What is Consumer Intelligence, Exactly?
What is Consumer Intelligence, Exactly?
"Consumer Intelligence" can sound complex, but the core idea is simple: it's about gathering and using consumer data to make better business decisions. Instead of just knowing what people buy, it's about understanding why they buy it, and predicting what they might do next.
This allows businesses to move beyond assumptions and truly understand both their current and potential customers, leading to stronger relationships, improved offerings, and sustainable growth.
Consumer Intelligence involves a continuous process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data related to consumers. This data is then transformed into actionable insights that inform various business strategies.
Here’s a breakdown of the different ways we at The People Platform generate Consumer Intelligence:
Surveys: Understanding the Voice of the Customer
Modern surveys are a direct and invaluable way to tap into the voice of the customer. Effective surveys go beyond basic questions, focusing on detailed and nuanced feedback.
- Beyond Basic Questions: Businesses use targeted questions to delve into specific aspects of the customer experience. For instance, a movie network might ask moviegoers about advertisements that they saw and their overall moviegoing experience to gain valuable insights into ad recall and effectiveness.
- The Power of "Why": Questions with space for specific user feedback allow customers to express their thoughts and feelings, providing qualitative data that reveals deeper motivations. For example, instead of just knowing a customer was unhappy, a survey might ask "Thinking about your recent experience with us, what worked well and what could have been better?"
- Targeted Engagement: Effective surveys are designed to reach the right people at the right time. Businesses can segment their customer base and tailor surveys to specific interactions or purchase experiences, such as a post-movie survey. At The People Platform™, we use a combination of location-based mobility data and other advanced targeting methods to identify and survey consumers.
Use Case: An airport advertising network sought to optimize ad placements and demonstrate value to brands targeting travelers. By implementing targeted surveys among passengers in key airport locations, they gathered real-time feedback on ad recall, engagement with specific campaigns, and traveler demographics, enabling data-driven decisions for ad inventory pricing and improved campaign effectiveness for advertisers.
Location Intelligence: Understanding Consumer Movement in the Real World
Location Intelligence analyzes the physical movement patterns and behavior of people in real-world spaces. By leveraging geospatial data, businesses gain insights into where customers go and how they interact with physical locations.
- Observe Patterns & Trends: Ethical Location Intelligence focuses on identifying broader trends and aggregated patterns, not tracking individuals invasively.
- Unlocking Actionable Insights: Understanding consumer movement patterns to physical locations, including identifying peak visitation times and analyzing consumer journeys, provides critical insights for a wide range of businesses to optimize marketing campaigns, media attribution, and overall strategic planning – regardless of whether they are the physical venue itself.
- Competitive Advantage: Analyzing where else their target audience shops & visits and what areas are underserved informs decisions about new store locations or targeted marketing strategies.
Use Case: A big fast-food chain notices increased lunch hour foot traffic near a location. Location Intelligence reveals a nearby frequently trafficked office complex, prompting the introduction of a faster lunch menu and targeted promotions for those office workers.
Audience Measurement: Understanding Media Consumption
Audience Measurement goes beyond simple surveys by fusing location data and demographic/behavioral information with other valuable first- or third-party transactional data. This comprehensive approach integrates insights from sources like point-of-sale (POS) systems, venue operational data, and direct customer counts to create a richer, more accurate understanding of who is consuming various forms of media and their real-world behaviors.
- Real-World Reach & Impressions: By blending location insights with audience data, we turn real-world foot traffic into verified reach and impression figures giving marketers a clear picture of how often their messages are actually seen.
- Optimizing Advertising Spend: By providing a deep understanding of real-world audience behavior through comprehensive measurement, we empower media owners to strategically plan and effectively sell advertising placements in DOOH/DPB environments. This rich data also fuels programmatic buying, enabling advertisers to efficiently target desired audiences across physical and digital touchpoints, maximizing the value of their ad spend.
- Informing Content Creation: Content creators and media companies use this data to understand audience preferences and tailor their offerings.
Use Case: A travel network leverages Audience Measurement to identify a highly engaged core viewership of women aged 40-59. This granular insight into their audience composition allows them to demonstrate significant value to advertisers, commanding higher advertising rates due to the ability to connect brands with a proven, relevant, and engaged demographic. This valuable audience data can be made available for ingestion into leading media buying and planning platforms such as Nielsen Media Impact (NMI) to optimize broader media strategies.
The Power of Knowing Your Consumer
In today's hyper-competitive marketplace, Consumer Intelligence provides the tools and insights necessary to build stronger customer relationships, optimize offerings, enhance customer experiences, and drive sustainable growth.
By understanding customers' unique needs, preferences, motivations, and pain points, businesses can transform raw data into actionable wisdom, leading to more informed decision-making, more effective strategies, and a more customer-centric future.
Interested in learning how The People Platform can improve your business? Contact us today.
