Customer needs and motivation research
In the choices we make every day, our needs and motivations play a fundamental role. In almost everything we buy or choose, we implicitly fill a need. Our drives are our deepest needs. We are often not even aware of them, but they form the foundation for nearly all our actions. Understanding needs, beliefs and motivations about a product or service, that are present within your target audience, lays the foundation for the development of a new proposition, new service or refined positioning. The difficulty lies in the fact that many people are unaware of their needs or what motivates them. Needs and drives reside in our subconscious mind. Forum Research knows better than anyone how to bring these subconscious needs and motivations to the surface, in both B2C and B2B and commercial and not-for-profit markets. We provide insights into what truly drives people in the context of your brand, product or service, and how you can guide decision-making and behavior.
How do we approach it?
Finding out customer needs and motivations requires in-depth research using interviews. When setting up interviews, it is important to realize that people are often unaware of their needs. They are part of our subconscious intuitive system. Therefore, to uncover customer needs, we employ associative techniques. Using images, we can bring to the surface what is in the respondents' subconscious brain. This requires targeted questions, through which we delve deeper, together with the respondent, to uncover the why behind each answer given.
In search of the drives
Researching customer needs and motivations requires intensive research. Customer needs differ for each individual. We therefore conduct individual in-depth interviews. This can either be done face-to-face or online via Teams or Zoom. These in-person interviews generally last at least one hour. We record the interviews and in the analysis, we look for needs expressed explicitly or implicitly by the respondent. By lining up and clustering the registered customer needs of all respondents, we identify what drives them. These are the deeper needs that are at play in the context of the topic under study and are hidden far away in our unconscious brain. The identified drivers are frequently utilized as a strategic map for optimizing the experience of customers, stakeholders, or employees.
Success Stories
Over the past 3 years, we have conducted customer needs and motivation research for clients such as:
"Forum has intrinsic motivation and drive to find out what drives and interests people. They know how to translate this into readable, professional and science-based references."
