by Cindy Blackstock

Being part of a custom market research firm with global clients, we are often a go-to partner on international research—both qualitative and quantitative. And while all global market research has some challenges, global qualitative research has some unique ones.

From years of designing consumer research approaches, we’ve identified a list of questions we ask our clients to customize research for their needs. But whether you are researching with SIVO, another supplier, or leading research internally for your own organization; here are 5 watchouts when planning global, qualitative research. These apply for both in-person and virtual approaches. 

Everything takes longer than domestic-only market research.  Most global market research consists of multiple countries and languages.  This requires added time to translate all materials such as recruitment screeners, discussion guides, and transcripts. For example, domestically you may receive a recruiting update every 1-2 days. But with the additional time needed to translate the recruiting progress, your updates may occur every 3 days with non-English speaking countries.  And with transcripts needing translation time too, that delays the analysis and delivery of your final report.

SIVO Tip! When planning your research, build in extra time to account for translation needs on both the front and back ends of your research.  This could easily add an additional 2-weeks to a simple qualitative design such as webcam focus groups. 

Expect cultural differences in business norms.  Corporate cultures differ around the world. When working with partners and consumers in other countries you need to expect, respect, and allow for cultural differences. One basic example of this is with interview start-times. As an example, our Thailand local moderator and consumers were consistently in-place and talking well before the official interview start time (making our client feel like they were late to observe the conversation); whereas in Brazil we had many consumers (and even a local moderator for one interview) who joined late. 

SIVO tip! As a client who may be inviting other co-workers or organizational leaders to attend your research, prepare your team that some behaviors—from professionals and consumers—will be different.  You can even remind your team these differences are likely one of the key reasons why you are conducting global research. Embrace it!

Know in advance if you want to adapt stimulus in real time. Particularly when researching marketing messages or communication, a client may learn from a few consumers and want to adapt the stimulus. This could be as simple as learning a word or phrase translated in your stim might be academically correct but needs to be modified to a more culturally relevant word – or it could be re-writing paragraphs of copy.  In either example, you need a translator readily available to adjust the stimulus before the next interview. 

SIVO Tip! Decide in advance if you will want or need to adjust your stimulus in real time.  And if yes, identify the tactical steps and talent needed to achieve this. 

Transcribe every word of the interview. Sometimes for efficiency (budget and time), a translator may only transcribe parts of the interview directly relevant to the brand, product and / or research objectives. But there is a lot of rich learning in the commentary! For example, consumer references to local politics can provide valuable context to their reactions to your product solution or marketing messages.

SIVO Tip! Confirm in advance that your translator understands your expectation that all words will be translated. And if efficiency is a concern, you can always limit the translation to only the ‘best’ interviews.  This can condense your timeline and save costs.

Consider a collective discussion with all moderators and translators. If fielding research in multiple countries and/or markets to inform a global strategy (not a market specific plan); consider scheduling a collective debrief will all moderators and translators.  This allows for discussion on what learning is consistent vs. the differentiated needs by country. 

SIVO Tip! Such a discussion impacts your project timeline and costs and should be included as an expectation at the start of your project.  A good research partner should be able to flex and add this to the close of your project but be aware of the implications to time and budget.

These 5 watchouts when planning global, qualitative research (in conjunction with a qualified and experienced Consumer Insights agency partner) will help ensure that you have a successful project resulting in global consumer insights to inform your business decisions.  

To discuss these tips and any other questions about international or domestic consumer research, please feel free to contact the SIVO team at Contact@SIVOInsights.com for a consultation call.

As customer needs evolve and competition intensifies, traditional segmentation frameworks often fall short. Many segmentation models are based on demographics and psychographics, and often define customers based on traits such as their age, gender, attitudes and values. They tell you who your consumer is – but not why they make the choices they do. 

To fuel meaningful, strategic growth, businesses need more than demographic snapshots. They need contextual insight. This is where frameworks like Demand Space thinking comes in. 

What Is Demand Space Thinking? 

Demand Space frameworks shift the focus from static consumer traits to the moments that drive decisions. Instead of defining your audience only by traits such as age, gender, or income, this approach considers: 

• When the decision happens 

• Where the consumer is 

• Who they’re with 

• What they’re trying to achieve 

• How they feel in that moment 

It’s not about who your consumer is on paper – it’s about what’s happening around them, and inside them, when they make choices. 

