Our Methods

Online Discussions

As consumers have adopted new ways of communicating online, C+R has evolved its methodologies to keep pace. We've mastered the intricacies of creating online communities around our clients' products and services.

Through these online communities, we harvest all the posts, comments, photos and video to become immersed in customers' lives as they're living them -- whether they're at home or on the go.

We leverage mobile technology to stay in tune with people's behaviors in the moment. We integrate qualitative discussions with surveys in innovative ways to dive deeply into the data and extract the "whys".

C+R has conducted online discussions among a wide array of audiences, covering everything from early-stage creative development, consumer profiling/brand champion exploratory, product usage, concept evaluations/optimizations, inundation and deprivation, barriers research, path to purchase, and more.

Focus Groups

Having conducted thousands of focus groups, C+R moderators utilize an extensive set of techniques to energize consumers and uncover the hidden drivers of their behavior. We continually experiment with new techniques to keep the experience fresh, enabling us to enrich your understanding of your brands and target audiences.

Our capabilities are extensive. We can coordinate a large study with multiple moderators under one roof. We can also integrate general market and multicultural focus groups to provide a more holistic perspective. Our moderating team works closely with our quantitative research team to make multi-modal research seamless, providing you with incredibly rich insights.

Ethnographies

We are qualitative experts, skilled at connecting with consumers and uncovering their behavior, motivations, and attitudes both inside and outside the facility. Our toolbox includes face-to-face interviewing methods, including focus groups. Interacting with consumers in a focus group is an effective way to get insights, but it relies on consumers reporting their past behavior, and these reports are not always accurate. Ethnographic research allows us to truly capture consumer behavior by joining them in their worlds.

Ethnographic exploration means full immersion in people's lives; we move alongside the consumer or shopper in order to see things from their perspective. Whether that means spending time with teenagers celebrating at a Quinceanera, shopping with a consumer at the local supermarket, or cooking dinner with a family at the end the day in a real kitchen filled with hungry children, our team of professional moderators are trained to build real rapport with consumers so that they are comfortable to be themselves.

When you want to get to the heart of understanding your target audience, observing people in their "natural habitat" is an ideal way to gather rich insights. A consumer's home environment and decor can provide a look into their lifestyle and values, providing context behind their motivations and behaviors. We can learn what brands they have on hand and explore the role each plays in their routines and rituals. We can see them use key products of interest, to identify their processes and workarounds - the frustrations and pain points that can help you pinpoint opportunities for innovation or improvement.

Ideation

Transforming consumer insights into ideas is the key to fueling brand growth.

We approach ideation as a collaboration where we guide clients and push their thinking to develop original, groundbreaking ideas for new products, services, retail concepts, or marketing communications.

We conduct workshops involving both clients and creative-minded consumers (in person or online) to draw from the unique synergy between clients' category expertise and consumers' vision and point of view. Our team facilitates rounds of imaginative exercises designed to inspire creativity, stimulate different modes of thinking, and look at the consumer insight in new ways to produce fresh ideas.

In-depth Interviews

Nothing offers more depth of understanding than connecting with a consumer in a face-to-face interview. We conduct interviews individually in the home, at the store, online or anywhere to provide you with an intimate glimpse into your customers' motivations, behaviors and needs.

Mobile Qual

There's no better way to capture rich insights when consumers are "in the moment." We regularly experiment with new ways to get closer to consumers and are excited that the ongoing evolution of mobile research technology can fuel this effort. Here's just a few innovative ways we integrate mobile and qualitative research.

• Mobile journaling to obtain 'in-the-moment' instances and 'needs' states
• In-store mobile missions using smartphones or Google Glass when shopping to share opinions in real-time
• Mobile ethnographies where participants show us their world through pictures and videos
• Measuring advertising effectiveness when in a "real environment"
• Website navigation and reaction via mobile devices (using mobile markup tools)

Segmentation

Given the time and budget commitments involved, we believe that insights from segmentation research should provide insights that will have a significant impact on a company’s business and marketing strategy for years to come. Whether the goal is to identify new growth opportunities, refine or expand a brand’s target, or market more effectively, C+R has the expertise to deliver game-changing segmentation insights.

