Waiting for the freak-out
Editor’s note: Bryan Urbick is CEO and president of Consumer Knowledge Centre, a U.K.-based research firm.
What do Pizza Hut, Burger King, Verizon and Dunkin’ Donuts have in common? Apart from the obvious food element with three out of the four, they have all embarked on deprivation techniques, in which marketers attempt to measure brand loyalty by depriving consumers of a much-loved product.
The idea is to gain - supposedly - a greater insight into customer behavior. Some commentators have referred to the tactic of deprivation (or deception as it has been colloquially called) as a marketing prank, a trick played on customers to see how they would react when deprived of something they “simply couldn’t live without.” But marketing professionals retort, arguing that they use the research technique to measure the degree of customer loyalty to a brand or product by taking it away from consumers for a given period of time.
Simply put, a brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the individual consumer. To some, it may mean very little but, as marketers hope, to the target audience it should mean value, satisfaction and a strong feeling of well-being. A key to marketing success is identifying and understanding the specific drivers of the perceptual process.
As consumers we tend to think that how we perceive the world is objective and factual. However, there is ample evidence to suggest that this information is often strongly influenced by personal feelings, tastes and opinions, and less a reality than we might imagine. For marketers this creates a somewhat complex situation in that consumers will not only view brands differently from the brand owners but also from each other. In Burger King’s deprivation research, customers were told that Burger King had discontinued the Whopper. The reaction (captured in the “Whopper freak-out” commercials) was, perhaps, foreseeable. Loyal customers felt bewildered and betrayed when told that they could no longer buy the Whopper. An instinctive reaction, yet too subjective to draw any meaningful conclusions. When offered an alternative from a fast-food rival, many declined the offer vehemently. This reaction provided a small degree of brand insight but not enough to draw any helpful marketing conclusions.
So, does deprivation research on its own provide sufficient and meaningful data? There is no doubt that taking the brand away from extremely brand-loyal consumers and documenting the experience can be a useful means of determining the aspects of the brand experience that generate enduring connection. However, we believe that the learning can be deepened by adding an inundation technique with category loyals (rather than brand loyals, but you could include switchers) in which usage is forced upon them and comparing the outcomes of the two exercises.
Two-pronged approach
Layering memory association with this two-pronged approach to uncover deep emotional stories has helped to better understand the brand experience and provide actionable information to attract new users to the brand. These techniques allow the marketer to further delve into consumers’ psyches, trawling for and building on common threads. A three-dimensional analysis of the brand experience then comes to life.
One of the aims of the combined deprivation/inundation technique for marketing professionals is to get under the skin of the brand and the product experience in order to understand loyal consumers’ rational and emotional connections. Equally important is to learn more about the wider competitive set, the other brands and products in play, and the role of the purchaser in their specific category. This latter point is important particularly if the purchaser is not the end user. This can clearly be the case where certain foods (cereals for example) are purchased by mothers for their children. Marketers can be battling into a strong head wind if they try to influence the purchaser without giving due consideration to the needs and desires of the user, and vice versa. Deprivation/inundation in this situation can provide valuable data from two important sources.
Best methods
Together, deprivation and inundation work to create an insight-mining method that’s more than just the sum of its parts. To better understand why, it is important to analyze the best methods of conducting each and their strengths and weaknesses as well as get to grips with the key points of understanding that each provides.
We know that deprivation can provide a unique insight into the role of a brand or product from the perspective of a loyal, frequent user who is forced to do without it. Inundation, on the other hand, forces the usage of a specific brand on a target consumer who is not brand-loyal but is someone who may or may not be familiar with the brand. The intersection of the truths between the deprivation and inundation groups marks a path of communication that is built not only on a brand and category truth but is also designed to drive behavior change within the target group. The deep dive then overlays emotional reasons and truths from both loyal and target consumers to get beneath the mere functional/rational responses. Given the high degree of subjectivity of brand preference, which is influenced by personal feelings, beliefs and desires, it is imperative to develop as much objective data as possible from this often intuitive environment.
Taking something away
Much has been written about the use of deprivation to explore brand relevance and importance in consumer lives. The logic of the idea is sound: by taking something away that has become a regular part of one’s life, a unique understanding can emerge. But be in no doubt that those consumers taking part in a deprivation group will generally find the program very difficult. More often than not they will claim that the actual experience differed markedly from their initial expectations.
It is, therefore, important for marketers and researchers to have rigid guidelines and be prepared to offer appropriate support to this important group. After all, these participants are the loyal customer base. The length of the program will depend on a number of factors including the product under review, the number of available participants and the time projected to gain meaningful data. Dealing largely with food and beverage products, we have generally found that a time frame of seven to 10 days is, in most cases, sufficient to gather the data we require. Other products, particularly those in the telecom sector for example, may take longer to gather the required data.
Deprivation definitely works best with avid consumers since they are most connected to the brand and are most able to articulate what is missing when forced to refrain from using it. Participants must be prohibited from using a specified brand and, depending on the product being tested, generally not any other brand in that specific category either. If the product under review, for example, was an Apple computer, it would be difficult for participants not to use any other brand of computer. Indeed, by not limiting category usage (depending on the learning objectives) it can be interesting to see what brands and products within that category become the avid consumer’s second choice.
Those consumers who are frequent but less avid do not necessarily miss the brand enough during the deprivation period to allow us to ascertain the deepest, most compelling truths of the brand or product experience. “Avid” needs to be defined on a project-by-project basis, but would usually encompass the top 2 to 10 percent (in frequency of usage) of what would typically be classed as the regular, loyal consumer.