Why It Matters 

Consumers don’t always behave the same way, even when they share similar traits on paper. A single person has different needs and behaviors throughout the day, week, or year, and traditional segmentation often misses these moments that drive real-world decisions. Demand Spaces, on the other hand, are based on the moments where context, emotion, and need converge.  

The Power of Demand Spaces for Growth 

When implemented thoughtfully, Demand Spaces help businesses: 

1. Reveal Unmet Needs 

Demand Spaces help businesses find the moments when consumers are underserved by existing options. These blind spots often become the clearest opportunities for growth. By identifying emotional or contextual gaps in the consumer experience, teams can design solutions that respond to real pain points and not using assumptions. 

2. Unlock Innovation Whitespace 

They also help businesses go beyond what consumers say they want and uncover what they actually need in specific situations. This helps teams design offerings that better reflect real-world behaviors.  It’s a way to spark smarter ideas, grounded in daily routines, shifting priorities, and overlooked occasions that traditional research often misses. 

3. Strengthen Brand Positioning 

Demand Space tools help position brands based on context and need, not just category. This reduces overlap and creates clearer brand roles. That means brands can carve out distinct emotional territory, ensuring each one plays a defined role in the consumer’s life, not just on a shelf. 

4. Clarify Audience Priorities 

By focusing efforts on the most critical consumer moments – when the stakes, emotions, or needs are highest – teams can prioritize smarter. It enables brands to align resources with the occasions that drive the most value, loyalty, or conversion – improving both focus and ROI. 

5. Reduce Internal Cannibalization 

They also help in assigning each brand, product, or service distinct moments. This ensures they serve different needs or occasions rather than competing for the same ones. By separating who serves what – and when – demand spaces bring clarity to brand architecture and reduce inefficiencies across portfolios. 
 
Demand Spaces help businesses unlock growth by bringing clarity to what consumers need, when they need it, and why. Instead of chasing broad segments or spreading resources thin, brands can focus on the moments that truly drive behavior – revealing new opportunities, reducing internal friction, and building solutions that resonate in the real world.  

Real-World Example: Same Consumer, Different Moments 

Let’s say your target is a 35-year-old parent who regularly shops for snacks. Depending on the situation, they might want:

• A quiet, solo snack to recharge after work (need example = calm, emotional reset) 
• A fun, shareable treat for a family movie night (need example = togetherness) 
• A convenient, energizing bite during school drop-off chaos (need example = speed, functionality) 

Each moment carries different emotional and functional needs – and may lead them to choose entirely different brands or products. This is the nuance Demand Spaces capture.

How to Map Demand Spaces 

In a challenging market, brands can’t afford to rely on guesswork. Demand Spaces provide both smarter lenses for targeting and innovation, a more human understanding of consumer behavior, and a faster path to discovering what will actually drive choice – and growth.  

To identify and activate demand spaces, brands need to move beyond static surveys. Instead, they should use context-rich research tools like: 

• Mobile ethnography and video diaries 

• In-the-moment interviews and shop-alongs 

• Qualitative deep dives to understand emotional context 

• Behavioral observation and journey mapping 

These are some of the methods that help businesses capture real consumer behavior, in real environments. At SIVO, we combine deep qualitative expertise with flexible research models to help you map the demand spaces that matter most to your business. Whether you're reassessing brand positioning, exploring whitespace for innovation, or trying to understand behavior shifts in today’s market – we help you with the right tools and insights for your business.  

Want to talk about how Demand Space research can unlock strategic clarity for your team?
We’d love to help!  

Contact us

By Kerry Juhl

Growth. Every business in the world wants to grow, wants to live their purpose, follow their mission, serve their customers, and make money from it. But sometimes it is hard to know what to do, where to go, to find that growth. We ask ourselves questions like…

• Should we improve our products and services?  Or offer new ones? 
• Should we follow our competitors’ actions or do something completely different?  
• Should we invest in more marketing to drive awareness? 
• Or maybe we stay the course and focus on driving efficiency?   

Any of these paths could be the right direction for the business but at some point, teams must put a stake in the ground. That said, strategies don’t come out of thin air. It requires an examination of the world in which the business operates.

