Ethnographic Solutions

Determining customers’ “unmet needs” has become a kind of Holy Grail of consumer research. Since these needs often exist outside of customers’ everyday awareness, we prefer to conceptualize them as “unrecognized consumer needs.” Additionally, the discussion of “unmet needs” is too absolute—we carefully examine those areas in which customers’ existing needs may only be partially satisfied (“undermet needs”) as ripe opportunities for enhancement or innovation.

Interpreting the complexities of the consumption experience—going beyond what consumers say to get at what they really mean and actually do in their behavioral routines—enables us to provide illuminating insights to critical questions, including:

• · What are consumers’ situational and task-specific goals?
• · What are consumer deeper-level motivations and aspirations?
• · What specifically in the product/services category and brand, frustrates or disappoints them?
• · What behavioral strategies have they adapted to overcome problems/issues they regularly encounter when
•   using existing products/brands?

By identifying those ignored and overlooked opportunities that exist in the category to truly delight and surprise consumers, Ethnographic Solutions provides recommendations that close the gap between what customers really want/need and what is currently available to them.