brand research questions

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The complete guide to brand perception surveys.

7 min read Who owns your brand? Your marketing team? Your public relations staff? Your CEO? In a very real sense, your customers own your brand. It is what they think it is. It promises what they say it promises.

What does a brand perception survey do?

Brand perception surveys help you understand how your brand is perceived in the mind of customers, prospects, employees, and other stakeholders. They paint a picture of the mental real estate your brand owns and how it compares to that of your competitors’ brands.

At a very simple level, a brand is just an idea connected to your product. For example:

• Simple + Computer = Apple
• Cola + Youth = Pepsi
• Rebel + Motorcycle = Harley Davidson
• Pictures + Temporary = SnapChat

Do you know how many customers recall or recognize your brand name and logo ? Use our free brand awareness survey template to find out.

Why are brand perception surveys important?

Brand perception can be formed over time through different customer experiences . A customer’s personal experience with your product or service can spread throughout a market and solidify a positive or negative reputation among those who may know nothing about your company at all.

Brand perception surveys hold a key position in promoting positive brand equity – the value premium a brand brings to a business. Businesses want to maintain high levels of brand equity as this can have a knock-on effect on sales and profits.

As customers have ‘ownership’ over the brand’s image in their minds, it’s important that businesses can influence this. To do this, you first need to measure brand perception regularly, track it over time, and identify what drives improvements.

A brand perception survey is a painless and cost-effective way to measure your customer’s views on your brand. It’s regularly employed by brand managers as it provides more flexibility than in-person workshops: surveys can be completed in the target audience’s own time.

Best Practices : Discover how to increase response rates in your brand perception surveys. 

Questions to ask in a brand perception survey

There are 4 core human factors that lead to brand affinity:

• Cognitive – the concepts that a consumer associates with your brand
• Emotional – the feelings that a consumer associates with your brand
• Language – how a consumer describes your brand
• Action – the experiences a consumer has with your brand

When you design your brand perception survey, focus on these 4 key areas that will help you understand the cognitive, emotional, language, and action factors of your brand. The following sections will describe each area and provide some example questions to start you off.

These questions should draw out the associations that consumers connect to your brand. You can start off with open-ended questions and then tighten using multi or single-select lists.

Example questions :

• Open-ended question: When you think of [your brand], what comes to mind first?
• List question: Which of the following words describe [your brand]?
• Positive to negative scale question: Of the words you selected, how do you feel about each?

These questions should attempt to identify the feelings connected to your brand, and if those draw them closer to the brand or pull them away.

• Open-ended question: What kind of feelings do you experience when you think of [your brand]?
• List question: How would you describe your level of emotional attachment to [your brand]?
• List question: When you think of [your brand], how do you feel?

These questions teach you how consumers internalize and understand your brand by asking how they would describe it to others.

• Open-ended question: Which three words would you use to describe [your brand]?
• Open-ended question: How would you describe [your brand] to a friend?
• List question: Which words would you use to describe [your brand]?

These questions should answer how positive or negative a consumer’s previous experience has been with your brand.

• Open-ended question: How would you describe your last experience with [your brand]?
• List question: Which best describe your last experience with [your brand]?
• Scale question: On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend to a friend or colleague?

Who should you send your brand perception survey to?

Try to take into consideration who the best audience for your survey is. The kinds of insights you can draw from your survey will depend largely on who you invite to participate. For example, if your brand is about comfortable maternity-wear, you may choose to survey one (or more) of three different audiences:

• You may want to get a wide pool of responses from different backgrounds indiscriminately, including expecting mothers, new mothers, partners, friends, and family. This could provide a 360-degree perspective that gives very general insights.
• Alternatively, you could focus on expecting mothers, then women thinking of having a child, etc. in a segment-by-segment approach , sorted in order of product market relevance. Your customer perceptions will then be from very focused, but relevant markets.
• You might also choose to send your survey to people from each possible stage of the customer journey . This focuses on audiences with greater involvement and brand affinity, shown by increased sales activity. In our maternity wear business example, the survey could be given to:
• Non-customers that have no knowledge of your brand
• New customers who have experienced it for the first time
• Current customers have the experience of purchasing a product
• Long-term repeat customers that enjoy using your brand
• Former customers that did not enjoy using your brand

In this way, you would gain customer perceptions from different perspectives along the customer sales cycle, helping you focus on process and product improvements.

Each of these three approaches provides unique and valuable insights.

Getting started with a brand perception study

Brand perception surveys have three main outcomes:

• Understand the impact of your marketing campaigns on brand perception.
• Resolve the gap between the brand qualities you want to portray and how the customer actually feels.
• Identify areas for improvement based on customer perceptions.

Tracking and managing these three stages can be hard to do without an intuitive solution.

The Qualtrics Brand Perception Study is a solution that gives a 360-degree understanding of how effective your marketing and messaging is. It’s an all-in-one product that helps you:

• Understand if your product experience is aligned with your brand values .
• Track how well consumers are accepting the ideas you try to associate with your brand. The ideas they associate with your brand help determine their affinity towards it.
• Measure how your brand is positioned against relative competitors.

Watch a video about the Qualtrics Brand Perception Study

Prebuilt reports, like below, show you instant analysis of your data, so you can spend more time delivering results.

Over time, results can be monitored and compared to see how your brand perception changes across different audiences.

Better understand the health of your brand with our free brand awareness survey template

Related resources

Brand Perception

Brand Sentiment 18 min read

Brand intelligence 12 min read, brand recall 10 min read, brand image 10 min read, brand identity 12 min read, brand perception 11 min read, request demo.

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• Jan 16, 2021

9 Key Brand Research Questions To Ask

Updated: Apr 5

There are 9 key brand research questions to ask that are vitally important to keep track whether the brand is seen in a positive light in the market. This is crucial for businesses or websites in ensuring they have a good brand name as it encapsulates the personality, values, goals and image that make the brand recognisable to the public.

In this post we will explore these key 9 brand research questions and the reasons why they should be used, which fall within the 5 levels of the brand research funnel below:

1. Brand awareness

2. familiarity, 3. consideration, 5. advocacy, other brand research question topics to include.

[Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, meaning we get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through these links at no additional cost to you.]

The table above shows the 9 key brand research questions to ask respondents.

The top 9 brand research questions shown above fit within the brand research funnel to help measure different key metrics. The brand research funnel gives you an instant snapshot of conversion from awareness to users or advocates of the brand. Below is an explanation of how these 9 questions fit within the 5 levels of the brand research funnel and their importance in brand research .

There are 3 types of brand awareness questions below that cover spontaneous and prompted mentions to make up total awareness amongst your audience of brands within a category.

1: Top of mind awareness

This helps to gage which brands in a particular category that the target audience are aware of spontaneously. In this case the first brand that comes to mind for that market or sector. This is important to see how your brand does when people are unprompted and is an important part of brand recall .

Q. Please think about online banks that provide everyday financial services such as current accounts, savings accounts, mortgages and loans. Which online bank comes to mind first?

2: Total spontaneous awareness

This measure’s all the spontaneous brand mentions including the first top of mind mention as well. As mentioned above this is a good judge of success for a brand to see how they stand out within their category.

Q. Which other comparison sites are you aware of?

3: Prompted awareness

This is when a brand list is either read out or listed in a survey for participants to select brands, they are aware of that they have not already mentioned in the spontaneous awareness questions.

Q. You may have mentioned several of these already, but please indicate which of the following computer brands you know, even if it is only the name.

The familiarity question helps to see how good is the awareness of brands of those participants who answered they know the brand from it being merely a label they heard of to something that is more meaningful and part of their consideration set for purchase.

Q. How familiar are you with each of these brands as mobile phone providers?

It’s important to be in the consideration set of 3 or 4 brands in members of the target audience who are serious about buying that product or service type. It often takes that number of brands for many purchase decisions. This question will allow you to understand if your brand is part of that consideration set from those participants aware of the brand.

Q. Which brands would you consider when buying a large household appliance?

It’s also interesting to see which is the most preferred by the target audience even if they have not purchased the product or service before.

Q. Which of these BRANDS do you most prefer?

When asking participants about usage of brands it’s best to keep it within a timeframe such as past month, 3 months, 6 months or in the past year. The usage question will allow you to understand how brands compare in the market and the relative market share. It’s a very useful measure to hold to supplement the existing sales data you have.

Q. Thinking about your own home, which of the following brands do you currently have/use in your household? This could be for any type of domestic appliance?

Either overall customer satisfaction or likelihood to recommend questions (NPS) on a scale of 0 to 10 will help you to understand how well your brand is delivering on your promises. Those that give a score of 9 or 10 are likely to be advocates of the brand in raising awareness or to consider purchasing in the future. So, this ties in with the other measures in the funnel.

LIKELIHOOD TO RECOMMEND

Q. On a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being not at all to 10 being extremely likely, how likely are you to recommend BRAND X OR WEBSITE to friends or family?

OVERALL SATISFACTION

Q. Thinking about your overall experiences with BRAND X in the last 3 months, on a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being not at all satisfied to 10 being extremely satisfied, how satisfied are you with BRAND X?

There are many other topics that can be covered in brand research and these include:

Channel of purchase

You can draw on important intelligence of the channel strategies of your competitors from where they bought the brand from and the brands used.

Behaviour in making the purchase decision

Find out what people were thinking in the lead up of the purchase, so did they seek advice from others, search for information online or looked at products instore. These are vital insights to gain an understanding of where your brand should be most noticeable in order to positively influence the purchase.

Switching patterns

This can serve as an early warning system of likely defection of customers when monitoring this on a regular basis. Possible questions for this would be around - do they intend on staying loyal to the brand? Or whether they are likely to change their purchase behaviour?

Profiling the audience

To get the latest understanding of their target audience many profiling questions are asked around demographics, attitudes and behaviour and is often linked to the segmentation profiles of a business.

Advertising awareness

So long as the sponsor of the research is not disclosed, you can ask questions around what advertising they remember seeing for a particular category? Do they remember the message of the ad? What brand was is it for? What was the source of the advertising? These advertising research questions help to establish how effective any recent brand advertising campaigns were.

Brand image

Brand image otherwise known as Brand association is normally asked towards the latter part of the survey to help ascertain whether the brand’s values are being positively associated with it or not. This is often a list of brand attribute statements on a 5-point agreement scale. It’s best a have a maximum of 10 statements to help avoid respondent fatigue .

Brand research helps to refine marketing strategies whether you’re at the start of your brand’s journey or in the middle to ensure the brand’s personality is positively conveyed and instantly recognisable amongst your target audience. It’s best to use brand research to monitor your brand’s progress over time to ensure you can efficiently and strategically move against your competitors and foresee any possible market trends by conducting brand analysis from the data that was gathered.

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• → 20 essential brand perception survey ...

20 essential brand perception survey questions + template

Brand perception survey questions help you gauge the strengths and weaknesses of your brand’s image. Discover what to ask on your next brand perception survey. 

