Case Study:
Segmentation Research Enhancement
The case:
A boutique research agency pitched a prospective client that was looking for a new perspective on segmentation research. The Rational Heart partnered with the research firm to help them show how segments differed in their emotional response to the client’s product offerings.
The challenge:
A small, innovative market research agency asked The Rational Heart to provide new and unique insights about segments of consumers in the organic sweet snacks marketplace. While emotional response could help define the client segments, brands cannot target individuals based on their emotional responses in communications or execution of a segmentation, creating a challenge on making sure the learning was highly actionable.
TRH worked in partnership with the research agency to identify the best way to leverage new emotional learnings in their segmentation research. Through this work, we identified that using emotional learning to describe and understand the segmentation’s identified key targets allowed their segmentation research to provide more details about the segments and how to better activate
against them.
The emotional
insights:
The research agency provided TRH with the sets of respondents who fell into the top-rated segments for their client brand. In turn, TRH identified the emotions that were uniquely associated with the client brand segments, and these emotions became cornerstones of the messaging strategies used to drive sales for the client.
Working to utilize emotional response data as a “segment-descriptive” indicator provided significant insights to the client teams who were looking to communicate in different emotional tones and messages to their most important segments.
The resulting strategic actions:
THR identified the emotions that were most important to their targeted segments of consumers in the organic sweet snacks category. The research agency then recommended messaging strategies that would be strong emotional influencers of behavior. Ultimately, the client brand was able to execute communications strategies to their most important segments in ways that spoke directly to their emotional triggers, not only driving interest, but also action.
Case Studies
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Confirming a new emotional approach
As one of the largest banks in the US, the brand wanted to do something different, namely to appeal to consumer’s emotional side. To do this, the bank needed to understand how consumers currently connected with the brand emotionally and compare this emotional profile to the banking industry/ category to set strategy for moving forward.
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Personalizing emotion to drive donations
A well-known research hospital uses emotional response data to identify and measure key drivers of charitable donation behavior.
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Shifting messaging based on emotional insight
A top-5 Clinical Research Organization (CRO) actively changed their messaging and business development materials, focusing on trust and curiosity.