Customer Needs Research

Understanding decision-making, needs, behaviors & perceptions

As B2B purchase decisions and buyer journeys become more complex, understanding the needs and perceptions of customers, along with how they make decisions, has never been more important.

Customer needs research spans a huge range of business questions and insight needs, from exploring perceptions of C-Suite decision-makers and understanding different customer needs and purchase drivers, through to buyer persona research and customer journey research. Often, these projects are complemented by ongoing customer satisfaction or loyalty tracking.

 

Our approach: Using laddering to elicit “beneath the surface” customer insights

customer needs research - laddering technique

In-depth interviews allow us to get underneath the skin of issues through techniques such as laddering. Laddering is a qualitative research technique that is used to explore the underlying values, beliefs and motivations that drive decision-making and buyer behavior.

Laddering goes beyond traditional questioning through probing deeper to understand the underlying reasons for choices and behaviors. Follow-up questions such as “why did you choose/do this?” and “why is it good/bad?” are asked to explore the consequences of a decision or attitude. The final step is to establish the values which ultimately drive choices and beliefs by asking questions such as “why is that important / what is the impact?”.

This approach allows us to identify the key factors that drive decisions and what truly matters most to customers, enabling you to understand decision-making and develop products and solutions that meet customer needs.

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Our approach: The Three Circles Framework

customer needs research - three circles framework

The Three Circles model is a framework for understanding customer needs and improving the customer experience.

By using this model, we can establish unique areas for differentiation by exploring customer wants, needs and desires whilst taking into account the benefits that your organization offers, and the benefits offered by competitors or alternative solutions.

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Case study: Helping Fellowes to better understand the needs and challenges of paper shredder users

Fellowes provides workplace solutions which range from shredders, binders, laminators and staplers through to workspace health solutions, storage solutions and air-cleaning/purification solutions. The focus for this project was on the shredder market.

The overall aim of the customer needs research was to better understand the needs and challenges of paper shredder users in a post-pandemic landscape and observe the impact of a changing work dynamic on shredder usage.

Find out how these insights were used to identify opportunities for Fellowes and reveal some of the key challenges that paper shredder users face when thinking about purchasing a shredder and when using a shredder in their day-to-day role.

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customer needs research

 

Case study: Using technology-adoption profiling and customer needs research to support Ligentia's global strategy development

Ligentia is an international supply chain solutions provider focused on data driven supply chains. With innovation and evolution being core to Ligentia’s growth, the business is acutely aware that primary research among customers and prospects is key in supporting strategic development.

Ligentia needed to validate key themes with a customer and market view as part of a planned refresh of the brand and build out of the product portfolio and marketing collateral to support the next chapter of global growth, to ensure that all developments were based on real market requirements and needs.

Ligentia required research to better understand market requirements and customer needs. Not only did this research need to investigate the impact of trends beyond COVID-19, but it was also necessary to predict future challenges and how customers are looking to change their operations in response to these so that Ligentia could continue to develop market-leading solutions and services.

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customer needs research case study

 

Our Clients

JLL
AkzoNobel
Shell
Brenntag
MolsonCoors
Tetra Pak
E-ON
Michelin
 

B2B Insights and Viewpoints: What we’ve learned from doing Customer Needs Research

 
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