Latest posts on Tips

Typeform    |    04.2024

Typeform    |    03.2024

When you hear the brand name Apple, what comes to mind? Cutting-edge, sleek, and top-of-the-line are just a few of the words and phrases commonly associated with the tech giant. From soccer moms to business execs, many people share the same sentiments about this brand because of the work it's put into its brand perception. 

Brand perception is (surprise, surprise) how your audience perceives your brand, which can influence their purchasing decisions and, ultimately, your business’s success or failure. And, like any great marketing endeavor, fine-tuning your brand perception takes solid market research . 

To start crafting your survey , check out these brand perception survey questions that won’t just tell you who you are now but what your brand can be. 

1. What’s your age/gender/location/etc.?

Measures: Audience research

Understanding your audience's demographics helps you tailor your marketing strategies to specific groups and identifies the customer segments most interested in your brand. Demographic survey questions allow you to craft laser-focused campaigns that resonate with specific groups, ensuring your message hits the mark and doesn't get lost in the noise. 

2. Have you heard of our brand before?

Measures: Brand awareness

Before you get into the meat of your survey, you should probably ask whether your participant even knows who you are. 

This question is fundamental in assessing the extent of brand awareness and visibility. It provides a baseline understanding of how well your audience recognizes your brand and serves as a starting point to gauge the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

3. How did you first learn about our brand?

Asking survey participants how they first heard about your brand sheds some much-needed light on your marketing landscape. It not only reveals the most successful first-touch channels but also uncovers the dark corners that need a little extra illumination. 

This question provides vital insights for refining your marketing strategies, directing resources to the most effective channels, and fine-tuning your approach to enhance brand discovery and engagement.

4. Can you name our main competitors in the industry?

Measures: Competitor awareness

It’s not enough to know whether your audience is familiar with your brand—to fully assess the level of brand awareness, you should also ask whether they’re familiar with your competitors.

This insight is essential in understanding where you stand in relation to your competitors. Armed with this knowledge, you can craft marketing strategies that emphasize your unique selling points, differentiate your brand, and communicate your strengths in a way that resonates with your audience and strengthens your market position.

5. What do you believe sets us apart from competitors?

Measures: Brand differentiation

Every brand has a unique selling point that sets it apart from the competition, but it’s not always obvious. Asking your audience what they believe are your brand’s unique qualities not only sheds light on the competition from their perspective but helps you understand what potential customers value as distinctive.

With this knowledge, you can position your brand more effectively in the market by aligning your messaging and strategies with the attributes that matter most to your target audience. 

6. How likely are you to purchase from our brand within the next six months?

Measures: Purchase intent

Inquiring about how likely your survey participants are to purchase from you not only measures the immediate sales potential but also offers valuable insights into the likelihood of conversion and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.

This question helps you identify potential customers on the cusp of making a decision, allowing you to tailor your efforts to nurture those prospects and secure future sales.

7. Do you believe our products or services are priced fairly?

Measures: Price perception

You might believe your offerings are worth a million bucks, but your brand’s premium price tags may turn off your target audience. Asking survey respondents to rate the value of your products or services for the price provides a direct line to understanding how customers perceive your value proposition. 

With this data, you can gauge whether your pricing aligns with customer expectations and whether you need to make adjustments to maintain competitiveness.

8. Have you ever used our products/services before?

Measures: Usage and interaction

Just because they’ve heard about your brand doesn’t mean they’ve already made their merry way through your sales funnel. 

Asking this question is essential because it helps you determine the level of consumer interaction with your brand. Responses to this question let you know whether survey participants have engaged with your products or services or if they’ve hit a snag along the customer journey.  

9. How would you rate the quality and reliability of our products/services?

Measures: Quality and reliability

Having survey participants rate the quality and reliability of your offerings is a linchpin in safeguarding and enhancing your brand reputation. It offers valuable feedback from customers about your brand's strengths and weaknesses. 

By addressing any shortcomings and amplifying strengths, you can maintain and elevate your reputation to build trust and loyalty among your audience.

10. How likely are you to continue using our products or services in the future?

Measures: Brand loyalty

Attracting new customers is only half the battle when it comes to building a successful brand—you need to keep those customers coming back for more. This brand perception survey question directly gauges brand loyalty and the depth of the customer relationship. 

It offers a clear indication of whether your customers are not only satisfied with but also committed to your brand, reflecting their potential for repeat business. Knowing how likely your customers are to continue using your products or services provides valuable insights for retention strategies and can help forecast the long-term sustainability and growth of your brand.

11. How would you rate our customer service?

Measures: Customer service and support

With scathing Yelp reviews and rampant social media sharing, nothing can ruin a brand faster than poor customer service. Inquiring about yours is pivotal for assessing how effectively your brand meets customer needs and, in turn, gauging overall customer satisfaction. It acts as a direct feedback mechanism, shedding light on the critical touchpoints of the customer journey. 

By understanding and addressing the quality of your customer service, you can enhance the overall customer experience, foster loyalty, and ensure your brand remains aligned with customer expectations.

12. How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend or colleague?

Measures: Word-of-mouth marketing 

Asking how likely your customers are to recommend your brand offers a glimpse into the potential for organic growth and word-of-mouth marketing. 

When customers are willing to recommend your brand, they essentially become voluntary brand advocates. Their positive sentiment and endorsement can cause a powerful ripple effect as satisfied customers actively promote your products or services to their networks. It's a testament to their trust and affinity for your brand, which can translate into increased visibility, customer acquisition, and long-term success.

13. How would you describe our brand in three words?

Measures: Brand association

Questions like, “How would you describe our brand in three words?,” “How would you describe our brand to a friend?,” or “What words or phrases come to mind when you think of our brand?” are great for understanding which core attributes and characteristics resonate most with your audience. 

This condensed feedback is a gold mine of information because it reveals the top-of-mind associations people have with your brand. You can use these descriptors to inform and shape your brand messaging, ensuring it aligns with the attributes that matter most to your audience. 

14. Do you feel our brand’s messaging aligns with your values and needs?

Measures: Brand messaging

Just like a game of telephone, the underlying meaning behind a marketing campaign can often get lost in translation. 

Asking your audience whether or not they feel your messaging aligns with their values serves as a vital checkpoint in understanding the harmony between your brand's messaging and your customers' expectations. It's not enough for brand messages merely to inform; they should also resonate with the values and needs of the intended audience. 

The response to this question can unveil whether your messaging strikes the right chord and whether customers perceive your brand as a solution that aligns with their values and requirements. 

15. How do you perceive our brand’s online presence (websites, social media, etc.)?

Measures: Online presence and perception

Knowing how your audience views and interacts with your online persona is necessary in today’s digital age—after all, your brand’s online presence is the first point of contact for many consumers. 

Their perception of your website, social media profiles, and other online assets can significantly impact their overall brand perception. Feedback on this aspect is indispensable for staying relevant and competitive in the online arena, as it allows you to make necessary improvements to align your digital strategy with your audience's ever-evolving needs and preferences.

16. How effective is our brand when communicating with customers?

Measures: Brand communication

This brand perception survey question is your hotline to find out if your brand is an eloquent storyteller or if it's muttering incoherent gibberish.

In today's world, effective communication is a must for building lasting relationships with your audience. Responses to this question may be your cue to fine-tune your communication strategy, ensuring it's not just speaking but truly engaging with your customers. 

17. Have you noticed any changes in our brand offerings over time?

Measures: Brand evolution

Like a fine wine, your brand should evolve over time—but it’s crucial to keep a pulse on how your audience perceives those changes. Are they readily embracing the changes or struggling to connect the dots? 

This question is your barometer, helping you understand how well your brand navigates through evolving market dynamics and customer tastes. It's all about ensuring your brand remains in sync with ever-changing market conditions and customer preferences.

18. Have you ever provided feedback to our brand? If so, what was your experience?

Measures: Customer feedback

Asking customers about their experiences by providing feedback on your brand is instrumental in gauging your brand’s responsiveness and commitment to improvement. 

The responses to this question can tell you if you’re hearing customers’ suggestions or concerns and acting on their insights. Customer feedback is crucial for driving meaningful changes within your brand. While we can’t implement those changes for you, our customer survey feedback tool makes it easy for customers to share their thoughts and feelings with your brand. 

19. What's your overall impression of our brand?

Measures: Overall brand impression

One of the final questions in your brand perception survey should cover participants' overall impression of your brand. It's a condensed yet crucial question that’ll provide a snapshot of your audience's general sentiment and perception.

20. Is there anything else you'd like to share about your perception of our brand?

Measures: Qualitative data

While structured questions serve as the backbone of a brand perception survey, wrapping up with an open-ended query lets customers express their thoughts and feelings in their own words.

This question captures the nuances, unique experiences, and unexpected insights that structured questions can miss. It allows customers to:

Raise concerns

Share personal stories

Highlight exceptional encounters 

Offer suggestions and ideas

This qualitative data can be a treasure trove for understanding the subtle aspects of brand perception, offering valuable context that can lead to improvements, innovation, and enhanced customer satisfaction. 

What is a brand perception survey?

Brand perception surveys are powerful tools that give insight into how current customers, potential customers, and the public perceive your brand—think of it as a mirror reflecting your brand’s image in the eyes of your audience. 

This survey typically consists of a series of questions aimed at assessing various aspects of the brand, such as:

How recognizable it is (awareness)

What people think of it (reputation) 

How customers would rate it (quality)

How helpful it is to customers (customer service)

The magic of brand perception surveys lies in their ability to provide a clear, data-driven understanding of your brand's strengths and weaknesses. They help you uncover areas where your brand excels and pinpoint areas of improvement, allowing you to tailor strategies to address any issues that may be tarnishing your brand’s reputation. 

By aligning your brand with your target audience's perceptions and expectations, a well-executed brand perception survey can lead to increased customer loyalty, stronger market positioning, and, ultimately, greater business success. 

How to run a brand perception survey

Leave the cookie cutter in the kitchen if you want to put together a successful brand perception survey. 

Your brand's unique audience and goals will affect how you format your questions, distribute your survey, and analyze the data you collect. Here’s a quick guide to making the most of your brand perception survey: 

Know what questions to ask

If you’re looking to gauge how your social media presence is fairing, you probably don’t need to be asking 20 questions about the usability of your product. Crafting the right set of questions is the cornerstone of running a successful brand perception survey, but it depends on your goals.  

Start by defining the specific insights you aim to gather. What aspects of your brand perception are most critical? These could include brand awareness, reputation, product quality, customer service, or any other attributes relevant to your brand. 

Once you've identified your objectives, design a series of clear, concise, and well-structured questions that align with those objectives. Open-ended questions can provide in-depth insights, while closed-ended questions with rating scales can offer quantitative data you can quickly analyze. Strike a balance between the two to gain a comprehensive understanding of your brand's perception.

Determine the best method to run your survey

The survey method you choose significantly impacts the quality and quantity of responses you receive.

