Crowd-funded research – the democratisation of insights

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This opinion piece was written for M+AD by Nichola Quail, a founder and research director at Fresh Focus: We believe the traditional market research model is out of reach for many businesses and as a result there is a lot of intuition, guesswork and assumptions made about customers, their motivations and why they do what they do (or don’t).

This is preventing brands from truly getting to the heart of what makes their customers tick and holding businesses back.

We want to change this by making research accessible, affordable and collaborative through the launch of New Zealand’s first-ever crowd-funded research project looking at the life and mindset of today’s male shopper and the role they play in decision making.

Democratising insights through a crowd- funded campaign is an idea Fresh Focus has been bringing to life over the last few months and materialised after conversations with marketers and business owners especially from ‘ME’ sized organisations who want a better understanding of human behaviour but don’t have mammoth budgets to spend.

We are really excited to launch this new initiative and to be working with Pledgeme – a fellow innovator. We are passionate about breaking down the barriers to market research and helping brands big and small, have access to insights that can truly make a difference to their business.

“For our first crowd-funded campaign we chose to focus on male shoppers as we believe there are a lot of myths to bust open, assumptions and stereotypes to challenge.”

Crowd-funded research is a commercial model where a collective of businesses pledge money and share the total cost of the project. Pledgers invest in different reward packages with $10 being the minimum commitment right through to the premium corporate package for $9497. If the money is raised, the research project happens.

The result will give brands previously unavailable insights and information that can be applied to their business immediately.

For our first crowd-funded campaign we chose to focus on male shoppers as we believe there are a lot of myths to bust open, assumptions and stereotypes to challenge. We will explore their shopping behaviour, rituals and routines and discover what is really going on inside the minds of Kiwi males today and understand the why.

Using a mix of ethnography and quantitative analysis we will unlock and reveal the male shopper as a person — his values, lifestyle, expectations, and the choices he makes when it comes to shopping for himself, retailers, and brands. We will explore and identify how and where he finds inspiration, what sources he uses, and what is missing in this mix. We may find there is one male shopper typology or many.

We will find out the why by asking the right questions.

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