CRAEVS Solution was built to take food product and marketing teams through five sprints in a completely integrated process:  

  1.  Clean Label Category Review: Understand competitive space and potential consumers, find your focus
  2. Co-Create Concepts: Gather qualitative consumer data to create and refine concepts
  3. Co-Design Products & Packaging: Develop and measure effectiveness of target prototypes 
  4. Commercialize Products & Packaging: Scale production conditions and match prototype to goals 
  5. Retail Store or Home Use Testing: Validate the product and get shelf performance feedback

The five phases are implemented through a single team formed by InsightsNow and CuliNex, structured to bring together culinary and food science innovation with insights from consumers in a rapid iterative manner. 

 “By using insights-driven research, we are able to partner together to inspire, guide and validate the product development process,” said Mark Crowell, CEO of CuliNex. “Between our two teams, we have 100+ years of development experience that can help food and beverage companies say ahead of trends—particularly for clean label products.” 

To learn more about CRAEVS, please visit www.craevs.com.  

 About InsightsNow 

InsightsNow, an award-winning behavioral research firm, partners with companies across a wide array of industry verticals to accelerate marketing, branding and product development decisions for disruptive innovations achieving a cleaner, healthier world. Insights are provided via custom solutions and assisted DIY tools based on proprietary behavioral frameworks to help find answers faster, improving your speed-to and success-in market.  www.insightsnow.com 

 About CuliNex 

CuliNex is a product development consultancy specializing in the development of delicious clean label food products. CuliNex works with brand owners, food manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, retailers, and multi-unit foodservice operators to achieve their growth goals by bringing successful products to market.         www.culinex.biz 

 

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Media contact: Michelle Andre, 415-577-8634, michelle.andre@insightsnow.com. 

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Webinar 43: Finding Holiday Magic – COVID-19 Consumer Tracking

How COVID is impacting purchase motivators in the upcoming season 

Presentation Date:   Thursday, Oct.  15

Presenters: Kayte Hamilton, Client Partner Director, and Jenny O'Connor, Community Manager

View Recorded Webinar

Webinar Recap 

Regardless of religious affiliations, there are a number of upcoming holidays that center on connecting and togetherness.  

How is COVID impacting traditions and emotions? To get there, we needed to take a step back regarding our CLE COVID tracker. Before now, we felt we were well on the way to the Recovery and New Normal phases. However, we noticed our CLE’s purchasing motivators have moved back into the functional territory. 

Part of this is due to the uncertainty on what to expect; there’s a lot of “waiting to see” what happens on a variety of fronts. Not to mention unemployment is still very high. That Recovery phase is blending with our Adjustment period as we once again gear up for new disruptions as the holiday season approaches and as US case counts climb toward a potential third US peak in terms of total virus cases. 

Normally around this time of year we would expect a larger spike in social purchasing motivators – those purchase types are often driven by relationships (both friends and family), but we’re hearing that gifting based on need (versus want) is a large necessity this year. You aren’t seeing advertisements for the latest tech gadgets or frivolous spending categories; we’re driven by these practical aspects more than ever.  

10-18 motivators over pandemic

Can there be holiday magic this year?  

In short, yes! 45% of CLEs feel the season is going to be different – but aren’t sure if these will be positive or negative adjustments (compared to 21% of CLEs feeling the impacts will bring on bad changes to their holiday plans). This explains the holding pattern we see in terms of emotional response while anticipating the upcoming celebrations.  

Top emotions about this year’s holidays include being Hopeful (68%) and Optimistic (63%). We also discovered that CLEs have mixed emotions from being excited/energetic to worried/anxious. It’s perfectly normal to experience polarizing emotions; especially in serious situations where the outcome is unknown.  

Not surprisingly, the down trends for how CLEs are planning to celebrate this year include all in-person aspects; from shopping to gatherings. Where we see this magic start to come to life are in the ways CLEs are adapting to the changes:  

    •  Home-cooked meals (89%) & 64% Open to trying new recipes 
    •  Online shopping (88%)  
    •  Charitable Donations (87%) 
    •  Gift cards & mailed gifts (82%) 
    •  Home Made Gifts (79%) 
    •  Decorating (70%)  
    •  Virtual religious services (65%) 
    •  Virtual Parties (57%)   

Decorating was a standout, “Decorating is one of my favorite things to do around the holidays. It brings cheer and joy.” As we’re seeing not just CLEs staying home more than ever before, even 6+ months into the pandemic, that need to feel spirited comes from what we are surrounding ourselves with. From Fall/Halloween décor to full Christmas decoration; there will be an increase in money and time spent for people to feel this joy.  

 

Where are CLE’s are finding magic this year?  