There are several effective brand perception survey methods to choose from, including:

Online surveys: Administered through web-based platforms, these are cost-effective and can reach a broad audience.

Email questionnaires: Distributed via email, these surveys are convenient for reaching a specific customer base or email list.

Phone interviews: This method provides a personal touch but may be more time-intensive.

In-person surveys: Face-to-face interviews with respondents are often best for detailed or targeted research.

Social media surveys: Utilize social platforms to engage with your audience and gather feedback.

Mail-in surveys: Physical surveys sent through traditional mail may be more suitable for specific demographics or areas.

In-app surveys: Surveys integrated into mobile apps are ideal for businesses with a mobile app user base.

SMS surveys: Text message surveys are convenient for reaching a mobile-focused audience.

Mystery shopping surveys: Use undercover shoppers to evaluate the customer experience and gather feedback.

Your choice should align with your target audience's preferences and accessibility. For example, if your brand caters to a tech-savvy, online-focused audience, an online survey may be the most efficient choice. Conversely, if your audience is less tech-oriented, you may have better luck with phone interviews or in-person surveys.

Additionally, consider factors like the cost, time, and available resources for survey administration. Online surveys are often cost-effective and allow for quick data collection and analysis, while in-person surveys may require more significant time and budget commitments. Choose wisely!

Tailor your questions to each specific audience

To make the most of your research, it's crucial to tailor your brand perception survey questions to suit each specific audience within your brand's ecosystem. Your target audience, existing customers, cart abandoners, and other segments all hold unique perspectives and concerns. 

You may need to create multiple surveys that cater to each audience segment. For example:

Surveys sent to your target audience should gauge initial brand awareness and the factors influencing their purchasing decisions.

Surveys targeting existing customers may inquire about their satisfaction levels, brand loyalty, and likelihood of referring your brand to others.

Survey questions for cart abandoners should focus on pinpointing the obstacles that stopped them from completing the purchase, like price perception. 

Customized questions create a personalized and relevant survey experience for each group, increasing the likelihood of meaningful, actionable feedback. 

If you don’t have your audience segmented, that’s OK—you can use conditional logic with Typeform’s form builder so your respondents are only presented with the questions that are relevant to them. 

Impress with Typeform

Brand perception surveys require minimum effort but can result in maximum payout. Whether you’re a legacy brand looking to dial in your marketing messaging or a startup gathering customer data for your first big advertising campaign, Typeform lets you create beautiful surveys that are customizable, on-brand, and more engaging than your typical online questionnaire. 

Need a jumping-off point? Try adding your own spin on our brand perception survey template —we make it easy with over 1 million icons, videos, and photos to choose from (or you can upload your own).

About the author

We're Typeform - a team on a mission to transform data collection by bringing you refreshingly different forms.

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Published September 1 st 2016

Building a Brand Research Strategy: How to Analyze Your Brand

Brand research assists with the creation, development, and strengthening of brands. Using a variety of methods, researchers can uncover a range of insights.

Undertaking brand research will help to uncover the health of your brand. A business’s potential can be maximized by identifying threats and opportunities.

You can understand if your customers are aligned with your values. The position you occupy in the in the marketplace is important too, as is the health of your competitors.

What is brand research?

Brand research assists with the creation, development, and ongoing management and strengthening of brands.

Analysis can be carried out to understand the landscape and develop a launch strategy. Brand research can also be conducted after launch to assist in the development of brand assets.

For more established businesses, brand research can be used periodically, or continually, to track consumers awarenes, perceptions, and experience.

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Brand research methods

As with any research, the most robust methodology will include information taken from multiple sources. Some will be easier or cheaper to obtain than others, but investing wisely means you will develop a more detailed picture of the landscape and reduce the possibilities for bias that are inherent in any form of research.

The good old fashioned survey is still a great source of consumer views on brands and product categories, and can be useful regardless of what development stage the brand is at.

You can conduct surveys in person, by telephone or online. Each has its own set of biases that researchers have to be aware of.

Surveys can provide the quantitative insights for brand research, understanding consumer views on a larger scale. SurveyMonkey is probably the most well known and popular online survey software.

Workshops and focus groups

Bringing different types of people, from customers to employees, into a workshop can bring some qualitative insights into the research mix. Asking open-ended questions allows you to gain deeper perceptions, opinions and emotional responses to your brand, product or service.

Twitter recently launched a service that turns 12,000 users into a quick research panel, allowing brands to gauge what a cross section of consumers thinks of a campaign or product. The service can be used before or during campaigns, offering focus group insights at speed and without using the same level of resources.

Any customer facing employee should have some insight into what prospects and customers think of your brand. Salespeople, account managers, shop assistants and customer service representatives will all have stories from the front line that can add to the qualitative research.

Social Intelligence

Social intelligence offers a unique blend of research. Used well, it can offer a mix of the qualitative and quantitative. The organic nature of conversations reduces response bias found in surveys while the volume of conversations means that you are not limited to a specific set of questions. You simply need to devise the methodology to best answer the questions you’d like answered while also being able to find aspects of the conversation you hadn’t anticipated.

While collecting social media metrics for campaign monitoring has long been a popular use case, deeper business insights can also be found. Even brands at pre-launch or relatively new or small brands with lower volumes of conversation can gain insights by looking at broad topics and types of conversation. Segmenting the data using tags and categories is vital for highlighting relevant information in your data.

Ways to conduct brand research

With surveys and focus groups you can obviously just ask people the questions, although you need to design the questions to reduce bias where possible and keep them open ended. With social intelligence, you also have to design your methodology. One advantage is that you may come across insights you hadn’t previously considered.

Below are some topics and themes that you may wish to track, but the list is not exhaustive. There may be brand or industry specific insights you wish to search for.

Competitive analysis

Whether you are launching a new brand or are an established player, understanding the current landscape is vital. Undertaking competitive analysis can give insights to help you position and improve your offering.

With social intelligence, you can uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the competition, understand their unique selling point in the eyes of the customer, and get an overview of the level of competition among different markets and demographics by measuring share of voice .

Brand awareness

Are people aware of your brand and are they able to recall it unprompted? Focus groups are best for measuring brand awareness , but surveys and social intelligence can also be used to understand the level of fame your brand has achieved.

Brand perception

Measuring brand awareness will tell you if people know your brand, but measuring brand perception will tell you what those people think of the brand. What does the brand represent for consumers? What do they think of its products and services? How does this perception compare with competing brands?

Brand associations

Following on from brand perception, you can  discover and measure brand associations consumers have when thinking about your business. If you are a luxury brand, you need to know that you are maintaining that exclusivity and admiration. If you aim at the opposite end of the market, do people associate your brand with savings and economy or cheap, inferior products?

Sentiment and satisfaction

Sentiment analysis in social intelligence platforms can provide a quick overview of public opinion on any topic. A human analysis of the data can surface more nuanced emotions, such as joy, humor, frustration, anger, and so on. Working through the data you can understand if customers are satisfied or frustrated and why, helping you address any issues.

Shopping experience

Whether your shopfront is brick-and-mortar or e-commerce, understanding perceptions of your shopping experience is also valuable. Average shopping cart abandonment rate for e-commerce stores is 68% . While shoppers don’t tend to abandon carts in physical stores, experiences can still be improved through data led approaches.

General brand research tips

• Don’t be afraid to ask simple questions. Often you can find that by asking simple questions people open up and explain in greater detail.
• Seek emotional and rational responses. There are different reasons why someone chooses one brand over another. Trying to uncover a mix of the two will help your brand research.
• Don’t start with assumptions or bring your own views into the research. Facilitate the conversation to discover true insights, don’t lead the conversation to where you expect it to go.
• Think about the best presentation methods. Present your findings well, with methodology and key findings first, followed by clearly presented data and qualitative insights.

There is no one way to create the perfect brand research strategy. The best method will use a mix of data sources, developing a tailored approach to suit your brand and industry. Some of the findings may be great, and others may be painful. The painful ones can often be the best as they lead to opportunities to improve.

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• 13 Important Questions to Ask on Br ...

13 Important Questions to Ask on Brand Perception Surveys

Surveys are simple yet powerful tools that can provide valuable insight into your brand.

What is your business doing right? Where are pain points that have room for improvement? How satisfied are your employee s? What do your customers think about your brand?

Brand perception in the eyes of your customers is a critical piece of your marketing equation. While engineered customer personas certainly hold merit as you’re planning the next marketing campaign, the best way to measure brand perception is straight from the customer.

What is a Brand Perception Survey?

The purpose of a brand perception survey is to understand how your customers, prospects, stakeholders, and employees perceive your brand.

Think of some popular brands and the immediate association you have with them. For example, when you think of TikTok, you probably think of a young audience, short videos, and dancing.

But brand perception goes even deeper. Do customers trust your brand , or did they have a bad experience that makes them immediately feel a negative reaction whenever they think about your company? Do prospects already know what kind of goods or services you offer? Does your business have a memorable name? A recognizable logo?

In 2019, Doritos demonstrated just how confident it was in its brand perception and identity when it launched an “anti-ad” campaign with no logo and no brand name in order to appeal to a Gen Z audience. The company claimed the iconic triangle shape of their chips and branded colors were enough to still be recognizable even without traditional advertising. And they were right.

But Doritos probably wouldn’t have taken that bold leap without plenty of outreach and surveys to gauge their customers’ perception of their brand first.

How Do You Test Brand Perception?

The concept of brand perception can be tricky to nail down, since a precise measurement is impossible to take, and opinions of your brand will vary from person to person.

Companies rely on brand perception surveys to achieve three primary outcomes:

• To understand how past, present, and future marketing campaigns impacted (or need to impact) overall brand perception
• To identify and minimize the gap between qualities the brand wants to portray, and how the customer actually feels about the brand.
• To find opportunities for improvement based on customer experiences and perceptions.

In order to get a somewhat accurate pulse of consumer perception of your brand, your survey should focus on these four factors:

1. Cognitive

Cognitive questions uncover concepts and associations that a customer connects with your brand. The Doritos example using a triangle and branded colors is a prime illustration of cognitive brand perception.

Open-ended questions and multiple-choice word lists can be especially helpful to determine what connections are being made with your brand.

2. Emotional

These types of questions will help you to gauge the emotional connection a customer feels with your brand. Measuring your customers’ emotions can be a subtle way of analyzing their brand loyalty and trust in your company as well.

Scale questions, such as “rank on a scale from 1-10,” and open-ended questions often provide the best insights on how customers feel about your brand, and whether that pulls them closer to your brand or pushes them farther away.

3. Descriptive

What kind of language do customers use when describing your brand to others? Is it positive, negative, or neutral?

Focusing on the language and descriptions your customers are using can help future marketing campaigns to either build up and reinforce positive perceptions using the same type of language, or try to redirect your customers’ word choice and perception by presenting alternative vocabulary.