Over the years, we have developed and executed hundreds of segmentation studies in all types of industries and we continue to adapt and innovate our approaches. Our newest approach – called 360-Degree Segmentation - was developed to provide FMCG companies a smarter way to do segmentation. What makes this approach smarter? In a nutshell - we can marry actual purchase behavior (through receipt-capture) with attitudes, psychographics, and lifestyle characteristics. The beauty is that we don’t need to rely on self-reported purchase information, and we have historical purchase data on each person, providing a more in-depth analysis.

No matter what approach we use and who your target is --from margarita-drinkers to business travelers, dog owners to avid crafters, and millennials to moms of preschoolers, we have broad experience to guide us - and you - on your next segmentation project.

Concept Testing

Launching successful new products is tough. We have the tools and experience to help set you on the right path. Our concept testing solutions include screening multiple ideas to find the best and comprehensive evaluations of individual concepts to optimize them prior to launch. We're known for providing added-value insights wherever you are in the concept development process.

Our concept testing toolkit includes Max-Diff scaling and an interactive highlighter to help identify the most motivating benefits and claims in a concept. And our proprietary Concept Potential Score combines multiple factors which pinpoint a concept's true potential.

Finding winning concepts often isn't the end of the story. We have extensive expertise in helping clients determine how to manage new product(s) within their existing brand portfolios. Utilizing TURF, Shapley Value Analysis, and other share-based analytics, we provide essential insights into managing your brand's incrementality and cannibalization challenges.

Product Testing

Are you ready to launch a new product into the marketplace? Maybe you need to redesign or reformulate your existing product to cut costs, better compete against another brand, or meet new clean-labeling standards? Or, perhaps you need to evaluate your product's ease of use, effectiveness, or ease of storage? Whatever the case may be, we can partner with you to gather the consumer insights you need before your product goes to market, or goes back to market.

C+R knows what it takes to conduct successful product testing; we have decades of experience, and hundreds of studies under our belt, including in-home usage tests (IHUTs) and central location tests (CLTs). When it comes to IHUTs, in particular, we have the infrastructure in place to handle the largest, most complex studies. For example, we successfully implemented a 40-cell sequential monadic IHUT in which 10,000 products were shipped to over 5,000 participants. Along with our fulfillment partner, we can handle all aspects of your product testing - from acquiring & anonymizing competitive product, to help desk inquiries, and everything in between.

Our experience spans many product categories, so no matter your needs, we have the know-how and structure in place to design and handle your product testing with expertise, accuracy and care.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) studies have been part of C+R's fabric for over 30 years and in this time we've conducted CSAT studies for many clients across many industries. We are accustomed to handling customer satisfaction studies of all sizes - from small to very large continuous tracking studies. We have the systems, security measures and infrastructure in place to handle all the logistics for even the biggest programs, including automated "Red Flag" reports that alert you when a customer is dissatisfied, and wants to be contacted by someone from your organization. When people hear customer satisfaction tracking, many feel that the survey is staid and will never change. This is not the case with C+R, - our studies are designed with maximum flexibility; we understand that internal/external factors fuel the need to address a burning issue, or that we need to probe something more deeply. We understand that customer satisfaction tracking must be fluid, and we expect that studies will evolve and grow.

Because we understand that every study serves different needs, we don't push our clients' objectives into a one-size-fits all methodology or design, or tell you how to define loyalty - we work with you to determine criteria that makes sense for your brand and your category. Whether it's NPS, overall satisfaction, or a combination of factors, rest assured that we will dig deeply to understand what makes someone a loyal customer.

