Gareth Hodgson recommends that you should be looking beyond consumers when building your research audience.
For the best part of a decade, what felt like half my income used to go to the convenience store near my children’s Primary School. As well as being fleeced for the latest gimmick or trend, I ended up on first name terms with Ali the owner and I got to do some guerilla trends ethnography and learn a lot too.
- I saw American sweets hit the shelves years before they were in mainstream retailers or before the specialist shops popped up on every city centre street (anyone for some Toxic Waste?).
- I witnessed people spending £10+ for bottles of Prime before it was on the shelves in mainstream retailers and I winced as I saw kids giving their mates a fiver just to get a couple of sips. (And when I see bottles in bargain bins everywhere now for under £1, I wince nearly as hard).
- I saw bags of every spicy variation of Takis crisps flying off the shelves for over a fiver, years before Walkers copied the packaging and flavours.
Instant Ramen noodles. Mogu Mogu juice. Freeze dried candy. Ramune soda. You name it, I was there in the trenches. As each latest TikTok trend exploded, my TikTok-less finger was firmly on the pulse, all thanks to Ali being ahead of the game.
As my youngest moved on from Primary School last year, my daily trips to Ali’s became a thing of the past too. My bank account breathed a sigh of relief.
Briefly.
Unfortunately TikTok wasn’t going anywhere, and instead of over-priced sweets, I was now having to get familiar with trending beauty and skincare brands. Byoma. Bubble skincare. Sol de Janeiro. Sephora. The influence of that platform.
But then came Dubai chocolate. Suddenly TikTok was driving my daughter’s craving for a tasty treat again (or at least a craving for a photo of the packaging for socials anyway). But where would we possibly find that?
I knew just the man.
Ali greeted me with a big smile, a fist bump and pound signs rolling in his eyes. “It’s good to see you… where’ve you been?!”. Pistachio chocolate identified. Transaction completed. We chatted briefly and I went on my way. Never to be seen again until TikTok comes calling again..
What is the point of this blog? Surely it’s not just a vehicle to show how stupidly soft a parent I am and then moan about it? Surely the research angle has got to be more than that little ethnographic reference in the first paragraph? SURELY you’re not advising people to start hanging round kids’ sweet shops?
Well surprisingly (given how many times I’ve typed the name so far), it’s not about using TikTok to research trending products either. You’re doing that already aren’t you? (No? Ooops.)
What this little tale will hopefully get you thinking about is the audiences you engage with when you are doing research. Too often briefs will focus on the people BUYING the products… customers, lapsed customers, prospects. But rarely referenced, and something we always advocate, is engaging with the people who are SELLING the products.
Especially the people who are smaller. Who are independent. Who are more flexible and transient about what they can buy and sell. Who have their finger the pulse. They are a GREAT barometer for what’s going on in the market.
One customer will tell you what they think. The person behind the till will tell you what hundreds of people think. Which products are people asking them if they’ve got or getting in? Which products are flying off the shelves and need to be restocked quicker? Which products can they charge high prices for and still sell?
By the time Prime finally hit Tesco, people didn’t care anymore.
And for you big retailers, you probably do a nice employee survey with them so you can pat yourself on the back about how happy everyone says they are, but how often do you ask your OWN staff what customers want, need or think? And don’t think this just means grocery retail. This applies no matter what sector you’re in. Leisure? Financial Services? Construction? Tech? B2C or B2B? I could keep going.
There’s a hell of a lot of insight sat in the heads of the people behind that counter, sitting on that till or rolling that cage down the aisle.
You should be talking to them.
Give us a shout if you’re thinking about how you can get even closer to what’s going on in your market. We’ll probably give you some different ideas.