Open-ended questions are usually best for this category, so customers can tell you exactly what words they’re using rather than selecting from predetermined choices.

4. Action-Based Experiences

Asking your customers about their positive and negative experiences is particularly effective when it comes to learning more about the performance of your customer service team and the functionality of your ecommerce shopping experience.

While multiple choice and scale questions are a quick way to analyze overall satisfaction in your company’s services, it’s a good idea to have at least one open-ended question at the end of the survey where customers can elaborate on why they gave the score they did.

After all, a brand perception survey isn’t going to be helpful if you don’t know the reason a customer is upset about their experience.

13 Brand Perception Survey Questions You Should Be Asking

You have several options when it comes to determining the best audience for a brand perception survey.

If you’re interested in obtaining data on a segmented portion of your audience, such as first-time customers or prospects who have heard of your brand but not committed to a purchase yet, then you can limit your questions to a specifically targeted demographic.

But if your goal is to get an all-encompassing view of your brand as a whole, you can send tailored brand perception surveys out to employees, vendors, business partners, stakeholders, new customers, long-term repeat customers, former customers, leads, focus groups, and anyone else you feel might be able to offer valuable insight.

Brand perception survey questions to ask customers:

• Are you familiar with our products/services? If so, how did you discover our brand?
• How would you describe our products to a friend?
• When you think of our brand, what comes to mind?
• If you had to describe our brand in three words, what would they be?
• How likely are you to recommend our brand to your friends?
• How would you describe your last experience with our brand?

Brand perception survey questions to ask employees:

• What did you know about the company before you applied for a position here?
• What factors made you want to work for us?
• What makes you happy about working here?
• If you could change one thing about the company, what would it be and why?

Brand perception survey questions to ask prospects and leads:

• How did you become aware of our brand and the products/services we offer?
• What have you heard (both positive and negative) about our brand?
• What was your first impression when you interacted with our company for the first time?

How Do You Write a Brand Perception Survey?

The good news – you don’t have start from scratch and waste time staring at the ominous blank page, wondering where to begin. Survey templates are an accessible asset available to help you, offering brand survey examples you can build from.

But before you dive into the templates, start by taking a step-by-step approach and developing a strategy.

First, identify the goals you want to achieve with your brand perception survey. What is the ideal response rate you’re looking for? How will your results impact your marketing goals? What factors about your brand are you specifically hoping to identify (i.e. customer service, brand recognition, online shopping experience)?

Next, consider your audience. Are you sending one survey out to a segmented population? Or will you need to create several difference versions of your brand perception survey for employees, customers, leads, et cetera?

Then, create your list of questions that fit the needs of both your survey objectives and the audience you’re targeting.

Some factors you should be mindful of when creating your survey:

• Time: If you want to maintain an average-to-high response rate , try to keep your survey relatively short. People are less likely to complete the survey if it takes too long.
• Complexity: Simple is better when it comes to surveys. Don’t overwhelm your audience with complicated instructions and questions that don’t make sense.
• Anonymity: Some respondents, especially if you’re sending out surveys for employees and stakeholders, may not complete the survey if they’re concerned about negative consequences for less-than-favorable answers.
• Question Types: Open-ended questions are a fantastic way to gain valuable insight in your customers’ own words, but they take more time and effort to answer. Vary the types of questions you’re asking in the survey to keep your respondents engaged.

When done correctly with a targeted, strategic approach, brand perception surveys can be a powerful tool to help your business represent the qualities you value.

Are you ready to create your brand perception survey? Sign up for FREE and get started!

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100+ Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers

Babu Jayaram

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Babu Jayaram brings over 20 years of experience in sales and customer service to his role on the Qualaroo Advisory Board. With a profound understanding of sales and conversion strategies, ... Read more

Babu Jayaram brings over 20 years of experience in sales and customer service to his role on the Qualaroo Advisory Board. With a profound understanding of sales and conversion strategies, Babu is committed to delivering exceptional results and fostering robust customer relationships. His expertise extends beyond mere management, including adept handling of support tickets, overseeing internal and customer-facing knowledge bases, and training support teams across diverse industries to ensure exceptional service delivery. Read less

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Shivani Dubey specializes in crafting engaging narratives and exploring Customer Experience Management intricacies. She writes on vital topics like customer feedback, emerging UX and CX trends, and sentiment analysis.

Asking the right market research questions can help you understand your target customers and map their behavior and preferences. 

But what does it actually mean?

Let’s look at a sample from a market research survey report for mapping brand awareness:

From this simple Q&A report, you can:

• Visualize the proportions of demographic segments among your audience.
• Measure how your brand is performing in comparison to others.
• Pick the top preferred brand among the customers, explore what makes it stand out, and apply the same techniques to your brand.
• See how your target market perceives brand advertisements and promotional efforts.

Now imagine if this type of data set is available for different aspects of your business – product development, marketing campaigns, optimization plans, and more.

That’s what market research does for you.

With the evolution of customer interaction points and constantly changing market trends, more and more businesses are fueling efforts to do in-depth market research, as evidenced by the steady increase in the revenue of the market research industry worldwide.

Market research can help you develop essential business strategies and maintain a competitive advantage over other brands to increase conversions and customer base.

And it all starts with asking the right questions to the right audience.

That’s why we have created this collection of 100+ market research questions to ask your target market. Each question aims to uncover a specific attribute about your customers. You can use a combination of these customer research survey questions, interviews, and othe marketing questionnaires for customers.

We have also added key tips to help you write your own effective market analysis questions if the needed.

100+ Great Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers

The main challenge while designing and conducting research is – “What questions should I ask in my customer research survey?

That’s why we have a carefully curated list of market research questions to help you get started.

To Explore New Product Opportunities

• What was your first reaction to the product?
• Would you purchase this product if it were available today?
• What feature would you like to see on the website/product?
• Which feature do you think will help improve the product experience for you?
• Of these four options, what’s the next thing you think we should build?
• What’s the one feature we can add that would make our product indispensable for you?
• Would implementing [this feature] increase the usability of the [product name]?
• Please let us know how we can further  improve this feature.
• What problem would you like to solve with our product?

To Collect Feedback on Existing Products

• Have you heard of [product name or category] before?
• How would you feel if [product name] was no longer available?
• How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use [Product/feature name?]
• How often do you use [product name]?
• How long have you been using [product name] for?
• When was the last time you used [product name]?
• Please rate the following product features according to their importance to you.
• According to you, In which area is this product/service lacking the most? Specify below.
• How does the product run after the update?
• Rate our product based on the following aspects:
• Have you faced any problems with the product? Specify below.
• What feature did you expect but not find?
• How are you planning to use [product or service]?
• How satisfied are you with the product?

To Segment the Target Market

Please specify your age.

• Please specify your gender.
• Select your highest level of education.
• What is your current occupation?
• What is your monthly household income?
• What is your current marital status?

• What is the name of your company?
• Where is your company’s headquarters located?
• Please specify the number of employees that work in your company.
• What is your job title?
• In which location do you work?
• Which activity do you prefer in your free time?
• Which other physical activities do you take part in?
• Where is your dream holiday destination?
• Please rate the following as per their priority in your life – Family, work, and social life?
• Are you happy with your current work-life balance?
• Do you describe yourself as an optimist or a pessimist?
• How often do you give to charity?
• How do you travel to work?
• How do you do your Holiday shopping?

To Conduct a Competition Analysis

• Which product/service would you consider as an alternative to ours?
• Rate our competitor based on the following:
• Have you seen any website/product/app with a similar feature?
• How would you compare our products to our competitors? 
• Why did you choose to use our [product] over other options?
• Compared to our competitors, is our product quality better, worse, or about the same?
• Which other options did you consider before choosing [product name]?
• Please list the top three things that persuaded you to use us rather than a competitor.
• According to you, which brand best fits each of the following traits.

To Gauge Brand Awareness

• [Your brand name] Have you heard of the brand before?
• How do you feel about this brand?
• How did you hear about us?
• Describe [brand name] in one sentence.
• If yes, please tell us what you like the most about [your brand name]?
• If no, please specify the reason.
• How likely are you to purchase a product from this company again?
• If yes, where have you seen or heard about our brand recently? (Select all that apply)
• Do you currently use the product of this brand?
• Have you purchased from this brand before?
• Of all the brands offering similar products, which do you feel is the best brand?
• Please specify what makes it the best brand for you in the category.
• Which of the following products have you tried? (Select all that apply)
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you recommend this brand to a friend or colleague?

To Map Customers’ Preferences

• Have you ever boycotted a brand? If so, which brand and why?
• What influences your purchase decision more – price or quality of the item?
• How many hours do you spend on social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc.?
• How do you do your monthly grocery shopping – online or through outlets?
• How do you search for the products you want to buy?
• Rate the factors that affect your buying decision for [product].
• What persuaded you to purchase from us?
• How likely are you to purchase a product from us again?
• Please rate the following aspects of our product based on their importance to you.
• What is the most important value our product offers to you?
• Which of the following features do you use least?
• How well does the product meet your needs?

To Map Customers’ Reservations

• Is there anything preventing you from purchasing at this point?
• What’s preventing you from starting a trial?
• Do you have any questions before you complete your purchase?
• What is the main reason you’re canceling your account?
• What are your main reasons for leaving?
• What was your biggest fear or concern about purchasing from us?
• What is the problem that the product/service helped to solve for you?
• What problems did you encounter while using our [product]?
• How easy did we make it to solve your problem?
• What is your greatest concern about [product]?
• Have you started using other similar products? If yes, what made you choose that product?

To Perform Pricing Analysis

• Would you purchase the product at [price]
• According to you, what should be the ideal price of the [product name]?
• Is our product pricing clear?
• According to you, what is the ideal price range for the product?

To Collect Feedback on Website Copy

• Please rate the website based on the following aspects:
• How well does the website meet your needs?
• Was the information easy to find?
• Was the information clearly presented?
• What other information should we provide on our website?
• How can we make the site easier to use?
• What could we do to make this site more useful?
• Is there anything on this site that doesn’t work the way you expected it to?
• How easy was it to find the information you were looking for?
• Have feedback or an idea? Leave it here!
• Help us make the product better. Please leave your feedback.

To Assess Website/Product Usability

• Are you satisfied with the website layout?
• What features do you think are missing on our website?
• What features do you not like on our website?
• Was our website navigation simple and user-friendly?
• How much time did it take to find what you were looking for on our website?
• Was it easy to find the products you are looking for?
• Was the payment process convenient?

To Uncover Market Trends and Industry Insights

• Did you purchase our product out of peer influence or individual preference?
• How do you form your opinion about our product?
• Do you follow trends of the product, or do you prefer to go with what you know?
• Do discounts or incentives impact your decision-making process?

Market Research Survey Templates

One of the easiest ways to conduct market research is to use survey templates. They can help you save time and effort in creating your own market research surveys.