Our goal is to provide you with solutions to change vulnerable customers into satisfied ones and satisfied customers into loyal ones. Beyond that, we will work with you to help you promote the CSAT study within your organization.

A&U's

Understand what your brand means to consumers.

Has your brand had a check-up recently? Do you know if you have made in-roads in building awareness, consideration, or trial? Do you have a good grasp on the competitive landscape and how your brand stacks up? It's critical to keep your fingers on the pulse of the ever-changing landscape that your brand competes in - new products enter; consumer preferences change; the "sleeping giant" competitor finally wakes up. We can help you to understand this landscape with an Attitude, Awareness and Usage study (A&U). By partnering with us, we can reveal the power of your brand by:

• Understanding who is aware of your brand and how they feel about it
• Monitoring how your brand stacks up against the competition
• Determining the strength of your brand's equity
• Identifying barriers to product trial or use
• Uncovering opportunities through usage occasions

We understand that no category is created equal, and certainly no brand is created equal - that's why we customize each project with the most relevant metrics for your brand and your category.

With decades of experience under our belt, and virtually every brand category researched, we know what it takes to design, implement, and bring the findings from an A&U study to life. Let us know how we can help you!

Advertising Testing

Sometimes you need to evaluate early-stage creative as quickly as possible. You want to make sure your creative is telling the right story.

CopyIQ is an online and interactive research methodology that blends innovation, art, and science to evaluate your brand's early-stage creative quickly and easily. CopyIQ cuts budgets and timelines by bringing real-time research to you anytime, anywhere - whether you need to test rough-cut ads, animatics, finished commercials, storyboards, positioning themes or more.

By leveraging the best of both quantitative and qualitative research, online pre-recruited respondents react to your creative in real-time through group-directed dynamic probing, as well as closed-ended and open-ended questions. Each session ends with an immediate debrief of findings and a full report delivered within one week.

From measuring message communication, persuasive ability, ad diagnostics, and more, CopyIQ facilitates on-the-fly learning about what's working with your advertising and what's not. We've helped brand managers, agency folks, and researchers achieve their goals using our approach.

Advanced Analytics

Run-of-the-mill statistics don't exist here. Our in-house Advanced Analytics team excels at delivering innovative, yet practical analyses that elevate every project's findings. They not only bring advanced analytics expertise to the table, but also a keen business acumen. Our statistical consultants are true team members - they are on the project every step of the way - from translating your complex questions into spectacularly-designed research to helping analyze the data into actionable insights.

Our analytic toolbox is deep and varied. You name it, we've done it.

• We can optimize your product line by using TURF and cannibalization/incrementality analysis - a must-have for many of our CPG clients.
• Conjoint helps forecast demand and configure products, product portfolios and pricing. We have a wide array of methodologies from traditional conjoint and choice-based conjoint to adaptive and menu-based conjoint.
• We tackle segmentation in a number of ways - k-means, latent class, hierarchical approaches and innovations like cluster ensembles. We also leverage a Max Diff approach in many of our segmentation surveys to gain greater discrimination in defining your segments.
• To understand the strengths of concepts, we offer model-based scoring techniques such as Bradley-Terry.
• We have lots of tools in our arsenal that we use for drivers analyses - it could be as simple as correlations or ANOVAs, and as advanced as structural equation modeling or hierarchical Bayes regression.

Pop-up or Short Term Communities

Our clients love the flexibility of short-term online communities. They are perfect whether you have one specific research objective that needs to be addressed over a few months or you have multiple related questions for one targeted audience. Our community managers provide you with the flexibility and tools to conduct any combination of qualitative and/or quantitative research among as few as 50 or as many as thousands of participants.

Long Term Communities

Our clients love the depth of insights that come from long-term online communities. They are perfect when you need to address multiple research objectives on an on-going basis or wish to continuously engage with your customers for feedback and ideas. Whether for six months, twelve or longer, our community managers provide you with flexible tools to conduct any combination of qualitative and/or quantitative research among as few as several hundred or as many as thousands of participants.