During the deprivation period participants must be encouraged to keep in-depth diaries or journals. Written diaries are OK but video diaries, blog entries or other electronic media, in our opinion, provide more meaningful data. No matter what the format, it is important that the participant documents what they consumed or used, and reasons why that choice was selected over other options available. These replacements, and more importantly the reasons for the choice, are particularly insightful in helping the consumer, as well as the researchers, understand the role of the researched brand or product.
Marketing professionals and allied researchers should also ensure that the first time the deprivation participants have a specific brand or product after the deprivation period, it be in the group or interview session. This “first experience” can often uncover some interesting behaviors and habits, and these can be observed, possibly probed, to add another dimension to the learnings.
Not devoid of weaknesses
While deprivation exercises are very effective at uncovering highly-relevant insights into consumer behavior and reasons for using a specific product or brand, they are not devoid of weaknesses. Similar to the Burger King “No Whopper” example, another major fast-food restaurant chain set out speak to avid eaters and engage them in a deprivation study. The top end of avid consumers were profiled as those who visited the restaurant regularly, at least four to five times a week. Having identified a good number of consumers who met the profile, the company could not get them to take part in the program, even after being offered a lucrative incentive to do so. The identified consumers simply felt that they could not go seven to 10 days without eating at the named restaurant. This resulted in the company working with consumers who were not at the top end of the avidity scale. Although the insights uncovered turned out to be sound and relevant for the company, one was left wondering if data more compelling might have been obtained from those most avid consumers.
This demonstrates a potential flaw in using deprivation alone. If the consumer is truly an avid consumer of a specific product and brand, but simply could not forgo their beloved product for a specified period of time, it leaves marketers and researchers with little choice but to use the less-avid consumer. Relevant data may still emerge but it always leaves a nagging doubt!
Deep truths
As with the deprivation programs, inundation exercises can uncover deep truths about brands and categories in addition to providing an understanding of lapsed, light or possibly medium users. Inundation works slightly differently to deprivation in that forced-usage programs work best with avid category consumers rather than specific brand users as in deprivation programs. Category consumers are those most connected to a category and are, in our experience, most able to articulate what they find different by being forced to use a specific brand.
Inundation programs would generally run for the same length of time as deprivation programs but, again, would depend on the learning objectives. Frequency of product or brand usage during the exercise should be determined by the frequency of use, or level of consumption, by a loyal consumer over the same period of time.
Inundation programs can provide some very interesting and enlightening information. Not only might they uncover the consumers’ surprise at the brand being researched but they may also highlight disappointments or weaknesses. Inundation forces awareness of a brand onto consumers through usage, and the consumer path of that awareness can provide creative answers to brand questions that might otherwise not be available to marketers through normal channels.
It can be hugely beneficial to get inundation participants to purchase the product being tested from their usual outlets, although in some cases they may need to be steered to specific types if this is determined useful to the study. Having the consumer purchase the product lets us explore the experience of the purchase which, in turn, often highlights issues that go beyond insight cultivation. These data provide brand teams with valuable information as they develop the holistic proposition at all the relevant touchpoints.
As with the deprivation group, inundation participants are required to keep diaries of their experiences - be they hard copies or in electronic form. Additional information can be gathered if the participants are also encouraged to develop a culminating collage or some other creative projective technique incorporating the various sensory attributes that are most notable during the experience.
As with other market research methods, inundation exercises have a number of challenges, not the least of which is the forced usage of a product or brand. There can be psychological barriers to an insistence on usage or consumption, particularly if the brand being researched has not been one that the participant is familiar with or used to. A gentle persuasion is often needed to encourage willing participation, and that willingness is usually best suited for those consumers who are open to trying new products. Neophobic consumers - those who are inherently afraid of new things - must be screened out before the commencement of the program. “Switchers” are usually good candidates because their category usage is not determined by one specific brand. Working with avid users of the primary competitive brands can be successful, but ways to overcome natural animosity to a rival brand experience need to be considered. Incentive programs can help in a small way, but more engaging to most is the participation in a study that is about understanding and not about conversion.
Psychotherapy sessions
Although deep-dive (complex implementation of qualitative methods as well as deep interviews of participants) is relatively straightforward theoretically, it takes an indefatigable researcher to uncover below-the-surface emotional landscapes, constantly digging deeper and not merely accepting functional or rational responses. Successful deep dives are more like psychotherapy sessions (and indeed can be very cathartic to those who participate), and the role of moderator is key to their success. The challenge is to be insistent (but kind) and inquisitive while keeping within the time frame and the overall project brief. Deep dives usually connect to greater belief systems and values, and these then need to be tied into the category being researched.
Only when the conversion aspects and other findings from the inundation program are compared with the learnings from the deprivation exercise do the common themes for creating a path for the brand become evident. Importantly, this path is forged by the deep brand insight common among avid consumers and those who are non-users. The use of the common truths, with the understanding of the emotional web surrounding it, provides vital support for the brand or product teams to channel that insight into behavior-changing marketing strategies.
New twist
On a lighter note, deprivation took on a new twist earlier this year when Burger King (in its ongoing campaign with the Whopper) ran an advertising campaign on Facebook - the Whopper Sacrifice - in which participants were promised a coupon for a free hamburger if they deleted 10 people from their friends list on the social network. Whether or not this exercise could be classified as true deprivation, the campaign was hugely successful. The Facebook application was installed in a matter of days and used by more than 80,000 people to delete over 230,000 friendships. A corresponding message was then sent to each of the deleted friends saying that they were worth less than one-tenth of a Whopper!
Humorous and undoubtedly successful, depriving oneself of 10 friends for a hamburger will probably not be seen by the purists as a true case study in deprivation. But in research, there are a great many things to be learned by the methodology - particularly when combining deprivation with inundation.