There are many types of market research survey templates available, depending on your objectives and target audience. Some of the most popular ones are:

• Demographic Templates: These templates help you segment your customers based on their location. It can help you tailor your marketing strategies and offers to different customer groups.

• Consumer Behavior Templates: These templates help you keep your pulse on your target market.

Industry Insights Templates: These templates help you get detailed information about your target industry and business.

Breakdown of Different Market Research Questions

The answer choices in a market research survey question can significantly impact the quality and reliability of the response data you collect from the audience.

Some answer types help categorize the audience, while others measure their satisfaction or agreement. 

So, before listing the customer research survey questions to ask your target audience, let’s understand their types:

Multiple Choice

A multiple-choice question type lets users select more than one answer from the given options. These questions are great for collecting multiple data sets using the same question and gauging people’s preferences, opinions, and suggestions .

Single Choice

In a single-choice question, the respondent can select only one answer from the given options. This question type is great for:

• Segregating the users.
• Prioritizing product updates based on user consensus.
• Disqualifying irrelevant respondents by placing the question at the start of your customer research survey.

Matrix Match

A matrix matching grid can combine multiple market research questions into one to make the survey shorter . There is only one condition – the individual questions should have the same response anchors as shown in the image below:

The questions are arranged in rows while the answer options occupy the grid columns.

Ranking Question

A ranking question can help map customers’ preferences and set priorities for product development . This question type asks the respondent to arrange the given options in their decreasing/increasing preference.

Dichotomous

A dichotomous question poses a simple yes or no scenario to the respondent. These question types can help disqualify irrelevant people from the survey and categorize the users into two groups .

Likert Scale

Likert scale market research questions can help you measure the extent of respondents’ agreement/disagreement with the given statement . The answer options are arranged from positive to negative sentiments or vice-versa, with the neutral option in the middle.

There are two types of Likert scales: 5-point and 7-point .

Open-ended market questions let you explore the respondents’ minds without adding any restrictions to the answer . This question type is followed by a blank space for the respondent to add a free-text response.

You can add an open-ended question as a follow-up after the first question to explore the reasons for the customer’s previous answer. It also lets you collect more in-depth information about their issues, pain points, and delights.

Tools like Qualaroo offer tons of different question types for your surveys. Just pick the question and match its answer option type from the drop-down. To make it more effective, you can add branching to the survey.

How to Write Your Marketing Research Questions

It’s imperative to have a dedicated repository of market research questions for your surveys. But nothing’s better than crafting your questions.

For this, you need to sit with your team and discuss what information you require from the customers. It lets you analyze and document how much data you already have in your system, which can help set the market research scope.

We have listed some questions you need to ask yourself before asking market research questions to your potential customers or target market:

Audience Segmentation Questions

Audience segmentation questions help to size up your target market and provide a granular view of the audience . Not all customers are equal, and audience segmentation makes it possible to focus on each group individually to address their issues, fears, and expectations.

Here’s what you need to know before you start writing customer research survey questions to understand your audience:

• Do we understand the demographics of the new market we are trying to target? (Age, location, ethnicity, education, company, annual income, etc.)
• What are the locations that drive the most customers to our business? How are these locations different from others?
• What are the interests, preferences, and fears of people from our new target market? Have we addressed these situations for our current customer base?
• What are the psychographics attributes of the current customers and potential market? Are we targeting these in our campaigns?
• What are the most popular engagement channels for our customers? Which channels drive the most traffic to our website?
• Do we have enough data to perform value segmentation to separate high-value customers from low-value customers? 
• How often do these high-value customers make a purchase?

Product-Based Market Research Questions

Product-based market research questions can produce precious insights to channel into your product development and optimization strategies . You can see how changing technology affects customers’ behavior, what new features they want to see in your product, and how they perceive your products and services over the competition.

Start by gathering information about the following:

• How does our product compare to the competition based on the features?
• What products do our competitors offer?
• What new features do customers want to see in our products? Do we have a product roadmap to deliver these updates?
• What unique solutions do our products offer? What is the value proposition that reflects this offering?
• Does our product incorporate the latest technological advancements?
• What channels do we use to collect product feedback from our users?
• What are customers’ preferences while choosing our products over competitors?

Pricing Market Research Questions

Pricing analysis can help you make your product more affordable to different customer segments while maintaining the desired gross margin. It also lets you restructure the pricing tiers to provide features depending on the customers’ requirements and company size .

Watch: (1/5) Supercharge Your Revenue With Data-Driven Pricing

Your sales and marketing team can help you hone in on the market research questions to ask your customers for running pricing analysis:

• Do the customers ever complain about the difficulty in finding the pricing information?
• What is the pricing structure of our competitors for the same products? What features do they include for a specific price?
• How do customers find our pricing when compared to the competitors?
• Do our products provide value for money to the customers? Does the sales pitch reflect this point?
• Can we restructure the pricing, and how will it affect the revenue?
• Are there any customer segments that have high-value potential but find the current pricing unaffordable? What are the plans for such customers?
• Are we in a situation to offer a basic free plan to encourage customers to try our product before upgrading?
• What promotions can we run to attract more customers?
• Should we target customers based on income, company size, or type of solution to set our product prices?

Brand Reputation Market Research Questions

A brand reputation questionnaire for marketing research gives you information on how well your target market knows about your brand. You can uncover previously unidentified channels to increase brand awareness and find potential customers to promote your brand .

Start by gauging what customers are saying about your brand:

• Which channels receive mentions of our brand? Are these posts positive or negative?
• Do we have a system in place to analyze and monitor these reviews and posts?
• What are the reviews of our brand on different sites? What is the overall impression of our brand in the market?
• How are we currently addressing the negative reviews and complaints? What do our customers think about the handling process?
• What is the impression of our brand in our target market?
• What brand awareness campaigns are our competitors running?
• Is our brand among the top choices of our target customers?

Advertisement & Campaign-Based Questions

These customer research survey questions let you assess the effectiveness of your current value propositions and campaigns . You can channel the customer insights into your advertising strategies to design targeted campaigns for different customer segments to reduce the overall acquisition cost and increase conversions.

Ask the following questions to collect information about the different marketing campaigns that are performing:

• What are the best modes to run the advertisement campaigns to reach our target audience?
• What is the estimated lifetime value of customers acquired from current campaigns? Is it higher or lower than the acquisition costs?
• Which campaigns bring the most ROI and why?
• How well do our advertisements present our value proposition to the customers? Do they address customers’ fears and expectations to attract them?
• Are we running A/B tests to improve our online campaigns? How are we gathering data to build the A/B test hypotheses – surveys, heatmaps, eye tracking, etc.?
• What advertisement campaigns do our competitors run?

7 Question Types to Use in Market Research Surveys

We mentioned earlier that market research questions provide important data for different operations like product development, marketing campaigns, sales pipeline and more.

But to what extent?

Let’s break it down to individual processes and understand how insights from customer research surveys can impact them:

To Know Your Target Market

Understanding your target audience is the fundamental aspect of market research, be it a new target market or existing customers. If you know what marketing research survey questions to ask your target market, you can identify different customer types’ unique traits and preferences.

The data can help you segment the users based on demographic, psychographic, geographic, and other attributes. These include their behavior, purchase preferences, age, location, habits, delights, frustrations, and more.

You can then create various customer personas and fuel your sales strategies to maximize ROI.

Case study – How Avis increased its revenue per customer

Avis, a leading car rental company, was looking to enhance customer experience by offering useful car add-ons like navigation systems, child seats, insurance, etc., to customers with their booking. So, it reached out to AWA Digital to find a way to promote these products and increase their sales.

AWA digital implemented customer research campaigns using targeted surveys to determine which add-ons were popular among the customers and why. 

Using these insights, the team added an interstitial pop-up just before the booking page to show relevant add-ons to the customers.

This simple update dramatically increased the sales of add-on items and helped Avis generate more revenue per customer.

Read the entire case study here .

To Plan the Product Roadmap

A product roadmap is a visual representation of the current status of your product and planned updates over time. It shows a high-level summary of planned activities and priorities for different teams to take the product to the next level.

Steve Jobs famously said – “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology then try to figure out where to sell it.”

And market research helps to align your product strategies with the customer demand. Using targeted marketing survey questions, you can gauge what new features or functionality customers want to see in your products.

It helps to plan product development strategies based on customers’ consensus to prioritize the ideas that can have the most impact on customers and replace intuition-based approaches with data-backed decisions.

Customers’ demands change with market trends and technological advancements. That’s why your product map also needs to evolve constantly with time to reflect these changes in your product development cycle.

By designing targeted market research questions to ask the customers, you can uncover their expectations to deliver optimal product solutions. 

That’s what our next case study demonstrates.

Case study – How customer research drives Twilio’s operations  

Twilio, a cloud communications platform places customer discovery and research at the core of their product development strategies. It helps its teams to anticipate customer needs in a constantly changing market.

Lack of time and budget are the two biggest challenges that the company faces in its product development cycle. So, the team uses targeted market research questionnaires for a product to understand the challenges the customers face today and the ones they will face tomorrow. 

With an abundance of ideas and no time to test them all, the feedback data from surveys is used to prioritize the hypotheses to run the tests. It makes the process more efficient and effective in producing positive results. 

This data-backed approach is used across 18 different teams at Twilio to release new functionality every week and deliver optimal solutions to the clients.

Read the complete case study here .

To Reduce Acquisition Costs

Your customer base consists of multiple customer segments with different preferences and purchase potential. That’s why you cannot sell to everyone and need to find the right audience for your products.

If an acquired customer doesn’t bring in more revenue than it costs to acquire them, it will increase your acquisition costs over time.

We don’t want that, do we?

For example, let’s say you are targeting the entire market population using the same campaign. If your acquisition cost per customer is $300 and you acquire 20 customers from one campaign, you need to make more than $6000 to register profits.

The difficulty is you don’t know about these customers’ purchase behavior and capacity, so you cannot be sure if you will reach your goals. It adds unnecessary risks to your marketing ventures.

But, if you were targeting a specific segment with high income, regular shopping habits, or proven history of brand loyalty, You can obtain better results.

Now, the question is – 

How will you separate these potential long-term customers from one-time buyers and high-value targets from other segments?

One way to do this is by building customer personas using the data from the market research survey questions. A buyer persona defines different attributes of a particular customer segment so you can hone in on the right audience to funnel your marketing efforts.

Here’s what a typical persona includes:

• Target regions
• Target demographic (age, marital status, gender)
• Ideal psychographics (hobbies, social channels, activities they indulge in, goals)
• Preferred interaction channels
• Favorite brands and products
• Total revenue till date
• Estimated lifetime value

Once you have a clearer picture of different customers, you can find high-value prospects with the potential to be long-term customers looking for product solutions that your business offers. 

You can then design the correct pitch using the market research data to bring in these customers and control the overall acquisition costs.