Teams need to thoroughly examine their:

• CUSTOMERS – what do customers want, need and value and how do they behave 
• MARKET – what are the industry or category dynamics, the competitive actions 
• OWN COMPANY – what structures, processes, groups are working well, or not 

The output of this examination can be organized into a framework that inspires growth strategies.  Growth Frameworks allow teams to reconsider the world in which they operate – literally putting it into a new “Frame” that will help identify issues and unearth opportunities for growth. The opportunities within the framework offer a “where to play” roadmap for teams, allowing them to pick a path forward and define their strategy for growth.

A Proven Process

SIVO has a tried-and-true process for developing growth frameworks that has been refined over the years and across industries. The SIVO team utilizes a specific process, research approach and expert facilitation to lead business teams to a clear and relevant growth framework. The process can be customized to fit the client organization based on factors such as their existing customer knowledge, the team’s availability to participate in the process and team size. Typically, 5 to 10 client team members work collaboratively, guided through five steps, beginning with the discovery of insights that point to future opportunities and ending with an activation plan that will advance the business.  

The 5 Steps

MINE

1. SIVO recommends starting with what clients already know, by mining existing company, customer, category, and industry knowledge.

BUILD

2. We fill knowledge gaps with custom qualitative research with your brand loyalists to explore their needs, motivations, and perceptions, to uncover key insights.
3. We quantify and prioritize the research findings with the appropriate audience.
4. We leverage expert facilitation to develop and refine the growth framework.

APPLY

5. Once the business team has aligned on the framework, we move the team to application by facilitating the development of an activation summary to outline future steps.

The Resulting Growth Framework

The output of this comprehensive process is a framework that provides teams with an inspiring construct that has easily digestible, business-relevant content and a common language for client teams to rally around, so they can clearly see and prioritize a path to growth. These frameworks can take many forms, including:  

• Consumer Jobs Map – Consumer Jobs Maps (a.k.a. Demand Space Maps) help explain why consumers make the choices they make, highlighting opportunities to deliver on unmet needs.
  
• Category Vision Framework – A category vision framework envisions the category of the future.  Although no one can predict the future, SIVO, in collaboration with the client business team, develops a vision for what the future state of the category will be 3 to 5 years from now.
  
• Customer Value Equation – A Customer Value Equation framework provides an understanding of what customers value about the total brand experience by mapping the key drivers of value and the assets that support those drivers.
  
• Competitive SWOT – A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) framework allows business teams to assess and analyze a current situation from all angles and to formulate future strategies in response to the findings. 

For more definitions and details on each of these frameworks, see SIVO’s Growth Frameworks: A Path to Action & Growth blog.

Applying the Growth Framework

Applying growth frameworks to the business can lead to growth strategies that span across the 4P’s of marketing.  

Product strategies could include Innovation to launch new products that fulfill demand or Renovation to improve existing products to better meet customer needs.

Pricing strategies could include Price Increases that strategically align with consumer preferences or Cost Engineering to improve profit margins by removing attributes that consumers don’t value.

Place strategies (i.e., Distribution strategies) could include retailer and channel distribution strategies or category management negotiations to improve product placement that aligns with customer shopping habits.  

Promotion strategies could include new advertising campaigns that focus on key benefits that align with what consumers need and value or in-store promotions to align promotional activity with how consumers shop the category.

Reach out to SIVO to learn more about Growth Frameworks

SIVO wants to share our proven process for elevating your insights into a growth framework that enables your team to set strategies that put your business on the path to growth. 

Reach out to the SIVO team at Contact@SIVOInsights.com to discuss the approach and growth framework that will be the right strategic fit for your team and your business. 

By Ashton Walz

Are you new to Market Research? Or do you know someone who is new to market research? Many of us came out of business school with no more than one market research class under our belts so that means we had to learn the art and science of market research while on the job. But learning our craft while doing the job can be tricky because you're often "trying to safely fly the airplane while building it."  With this in mind, the SIVO team thought it would be great to share the basics of quantitative online survey design with the next generation of market researchers out there.  To our experienced clients and friends, please feel free to pass these nuggets on to someone new to our industry!

