Market Research

Customer insights at the core of successful strategy development

Successful transformation is based on sound knowledge of customers and markets. We combine market research and strategic consulting methods in gathering the information essential to well-prepared and successful transformation.

Deciphering the customer logic

At the heart of customer dominant logic, lies the identification of a customer´s needs, activities, and motivations. Knowing customer tasks, processes, goals, as well as their pet peeves and what brings them joy. Customers are not necessarily always individuals – especially in a B2B environment, they might be members of a buying center, a department (Purchasing) or even a company as a whole.

We conduct in-depth interviews and means-end analyses in addition to evaluating service reports and complaints in order to fully understand the customer decision-making process. Theoretically, there are as many customer logics as there are customers. For the sake of practicality, it makes sense to bundle these and group customers into buyer Personas.

Understanding the customer ecosystem

A customer does not think or act within a vacuum. The customer logic is always embedded in an ecosystem of interacting players and elements. We use focus groups and ecosystem-mapping to identify the customer’s environment and relevant relationships. In customer journey mapping, emphasis is also placed on the customer’s activities that are unrelated to the offerings of the service provider in question.

Identifying drivers of value development

Customers take advantage of a service offer when it creates specific value. This value might be either rational or emotional. It can develop before, during or after utilization of the service. We identify value drivers for products, services, and brands using in-depth interviews, netnography and ethnography, Kano model interviews, and UX research. All guided by the basic principle that value formation for the customer is not created by the offer itself, but by its application within the customer’s ecosystem.

Our mix of methods

Due to our close cooperation with the Universities of Basel and Hohenheim, we conduct all our research at state-of-the-art facilities that are ‘right at our doorstep.’ With our fingers on the pulse of the latest developments in methodology and technique, we can efficiently and effectively survey and analyze relevant customer and market information.  Our mix of methods encompasses everything from classic market research approaches such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, and quantitative customer surveys to ethnographic methods and UX research.