For example:

• Plugin the demographic and psychographic data into CRM software like BIGContacts or Salesforce to convert high-value targets.
• Use your CRM to create segmented lists of prospects based on estimated value, location, current status, and more. Then target these groups individually with personalized value propositions to increase conversion rates.
• Identify their preferred mode of communication and technographic inclinations to find the right opportunities to pitch your product offering at the precise moment.

Even if acquiring and retaining such customers costs more, their overall revenue can balance the acquisition costs to deliver higher profits.

To Design Targeted Marketing Campaigns

By knowing how your target audience behaves and interacts with your business, you can find the exact opportunities to target them with personalized campaigns.

• You can use mail campaigns to target website users with app-exclusive offers to encourage them to download your app and improve app adoption.
• Add in-app broadcast messages about upcoming offers, exclusive membership benefits, and other incentives for new users to push them towards the end of the funnel.
• Create multiple landing pages to target different customer types.
• Design location-based ad campaigns with personalized value propositions based on audience preferences and problems at each location. 

Case Study – How Canon’s campaigns generated 700% ROI

AWA digital was tasked by Canon, one of the biggest electronics companies worldwide, to assess and increase the demand for their products in different geographies. So, the AWA team conducted customer research using target market survey questions and discovered the following attributes about customers’ purchase behavior and reservations:

• In some regions, people were reluctant to spend money on a Canon camera as they weren’t sure if Canon was an authoritative brand.
• In other regions, authority was not as important to the users.

Using these insights, AWA optimized the ads campaigns’ messaging for different locations to include what consumers deemed important purchase factors.

The results?

With in-depth customer feedback, Canon generated an overall ROI of 700% in all regions using personalized campaigns to target the audience.

To Improve Brand Awareness

Whether you are into soft drinks or not, You probably would have heard of Coca-Cola’s 2011 Share-A-Coke ad. This single campaign put the Coke brand back on the map and reversed the 10-year steady decline in sales in the US.  

Coke understood what motivates their customers and delivered a product offering that appealed to the masses to increase its brand equity- the excitement to get a Coca-Cola bottle with their name on it.

How did they do it?

In 2011, Coca-Cola rolled out its share-a-coke campaign in Australia. The company debranded the traditional Coke logo from the bottle and replaced it with the phrase “Share a Coke with” followed by a name.

The campaign used the list of the country’s most popular names (nicknames). The purpose was to make people go out and find the Coke bottle with their name on it and share it with their friends. The campaign was subsequently rolled out in 80 countries.

How did it impact Coca-Cola as a brand:

• In Australia, it’s estimated that the campaign increased Coke’s share by 4% and increased consumption among young adults by 7%.
• #ShareACoke became the top trending hashtag on Twitter globally and received over 1 billion impressions.
• In the USA, the campaign increased Coke’s market share by over 2% and brought 11% more sales compared to the previous year.

It’s not limited to big brands only.  

Understanding the customers and placing your product’s value offering along with their habits, lifestyle, and behavior can help you extend your brand’s reach.

Today, there are multiple touchpoints to connect with your customers and map their journey to uncover their issues, motivations, and fears to address in your campaigns.

• Monitor brand mentions on social media and engage with the users to cultivate an online community and promote your brand.
• Reach out to satisfied customers and turn them into your brand ambassadors.
• Use targeted ad campaigns that connect people’s emotions and general behavior to imprint your brand’s image in their minds.

Quick Tips for Writing Awesome Market Research Survey Questions

With the inter-team research complete, you are ready to write your own market research questions to ask your target audience. Keep these general dos and don’ts in mind to ensure that the market survey fulfills the purpose without affecting the data quality or response rate.

Use Mutually Exclusive Response Options

If you are using response anchors with specific ranges like age group or income, check that the options do not overlap . Otherwise, it will produce an irregular data set.

Please specify your age:

In the above example, the respondent lying on either extremity of the given age ranges may get confused on which option to choose. For example, a 28-year-old respondent can choose from both second or third options.

Plus, two different respondents of the same age may select different options, which will skew your demographic data.

You can avoid this confusion by creating mutually exclusive groups as shown below:

Always Add A “Not Applicable” Or “Rather Not Say” Option

Since market research questions extract personal information, some respondents may not want to share such details with you. These include questions about age, income, gender, hobbies, social activities, and more.

Forcing such questions on the customers without allowing them to skip can irate them and lead to survey abandonment .

That’s why you can also use Qualaroo’s skip and branching logic to create smart surveys that only ask relevant questions to your respondents based on their previous answers.

Calculate the Required Sample Size

Sample size plays a vital role in your market research questions to determine the reliability of your response data.

If the response volume is low, the results may not be conclusive to point towards customers’ consensus. On the other hand, a larger sample size than required means a waste of the company’s valuable resources and time.

That’s why it’s important to calculate the required sample size to estimate the number of responses you need for your market research survey questions.

You can use any survey sample size calculator available online to get started. Just fill in the required details to get the required sample size.

For example, to reach a statistical significance of 99%, you need at least 3145 responses to your market research questionnaire.

Consider Adding Incentives

Studies show that incentivized customer research surveys or questionnaires fetch higher response rates than general surveys.

The incentives encourage customers to invest their time in a survey and get something in return.

It means creating a gated questionnaire for market research can help you reach the required sample size quickly . The incentive can be a simple discount code, free shipping coupon, free ebook, or other freebies.

However, there is a possibility that irrelevant respondents may fill out the survey randomly just to get to the offer, which may skew the results. You can use screening questions to filter out unsuitable respondents.

Avoid Double-Barreled Market Research Questions

A double-barreled question poses two questions into one. The problem with such questions is that the respondent may have opposing views about the two statements in the questions. It makes it harder for them to choose one answer from the options .

“Please rate the [product name] on a scale of 1-10 based on overall quality and price?”

Here, the respondent may find the product quality appreciable while thinking it to be overpriced at the same time. In such a case, they may skip the question or select any option randomly.

You can easily sidestep this hurdle by breaking your double-barreled market research question into two to make it less confusing for the respondents.

Importance of Market Research

We mentioned earlier that market research questions provide important data for different operations like product development, marketing campaigns, sales pipeline, and more.

Understanding your target audience is the fundamental aspect of market research, be it a new target market or existing customers. If you know what customer research survey questions to ask your target market, you can identify different customer types’ unique traits and preferences.

AWA Digital implemented research campaigns using targeted customer research surveys to determine which add-ons were popular among the customers and why.

Steve Jobs famously said – “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and then try to figure out where to sell it.”

And market research helps to align your product strategies with the customer demand. Using targeted customer research survey questions, you can gauge what new features or functionality customers want to see in your products.

Image Source: Slide Team

By designing targeted market research questions to ask the customers, you can uncover their expectations to deliver optimal product solutions.

Case study – How customer research drives Twilio’s operations

Twilio, a cloud communications platform, places customer discovery and research at the core of its product development strategies. It helps its teams to anticipate customer needs in a constantly changing market.

Lack of time and budget are the two biggest challenges that the company faces in its product development cycle. So, the team uses targeted market research questionnaires for a product to understand the challenges the customers face today and the ones they will face tomorrow.

With an abundance of ideas and no time to test them all, the feedback data from customer research surveys is used to prioritize the hypotheses to run the tests. It makes the process more efficient and effective in producing positive results.

Your customer base comprises multiple customer segments with different preferences and purchase potential. That’s why you cannot sell to everyone and need to find the right audience for your products.

For example, let’s say you target the entire market using the same campaign. If your acquisition cost per customer is $300 and you acquire 20 customers from one campaign, you must make over $6000 to register profits.

But, if you were targeting a specific segment with high income, regular shopping habits, or a proven history of brand loyalty, you could obtain better results.

Now, the question is –

Image Source: brightspark

• Plug the demographic and psychographic data into CRM software like BIGContacts or Salesforce to convert high-value targets.
• Use your CRM to create segmented lists of prospects based on estimated value, location, current status, and more. Then, target these groups individually with personalized value propositions to increase conversion rates.

• Add in-app broadcast messages about upcoming offers, exclusive membership benefits, and other incentives for new users to push them toward the end of the funnel.

AWA Digital was tasked by Canon, one of the biggest electronics companies worldwide, to assess and increase the demand for their products in different geographies. So, the AWA team conducted a customer research survey using target market questions and discovered the following attributes about customers’ purchase behavior and reservations:

• In other regions, authority was not so important to the users.

Whether you are into soft drinks or not, you probably would have heard of Coca-Cola’s 2011 Share-A-Coke ad. This single campaign put the Coke brand back on the map and reversed the 10-year steady decline in sales in the US.  

Coke understood what motivates its customers and delivered a product offering that appealed to the masses to increase its brand equity- the excitement to get a Coca-Cola bottle with its name on it.

• In Australia, it’s estimated that the campaign increased Coke’s share by 4% and consumption among young adults by 7%.

It’s not limited to big brands only. 

Market Research: A Key to Your Business’ Success

Market research is a vital process for any business wanting to understand its customers and market better. By asking the right questions and using the right tools like Qualaroo, you can gain valuable insights that can help you improve your products or services, enhance your customer experiences, and grow your business.

In this blog, we have shared some of the best market research questions to ask your customers, as well as some of the best customer research survey templates to find market trends and industry insights. We hope that this blog has helped you learn more about market research and how to conduct it effectively.

About the author

Shivani dubey.

Shivani has more than 3 years of experience in the modern creative content paradigm and technical writing verticals. She has been published in The Boss Magazine, Reseller Club, and HR Technologist. She is passionate about Artificial Intelligence and has a deep understanding of how organizations can leverage customer support technologies for maximum success. In her free time, she enjoys Nail art, playing with her guinea pigs, and chilling with a bowl of cheese fries.

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50+ Brand Awareness Survey Questions to Ask Your Customers

Kate williams.

15 April 2024

Table Of Contents

• What is a Brand awareness survey
• Brand awareness survey questions
• Tips for creating one

Brand awareness survey questions help you measure what your potential customers think about your brand, their loyalty, and whether they trust it.

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of the best brand awareness survey questions you can ask your customers to measure your brand’s market recognition.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this article; feel free to jump to the relevant section:

What is a brand awareness survey?

50+ brand awareness survey questions to ask your target group

4 tips for building an effective brand awareness survey

What is a Brand Awareness Survey?

A brand awareness survey lets you measure your customers’ awareness of your brand. Simply put, it helps you better understand what your customers think of your brand.

With a brand awareness survey, you can learn:

• What feelings and emotions your customers associate with your brand
• How loyal your customers are to your brand
• Whether they share the same values as your brand
• How much they know about your products and services

Get started with a free brand awareness survey template

55 brand awareness survey questions to ask your target audience.