The Art of the Market Research Survey

An online survey for quantitative market research can be the key to gaining critical insight into your market, consumer, brand, product, or competition. Collecting this valuable data will lead to a better understanding of the market you operate in and your consumers’ preferences, opinions, behaviors, and needs. Leveraging the data and insights gathered from surveys, business teams can make informed decisions, shape their strategies, and refine their products or services. 

But collecting this data can be tricky.  If the survey is not designed well, organizations can be misled by inaccurate data.  Market researchers have a phrase for this…“Garbage in, garbage out.” No one wants to make bad decisions from bad information so here are 10 tips for writing a great market research survey. 

10 Tips for Great Online Surveys

Survey development requires both rigor and creativity. It takes experience and practice to get it right but there are some basic rules that will help you garner more accurate results:

1. Define Your Objectives

Clearly establish the purpose and objectives of your survey. Identify the specific information you want to gather and the decisions or actions that will be influenced by the survey results. This should be done first to give your survey questions purpose and direction. A best practice is to categorize your survey questions under each business objective so that when the data is collected, you know that you’ll have the answers you need.

2. Include an Introduction and Instructions

Provide a clear introduction at the beginning of the survey, explaining the purpose, importance, and estimated time for completion. Include instructions for navigating the survey and answering the questions.

3. Ensure Anonymity and Confidentiality

Assure respondents that their answers will remain confidential and anonymous. Avoid collecting personally identifiable information unless necessary for specific research purposes. Be transparent about how you will handle, store and share out the data. This allows the respondent to be comfortable and candid in their responses, which improves accuracy and depth of insight.

4. Avoid Leading or Biased Questions

Frame questions in a neutral manner to avoid biasing the respondents' answers. Use balanced language and avoid leading statements that could influence the respondents' opinions. A survey created with biased questions will ultimately be thrown out as the respondent’s answers are not representative of how they actually feel. An example of a leading question is, “Which product features do you find most useful?” This question assumes that consumers find the product useful when they might not find it useful at all.

5. Provide Response Options

Offer a variety of response options that cover the range of possible answers. Include options like "don't know" or "prefer not to answer" to account for respondents who may not have a specific answer or may be uncomfortable sharing certain information. In doing so, it becomes a lot easier to avoid bad data and get an accurate look at your consumer target’s preferences. 

6. Use Logical Flow and Organization

Organize your survey in a logical and coherent order. Start with easy, less intimidating questions to engage respondents and progressively move towards more specific or sensitive topics. By using this ‘funnel’ technique it helps prime the respondent to think more critically when the in-depth questions come up. This organization can also help the researcher to weed out any respondents that would not provide accurate or helpful information for the study. (e.g., if someone doesn’t buy carbonated water, don’t ask them what their favorite flavor is.)

7. Avoid Double-barreled questions

To ensure that your data is clear and insightful, be sure to avoid asking about two topics in a single question as it creates ambiguity in the data and leaves the analyst wondering how to interpret it. For instance, the question, “Please rate how well you like the lighting and atmosphere of this store?” leaves the analyst wondering if the respondent considered the lighting, the atmosphere or both when providing a rating.

8. Make it Interesting

A well-designed market research survey aims to uncover crucial information while simultaneously engaging with the target audience, to cultivate a sense of involvement. A mix of closed and open-ended question types can create a more interactive and enjoyable survey. Not only does it provide for an immersive experience but generally leaves the respondent feeling like they are being heard as they can freely express themselves through various types of questions.

9. Keep Survey Length under 15 minutes

In the same vein as making the survey interesting, survey length should be no longer than 15 minutes and ideally, 12 minutes or less. When respondents get fatigued, it can negatively impact their attention and diligence which impacts data accuracy. Long lengths also lead to incomplete surveys as respondents drop off.

10. Test Your Survey

Before launching the survey, conduct a pilot test with a small group of respondents to identify any confusing or problematic questions. Adjust based on their feedback to ensure clarity and relevance. This can prove to be extremely useful as there could be some things the survey designer didn’t catch that a respondent will.

Your Source for Expert Consumer Insights 

At SIVO, Inc., we dedicate ourselves to creating engaging and accurate quantitative market research surveys that help you better understand your market and consumers. We are experts in developing the appropriate questions and applying the right analytic techniques to deliver insights that meet your business objectives.  

Contact us via our website form or email us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com today to schedule a discovery call!