Flex/DIY Communities

Feel like an online community is the right answer, but not sure how to make it happen within your budget? C+R's Flex DIY Communities can be set up for you to conduct your own research, helping you gain the information you need for a cost you can live with.

We equip you with our user-friendly platforms so that you can put questions into the community yourself. Our team builds and manages the community's ongoing health and sampling so that you can focus on the getting the insights you need. If your time or resources become constrained, our analysts can help move your projects along. We help you in any way you need - by building your questionnaires, developing discussion guides, or providing support with programming or analysis and reporting.

Custom Panels

Panels are different from communities in that participants do not interact with each other. Panels are best used when you don't need to see interactions over time - when you simply need quick access to your target audiences at any given time.

Custom panels can be either short term or long term, and can have anywhere from 50 participants to thousands. Because participants are pre-recruited and we know their profile, C+R has immediate access to panelists who can be selected to participate in online qualitative or quantitative research projects.

Mobile Communities

Mobile Communities or Panels are perfect for those who seek a solution for ongoing research objectives that require in-the-moment insights or heavy mobile user targets. We utilize mobile platforms that are app- OR web-based, depending on the needs of your research. All of C+R's Community or Panel solutions can be mobile only!

Whether for six months, twelve, or longer, our community managers provide you with ways to conduct any combination of qualitative and/or quantitative mobile research among your targeted participants, whether you require several hundred or even thousands of participants. We have myriad tools at our fingertips, such as geo location, barcode scanning, and multimedia uploads, to ensure any experience is captured. All these tools open the door to all sorts of in-the-moment insights:

• usage journals
• purchase journey
• in-store experience
• on-premise consumption
• video confessionals

Lasso (Mobile Sample)

Do you have any apps on your mobile device - games, fitness, brain teasers, etc.? If you're like millions of other smartphone and tablet users, we bet you do! Now, you can reach these millions of consumers, in the moment, on their mobile devices without having to rely on a pre-recruited panel.

Lasso is C+R's mobile sampling solution for reaching mobile consumers while they're playing games and using other interactive apps. Lasso is especially great for harder to reach audiences, such as millennials, young men, multicultural consumers and lower income consumers.

Mobile-friendly Surveys

What's the most appropriate device for your survey? Is it a smart phone, tablet, or PC? We understand the 'who', 'what', 'where', and 'how' of the 5, 10, and 20" screens on which people complete surveys.

Mobile is the most important technology for research since the internet. Smartphones are now carried by more than two-thirds of the US population and over 30% of all surveys are being completed on mobile devices. As a result, we design mobile-friendly surveys that are responsive - meaning they will automatically resize and reformat to fit any device that a respondent wants to use to complete a survey. This strategy enhances the respondent's experience, and in turn ensures data quality and maximizes survey response. For complex study designs, such as discrete choice, shelf-set evaluation, and segmentation, we intentionally limit mobile access in order to ensure the highest-quality data.

Shopper Missions

Understand the shopping experience from a shopper's perspective. We send respondents out on assignment and have them use mobile technology to communicate what they notice, what they consider, how they decide, and what they experience. From ad hoc virtual shop-alongs or as part of your path to purchase study, we help you evaluate the shoppers' experience as it's happening. With the ability to take and upload photos and videos, as well as scanning barcodes and confirming location through geo targeting, mobile technology enhances the information we gather from shopper missions.

In-the-Moment Insights

We've all seen it - people taking photos of their meals at restaurants, snapping selfies at sporting events, messaging in the check-out line, and posting comments during television shows. Mobile gives us the opportunity to communicate with your audience wherever they are, whenever it works for them.

In-the-moment insights are obtained through surveys, discussions, journals, photos and videos, in or outside of a consumer's home. Whether you want to understand usability issues, in-context drivers or barriers of choice, C+R uses mobile technology to help you capture and evaluate in-the-moment experiences with your consumers.