Here are the best brand awareness survey questions to measure your brand awareness :

• What brands come to mind when you think of {product category or type}?
• When did you last use a {product type or category}?
• What is the first brand you think of {product type}?
• Which of the following brands have you heard of?
• Which brands do you purchase {product type} from?
• What brand is the most recognizable in {the product category}?
• Which of the following brands make you most happy?
• Considering {product type}, which brands would you consider purchasing from in the next six months?
• Which of the following things would make you loyal to our brand?
• If {brand name} was a person, how would you describe that person?
• How did you find out about {the brand name}?
• When buying a {product type or category}, which is your top choice?
• Which of these aspects led to this choice?
• What characteristics or values of our brand make it recognizable?
• What makes our brand more recognizable than other competing brands?
• Have you seen {brand name}’s advertisements?
• Where did you see the advertisements?
• How familiar are you with {brand name}’s products and services?
• List five words you would choose to describe this brand.
• Do you currently use any products or services from any of these brands?
• Of all these brands, which do you feel is the market leader?
• What about {brand name} makes you feel that way? explain briefly
• When buying {product type}, are you the main decision maker?
• How often have you used {product type} in the past?
• Which of the following messages do you associate with {the brand name}?
• What emotions do you feel when considering {the brand name}?
• What stood out most from the ads you have seen?
• Which of the following traits do you associate with {brand name}?
• What company do you turn to when you have {a specific problem}?
• Which of the following words describe {the brand name}?
• Of the words you selected, how do you feel about each?
• How would you describe your level of emotional attachment to {brand name}?
• When you think of {brand name}, how do you feel?
• When did you first hear about our brand?
• How would you describe {brand name} to your friends or colleagues?
• How would you describe your last experience with {the brand name}?
• Which best describes your last experience with {the brand name}?
• Have you purchased our product before?
• Which of the following products have you tried?
• Have you heard of {brand name} before?
• Which of the following types of customers are ideal for our brand?
• How was your experience with our product?
• Do you currently use our product?
• Does any other brand come to mind when you think about our brand?
• Where have you seen or heard about our brand in the past three months?
• How familiar are you with our brand?
• How often did you hear people talking about our brand in the past few months?
• How would you describe your overall opinion of our brand?
• If you had to describe our brand in three words, what would they be?
• How favorably do you think about our brand?
• How has your perception of our brand changed over the last few months?
• Rank the following values, from the one you think is closest to our brand to the one that is furthest.
• How likely would you recommend our brand to your friends or colleagues?

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4 Tips for Creating an Effective Brand Awareness Survey Questions

Here are some tips for creating brand awareness surveys that let you effectively measure and track brand awareness

1. Identify Your Ideal Audience

It all starts with who you’d want to take your survey. You need to narrow down your target market . You’d have to target a specific segment within that market with your brand awareness survey. This is the segment that’s best for your brand or product.

2. Ask the Right Questions

Now that you’ve identified the right audience, you need to ask questions that help you determine their thoughts about your brand and whether they know it well enough to use your products and services. Keep your questions relevant to what you want to learn.

3. Start with Unaided Questions

There are two kinds of brand awareness questions: aided and unaided. Both provide insights into how your potential customers recognize your brand. Unaided questions help you identify whether your customers can remember your brand without providing any assistance.

4. Dig Deeper into What Your Audience Thinks about Your Brand

You can dig a little deeper other than learning whether they know your brand and the associations they make with it. Ask more questions to understand how they perceive your brand. You can follow up with open-ended questions to get more feedback from them.

Final thoughts

Do your potential customers know your brand well enough to choose you over your competitors? Or do they even know your brand? When they think about your brand, what do they associate with it? A brand awareness survey can help you answer these questions.

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The insights you gain will help you build brand credibility and establish trust between you and your potential customers.

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SurveySparrow provides everything you need to create your brand awareness survey that matches your brand’s personality.

It provides a simple drag-and-drop interface and premade template that anyone can use to create a brand awareness survey in minutes.

Most of your customers will complete your survey as they would be pleased to take conversational surveys that are quite different from the long, tedious forms you’ve seen on the internet.

If you want to boost your survey responses and create pleasant experiences, take the conversational way and try SurveySparrow today!

Have you got any questions on creating a brand awareness survey? Any interesting tips or hacks for creating effective brand awareness surveys? Let us know in the comment section below.

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The Four Steps of Effective Brand Research

Quantitative and qualitative research are crucial tools for building a brand strategy. Discover the four steps to effective research that finds insightful data.

When it comes to developing a cohesive brand and marketing strategy, the process should always start with a healthy amount of research. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are crucial for getting a lay of the land before delving into strategic planning. So how do brands use both to their advantage?

Below, we’ve outlined the importance of brand research as the foundation for an impactful strategy that captures attention and builds value for your company. Along the way, we also thoroughly review our recommended four-step brand research approach.

The Importance of Brand Research

When beginning any strategic branding process, it’s easy to assume that you know exactly what your client or audience needs or wants. But there’s a high chance that you have certain blind spots, knowledge gaps and things that could be leveraged that you’re unaware of.

When beginning a brand assessment, it’s important to go in with as broad a perspective as possible to vet and validate your assumptions about your brand.

You may discover that those outside your organization perceive and experience your brand differently than those inside the organization. All of this is crucial information for developing an effective brand strategy .

When it comes to using qualitative research versus quantitative research, both are valuable tools in your arsenal for understanding different dimensions of your audience. Many organizations jump straight into quantitative (or data-driven) surveys without taking the time to interview customers one-on-one to understand the emotions and experiences behind the data, which is the qualitative part of the research puzzle.

By using both, you can paint a more complete picture of the way people react and interact with your brand. Qualitative research provides a gut feel for what seems most important to your brand, while quantitative research tells you to what degree those things matter, allowing you to understand the depth and importance of the variables associated with your brand.

The four steps below help lay a foundation of knowledge upon which you can build a more-informed brand strategy and methodology that speaks to your brand’s mission and the needs of your customers.

Step #1: Identifying Key Issues Qualitatively

Qualitative interviews that capture common experiences, perceptions and sentiments about your brand are the first step towards a well-founded brand strategy. But to do so, you need to cast a wide net to capture the whole picture of what your brand represents to all stakeholders.

Start by taking a cross-section of your entire organization. Many organizations make the mistake of only interviewing the C-suite executives, but it’s crucial to interview employees from different departments, tiers, regions and branches. This is going to engage the organization and allow you to culturally align it. It also helps your interviewees buy into the brand because their voices are being heard, and helps you gather a healthy set of perspectives from the organization, top to bottom.

Customer engagement is the other side of this process, but don’t forget to talk to more people than just existing customers. What about past customers? What about lost customers? What’s a good customer? What’s a bad customer? What is their perspective going to be like? How do they think and talk about the brand? These questions will help provide insight into what your brand represents to different sectors of your audience, identify gaps, and likely provide opportunities for improvement.

Then, there’s often a competitive analysis factor to your qualitative research. Try to gather an understanding of what the marketplace is doing and saying, and how other brands might be organizing their products, services, their value-added benefits, their claims, their warranties and their service/product promises. This will also influence the survey design that you’re going to put together for the quantitative side of your research later on.

This step will begin to paint a broad picture of your brand from different perspectives. Remember: your brand exists as an idea in the minds of your employees, customers, competitors and onlookers. The qualitative research aims to understand that idea and begin to solidify issues, opportunities and recommendations that can be addressed in your brand and marketing strategy.

Step #2: Developing Concepts & Ideas

With your qualitative research in hand, you can begin to distill your findings into test concepts. Think of them as a kind of hypothesis about your brand: “people react well to our messaging about X product/service,” or “people don’t believe our claims about our value proposition.” This gives you something to test when you begin your quantitative research.

Whatever your test concept is, it should be founded in the research you performed in step 1. Comb through your interviews and identify common themes or similarities in responses to determine where your brand has issues or opportunities to address.

If your goal is to determine a design direction for a rebrand, this stage might be where you think about a few creative updates to ask about during the quantitative research. That will give you testable ideas to learn how people respond and react.

When you have your test concepts ready, it’s time to move into quantitative testing.

Step #3: Quantitative Testing

Now it’s time to put your hypotheses and themes found in the previous two steps to the test. Surveys using the ideas you developed in step 2 allow you to see what customers prefer: do they respond better to a personable, down-to-earth brand voice , or do they prefer a more elevated, professional approach? The same kinds of tests can be run on visual brand identities , taglines, and brand names.

The important benefit of quantitative research is that it confirms or denies the hypotheses you’ve developed from your qualitative research. You can then confidently say, “50% of the customers prefer this while 80% of the customers prefer that.” It strengthens your decision making with data that is more generally applicable to a wider audience.

The other benefit is that it provides hard numbers that can help increase buy-in for branding or marketing recommendations. An intensive brand strategy can take a lot of investment, but if you have data to back it up, it’ll be easier to more confidently prove the benefits of going in one direction over another. It’s a method of reducing risk by providing some insurance that this decision is backed up by solid research.

If the quantitative research indicates that your concepts and ideas are missing the mark, then you’ve learned early on that your findings are misaligned with broader trends. This could indicate an unintentional bias in your research, or show that it’s time to go back to the drawing board with a new concept that better captures your qualitative findings. Either way, you’ve saved yourself the trouble of finding this out after implementing the strategy, and can reset to find a better solution.

Step #4: Analyzing Data

In many cases, the biggest mistake organizations make happens after they have done the quantitative research and are equipped with their facts, figures and pie charts: Forgetting that those graphics must be interpreted in light of all the qualitative learning that went into creating them.

When evaluating the statistics found in your quantitative research, it’s crucial to remember that your qualitative findings help provide deeper context and insights into every quantitative finding. In order to transform your data into meaningful strategies and implementations, you have to fully understand the complete picture around the numbers.

When analyzing, try to look at the data, take biases out and think about what the numbers say. For instance, “How does that number correlate to what we heard in interviews?” You need to be able to put that emotion with the factual information as it allows people to buy in. It allows people to truly feel invested in the work you’re doing.

Connecting the dots between your quantitative and qualitative research is the biggest source for productive conversation and analysis. Try to keep your own personal assumptions out of your analysis and focus on what your team members, stakeholders and customers are saying. This can serve as a catalyst for your organization to make real change that speaks to your audience effectively and builds value for your company.

Take Your Brand Research to New Heights

Use this four-step plan to push the limits of your brand and truly understand the needs of your audience. If you’d like to learn more about how to upgrade your brand research process, explore methods of audience strategy . Or, contact BrandExtract to consult with an expert strategist and level-up your brand.

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Branding Research Questions: 12 Keys to Success [templates]

Topics covered ✅.

• What is branding research?
• Brand recognition survey questions examples
• Brand identity survey questions
• Rebranding survey questions
• Brand perception survey questions
• Branding research process
• Brand research examples

You're starting a business and want your product or service to stick out in consumers' minds. How can you make sure you have loyal customers that resonate with you?

Brand identity is one of the most important aspects of any business, and it can make or break a business that doesn't get it right.

Claim My Free Brand Positioning Template

This hub is ready-made and pre-populated with tips, examples, checklist items, and files to help you improve your brand positioning.

1. Branding

When building a new brand or business, it can be hard to know where to begin. A good place to start is with look or design.