  • Online shopping. Yes – another year of a rise in online retail. This is a way to feel safe instead of being driven into closed-quarters. There's also the added bonus of many major sales happening sooner and lasting longer; giving more time to find the best gifts.  
  • Local celebrations. With travel down (both domestic and international), people are staying much closer to home and are looking for ways to support small business and local merchants. This is an excellent ‘upper’ to feeling more connected to their community.  
  • More intimate and creative connections. CLEs are trying to find the positives to the restricted social aspect and are accepting the challenge. From learning to cook, to trying new recipes, to developing new traditions; they feel up to the challenge.  

 How can Brands help them find the magic this year?  

  • How can your messaging or your product be tailored or packaging so it can become a part of something personal they create? How can you create a way for people to create a personalized gift without a large expense? 
  • What new foods can you help them experience and cook? How can you cater to smaller groups? 
  • How can you create a way to share an experience virtually? How can you’re your brand be involved in making new connections? What new experience are you able to create that has never been created before? 

 

For more on holiday magic, check out the archived recording here. 

Find more insights on people's adjustments to the pandemic on our Tracker page.

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ESOMAR Insights Festival

ESOMAR Insights Festival Notes

Day 1

ESOMAR pivoted to our new virtual landscape with the Insights Festival 2020—an event focused on how research, data, and insights contribute to our daily lives. We jumped in to be part of this unique experience as it is currently being live streamed across social media channels and have already found it full of the promised conversations and content. We already caught a great session with David Evans from Microsoft, where he focused on brand love, “The New Brand Perception Battleground.” It was a fantastic wake up call to everyone in innovation first thing Monday morning (Pacific Time)!  

The session content showed that it isn’t enough to just have a great brand experience, a product that fulfills needs, and performs flawlessly in the moment of use. David delved into how the measurement of consumers’ brand memories can help increase spending on the brand over time, and that “defining brand memories are the moments that matter for world-class service brands.” 

The talk focused on how creating strong brand memories differs from just developing a product experience that people love; you need to be intentional. And importantly, defining strategies for building brand memories is a very different end goal than developing for usability.  

In the session, David reminded attendees:  

  1. You can’t change what you aren’t measuring, therefore you have to measure the percentage of people who have “peak memories” and those who have “pit memories.” 
  2. You want to create a frictionless product experience. 
  3. That frictionless experience is very different from creating strong brand memories. Creating strong brand memories is about finding ways to create peak memories that last. These moments include: 
      • Moments of Pride 
      • Moments of Connection 
      • Moments of Insight 
      • Moments of Elevation 

This focus on peak and pit moments also allows study of those areas which are creating the greatest negative experiences. Negative experiences need to be addressed most quickly as they are harming your brand. And the session covered how improving those positive brand memories is shown to increase the money spent on your brand over time.  

When you focus on only one area, you limit the connections you can make and the insights you can discover. At InsightsNow, we talk a lot about moments and their impact on the brand, and we enjoyed bringing this talk back to the team after attending on Monday.  

What other sessions have you attended or are planning to attend at ESOMAR’s Insights Festival?   We are planning on checking out Xabier Palacio’s talk on “The Global Insights Industry—Trends and Forecasts” on Wednesday, and Gabriela McCoy’s (Bacardi) talk on “The Consumer Matrix: How to Save the Humans” on Thursday, among others. Hope to see you there!

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IIEX North America Virtual – Learnings with Online Fun

We recently attended Greenbook’s new online version of IIEX North America, that was postponed from its usual spring time slot and reimagined in a virtual setting— as we are still unable to meet in person in the usual venue of Austin, Texas, due to the pandemic. Our attendees picked sessions that were the most interesting to them, reported back to the wider team on our learnings, and we share them here with you! 

Our Learnings

Our Chief Research Officer, Greg Stucky, dropped in on “Becoming Behavioral Designers: The Journey to Make Behavioral Research Pervasive” with Carlos Navarro (Principal Financial) and Will Leach (Mindstate Group). Session attendees heard about focusing marketing communications on behavioral motivators to gain clear results—something we are big fans of doing here at InsightsNow as well. This talk touched on mental mind states, showcased how to go beyond personalities to understanding decision-making, and discussed communication strategies for target audiences. We have found the areas they covered to be true in our own innovation research—you must go beyond merely “correct” marketing messaging, but also ensure the product or service delivers on the promise of the message. This allows the offering, the messaging and the experience to be in complete harmony. Greg also popped into some planned networking sessions, including trivia night with Women in Research (WIRe). InsightsNow recently became a corporate donor supporting the WIRe organization, and we had a fun night answering trivia questions about famous women making history. 

Kristen Dale, InsightsNow’s Vice President of Client Partnerships, joined the Renee Smith (Gutcheck) session on a “Modern Look at Personality & Consumer Behavior” to take a deep dive into some interesting work within neuroscience. Some techniques discussed included ways to unlock subconscious mindsets and core personas to create effective product engagement and communication, with presentation points on personality measures, eye tracking, language-based assessments and more.  Kristin also went to a “The Future of Insights” session with Phil Ahad (Toluna) and Michael Lancor (Procter & Gamble) where they discussed ways they’ve been helping P&G in their quest for constructive disruption. Research approaches for the brand to stay ahead of the fast-changing market included quick learning techniques, and also what might be a stop gap in the product space. Both her session choices resonated with the consumer behavior and disruptive research that InsightsNow has been focused on for our research studies.

Our business development and membership services associate, Amissa Sugden, decided on “Storytelling with Data” with Jason Alleger (Traeger Grills) for one of her IIEX NA sessions. He started out by comparing the story structure of “The Three Little Pigs” to data storytelling, noting that the fairy tale has an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. The problem with presenting data is many data stories don't bring people along a journey like this. During the talk, attendees learned about storytelling templates, graphs and creating focus, the words we use to describe data, and some great examples for inspiration. Applying some of his tips is sure to make any data presentation anything but dry, and we were glad for Amissa to bring back these tips to the team!

Sarah Kirkmeyer, who is a senior director of client partnerships at InsightsNow, went to “A Winning First Impression:  How to Create Appealing Product Designs by Leveraging Implicit Research” with Quantilope where they showed a platform for pulling in and displaying implicit results. She also popped into “Spiritual Design: Making Room for Meaning” with Dr. Stephen Wendel (Morningstar) where attendees learned about intentionally designing one’s environment (physical, social, temporal) to remove distractions and make room for a meaningful spiritual life.

We gained a wide array of knowledge from the presentations at this year’s IIEX NA, and enjoyed seeing some colleagues, researchers, friends and clients online – and can’t wait to meet up with everyone in person soon.

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Supporting Women in Research (WIRe)

Media Alert

9 September 2020

 

InsightsNow becomes corporate donor supporting Women in Research (WIRe) 

Donorship will support key programming for diverse groups in market research around the globe 

InsightsNow, an award-winning behavioral research firm, has signed on as corporate donor to support Women in Research, a global networking organization in the market research industry. Women in Research advocates for women and minority groups in the market research industry by creating opportunities, fostering inclusion and supporting diversity. InsightsNow’s contribution will be used to help grow and promote key programming of the nonprofit organization, such as worldwide educational events, mentoring and equal representation initiatives.  

WIRe small_logo

About InsightsNow
InsightsNow, an award-winning behavioral research firm, partners with companies across a wide array of industry verticals to accelerate marketing, branding and product development decisions for disruptive innovations achieving a cleaner, healthier world. Insights are provided via custom solutions and assisted DIY tools based on proprietary behavioral frameworks to help find answers faster, improving your speed-to and success-in market. www.insightsnow.com 

 About Women in Research 

Women in Research (WIRe) was founded by Kristin Luck in 2007 as a small networking group for women in the Los Angeles market research community. WIRe has since evolved into a global networking group for women in all parts of the industry, holding events all around the world. Beyond networking, WIRe events also facilitate leadership, entrepreneurship, mentoring and other career development goals. By empowering and nurturing relationships, WIRe’s goal is to develop and accelerate women in their market research careers. www.womeninresearch.com 

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Insights Association Open Mic Night

By Greg Stucky

At the end of August, I had the pleasure to take the microphone for a few minutes at the Insights Association, Northwest Chapter's Open Mic Night. It was a fantastic session featuring five “speakers” who had the opportunity to engage with the audience on a wide variety of topics relevant to the market research industry and the work we have been doing lately.

Consumer Behavior at Restaurants

I spoke about the interesting phenomena our tracker study is seeing regarding restaurant behavior right now, where very few people are willing to go into a restaurant to eat, but a quickly growing number are perfectly willing to eat outside at a restaurant. At the event, we had a great discussion about the driving forces behind this behavior: consumer lack of trust and consumer lack of control are generating fear of sitting down inside a restaurant to eat. [Restaurant Behavior]

What Speakers Shared

We also heard more about COVID-19 influenced behaviors from Kaben Clauson at TruePublic where they are seeing some fascinating changes in attitudes toward marriage—and other social behaviors—including how high school and college students really feel about returning to school.

Roger Straus provided us all with some fantastic tips about coordinating virtual focus groups, including simple things like how to work with your team to manage technical issues and get people focused and conversational.

We all learned more about how low-vision/blind people have organized their technology and thus helped us gain new perspectives on caring for everyone in research with Mary Ann Mendez. She talked about “Being Inclusive of Those Who Are Low-vision/Blind in Research”, we are all going to be using #altext and labeling form fields and elements way more often now! It was great to hear some easy steps to take to be more inclusive.  

Amanda Durkee gave testimony on how she has used mediation and other relaxation techniques to improve her stress levels. Good advice for all of us who are working in newer, and often more chaotic, environments. We can all add simple daily activities designed to help us relax to stay happy and healthy in our new work environments.  

And to top it all off, Brian Fowler provided us all with education we never knew we needed about the ukulele and allowed us to join in a mini jam session.  

It was a great session full of new information and new connections. Looking forward to many more!