A brand represents how the world perceives a business or a company. Branding is the process of giving meaning to a product or service through creative and visual decisions.

Most businesses probably have a few visual aspects in mind when they start the process; such as a color scheme, font styles, images, and a brand voice. Making these aspects unique and distinct from other brands out there is key to establishing a strong brand identity.

2. Product Success

You've got a great product, but you want to make sure it's reaching the right people and getting the attention it deserves. Here are some questions to help you get started:

• Who is your target market?
• What kind of research do you need?
• What are your marketing efforts?
• How do you maximize your competitive advantage in the marketplace?
• How can you sell this product without losing sight of its value proposition or its core purpose?

You should also consider product testing market research to ensure you are validating that your potential product is meeting the needs of your audience.

3. Target Market Studies

Target market studies help you figure out who you're marketing to and help you create marketing campaigns that speak directly to your customers' needs and desires, resulting in more valuable insights and a competitive advantage over other companies.

Here are some of the most important questions you'll need to ask when conducting face-to-face interviews with your target market:

• What do they think of the product or service (positives and negatives)?
• How did they find out about it?
• Why did they choose this particular product/service over others?

“If you can't measure it, you can’t improve it” - Peter Drucker

How do you figure out who you're marketing to?

There are a lot of ways to do this; for example, you can use different types of surveys for research , focus groups, and other types of market research methods to get a sense of what your potential customers are looking for.

And there are plenty of free online survey templates that will help you organize research and questions so that they're easy for people to answer.

How can a company know if it's doing a good job if it doesn't know what it needs to improve on?

A survey is a way to get more insight into your target market's preferences, needs, and perceptions. Since the beginning of marketing, polls, surveys, and, better yet, super fancy questionnaires, are a great way to collect both quantitative and qualitative data.

The bottom line is that you want to de-risk and ensure your marketing efforts are as effective as possible. Thus, it's critical to understand who you're really targeting and how they feel about your brand on an ongoing basis, before investing substantial capital or labor into any single campaign.

Claim My Free Surveys Template

This hub is ready-made and comes pre-populated with surveys, lists, and PDFs to help you get started.

5. Basic Areas for Surveys

While the survey questions may vary, they should focus on the following basic areas:

• Target audience demographics (age, gender, education level)
• Perception of your product
• Customer experience with the product
• Marketing communications and campaigns that have been most effective with this customer base

6. Finding Your Audience

While it may seem that we are repeating this over and over, it warrants reinforcement. Always remember: when it comes to brand building, one of the most important things you can do (if not the most ) is deeply understand your target audience.

In order to do that, you need to ask the right questions. Here are some things to consider when writing your questions for surveys, polls, and questionnaires:

• What is their gender?
• What age range?
• Are they parents?
• Do they live in the city or suburbs?
• What are their hobbies and interests?
• What are their passions?
• What do they like to do for fun on a Friday night?

Questions like these provide baseline demographic data as well as more fluid narrative data about how the potential customer views themselves, and how they approach their lifestyle.

These questions also help with customer loyalty research and continuously understanding what your customers value.

When you find your audience, this can help you with branding. For example, if your primary audience is children, you can make design choices that create a product that will catch kids' eyes. These can include bright, warm colors and exclamatory statements.

You should also consider various types of audience research tools .

Claim My Free Audience Research Template

This hub is ready-made and comes pre-populated with free tools, checklist items, files, and examples to help you improve your audience research.

7. Perception Surveys

Perception surveys and brand perception research helps you understand how your audience perceives you or your product/service over a duration of time.

8. List of Questions for Perception Surveys

Below is a list of questions to consider as you plan, strategize, map hypotheses and assumptions to test, and ultimately build out your perception surveys:

• What kind of surveys can be used to gain valuable insight into customers' experience with your brand?
• How can you use customer experience surveys to improve your marketing campaigns and craft more targeted, effective communications?
• Do customers think your product is affordable enough, or too expensive?
• Do they think it's something that would be useful to them personally or professionally?
• Have any competitors come out with similar products recently that may make yours seem old-fashioned by comparison?

9. Customers

While many of us love to plan and strategize, perfection is often the enemy of progress. With calculated risk and strong assumptions, it's time to get into the weeds and go interface with customers.

Getting feedback from real customers is the most direct way to inform strategic decisions about how to move forward with branding efforts. Fortunately, there are numerous ways to do this without spending excessive time, money, or energy.

3 steps for gathering customer feedback

For starters, you can:

• Conduct an informal survey using SurveyMonkey , Qualtrics , or another online survey tool
• Gather qualitative information and input through an external knowledge management system, like Kahana
• Talk to people within your networks, go on social media, and send notes to folks on our mailing list (email and physical mail)

10. Marketing

Let's take a step back and look holistically at marketing. With revolutions like data-as-a-service, the post-cookie world, metaverse marketing, and omnichannel experience disrupting the marketing world, if anything, it's more important than ever to focus on asking the correct branding research questions.

Marketing doesn't need to feel like an uphill battle as long as you take pleasure in the process of honing your strategy and aim to deliver brand experiences that are truly delightful.

11. What Consumers Want

You're constantly tinkering and optimizing your marketing efforts, and part of that ongoing process is to know who your audience is and what they want at a given moment.

Example clusters of branding research questions

When you are learning about consumers and their preferences, there are several clusters of branding research questions you'll want to ask yourself:

• What do they value?
• How do they prioritize their needs?
• What are the most important factors when making purchasing decisions?
• Are you targeting specific demographics or geographic regions?
• How often do you reach out to potential customers?
• How much effort is being put into building relationships with them?
• How would these people perceive your brand?
• What would they say if asked about it?
• What are their perceptions of competing brands as well?

If you can't answer these questions with confidence, then you won't be able to develop the appropriate marketing messages to generate results or build a strategic plan that will work for your business. Moreover, if you can't answer these basic questions, you can't expect to use advanced solutions like predictive analytics properly as marketers.

12. Brand Research: a Useful Tool

When you think about the marketing you do for your business, what are your goals?

• Do you want to find new customers?
• Do you want to keep customers happy with your products and services?
• Do you want to increase sales?
• Or do you just want to find out if people are actually interested in what you're selling?

The answer to all of these questions is yes. All of these goals are important for any business.

Being mindful of them and focusing on the right questions to ask in order to achieve them will help guide your marketing strategy moving forward, and will help ensure that future campaigns appeal directly to your target audience's needs and desires.

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Branding Questionnaire: 15 Questions Ask Before Get Started!

Creating a strong and effective brand is critical for any business or organization’s success. It differentiates you from the competition, communicates your value offer, and resonates with your target audience. A branding questionnaire can be a helpful tool in getting the process started.

Collecting the right data and insights before starting the branding journey is critical. A brand identity questionnaire can help you gather vital information to establish your brand’s identity.

This blog post will look at 15 critical questions to include in your branding questionnaire to build a solid basis for your personal brand strategy.

Content Index

What is a Branding questionnaire?

Why your client needs a branding questionnaire, top 15 questions for your branding questionnaire, how questionpro helps in creating a branding questionnaire.

A branding questionnaire consists of a set of survey questions that helps businesses achieve their goals with basic marketing and branding strategies. A branding questionnaire is a series of questions designed to assist a company in developing its brand identity, brand voice, brand traits, brand values, strategic approach, customer loyalty , and other factors.

This questionnaire will inform your preferred choices for the agency or organization working on your new brand identity.  

Creating a branding questionnaire is one of the areas in marketing strategy that is often overlooked because it doesn’t always provide direct results that can be measured. But this is the difference between the most successful and average organizations. Successful companies know the importance of a branding questionnaire.

The key to designing an effective branding questionnaire template is to ensure the questions are relevant and help an organization understand what they need to fill in to give complete information. 

To help you start on the right track, we are sharing the detailed list of 15 questions you must have in your branding questionnaire.

When branding a business or organization, a branding questionnaire is helpful for knowing their needs, preferences, and goals. A clear brand identity survey is also a great way to inquire about competitors in the branding or marketing industries. A branding questionnaire is helpful for the following reasons:

Clarifying the client’s vision

Create a branding questionnaire to assist the client in articulating their brand’s personality, vision, and objectives. It encourages them to consider their target customers, demographic, intended brand personality, unique selling characteristics, and long-term objectives. This transparency guarantees that the brand identity process aligns with its goal.

Gathering relevant information

The questionnaire collects vital information about the client’s industry, rivals, and target market. This data assists the branding team in developing a complete understanding of the client’s business environment, allowing them to create a brand that stands out and resonates with the target audience . 

Establishing brand guidelines

Color preferences, font, imagery, and tone of voice are all explored in a branding questionnaire. These facts help to build brand rules, which ensure consistency across all brand touchpoints and communication channels. 

Enhancing collaboration

Including the client in the branding process through the brand identity questionnaire promotes collaboration and guarantees that the final brand reflects their brand values and preferences. The questionnaire enables the ideal customer to actively engage in the decision-making process and contribute vital insights.

Saving time and effort

A well-designed brand strategy questionnaire can help to speed the branding process by obtaining critical information upfront. The branding team can avoid unnecessary revisions and iterations because they have a solid base to build on from the start.

Have you tried walking with your eyes closed? It’s tough, right?

When you create a branding questionnaire without adequate information, it will fall flat on its face. This is why you must have the right survey questions to complete your questionnaire. Here are the top 15 questions you need to have in your branding questionnaire:

01. What are the three things you like about your current brand identity?

Even before you start designing or redefining a brand, it is important to know the aspects of the brand the client already likes. Just because a request to redesign has been sent doesn’t necessarily mean they want to change everything about their brand. It is essential you determine the areas that need to be revamped or should be maintained instead of getting rid of them entirely.

02. What are the three things you dislike about your current brand identity?

In the same manner, it is also vital to know what the things a client might absolutely hate or strongly dislike about their brand identity. Figuring out early on what your client is unhappy about will also set a tone for your team. It also lets you know which areas of the brand will need your immediate attention.

03. What’s the story of your brand?

Brands are primarily about storytelling, so you need t know what the story of your client’s brand is. Consider yourself the director, replacing the existing director of a top-rated TV series. Can you go to the sets without familiarizing the screenplay, story, cast, location, etc.? Getting a quick background behind the scenes will help you familiarize yourself with the original.

04. Are there any brands you particularly admire?

It is flamboyant and can be extremely challenging at the same time. Therefore, you need to clearly articulate what your clients want. 

Asking your clients some of the brands their like will give you an idea about their taste in design and how they would perceive their brand to be. It will provide a framework to start your process of designing and developing a strong brand identity .

05. Are there any particular terms you associate with your brand?

It is an excellent question to have on your branding questionnaire. Asking your clients a few terms they associate with their brand can help you understand their thoughts related to the brand, giving you an abstract idea. This simple question will help you design an awesome brand guideline .

06. What is your 10 years plan for your brand?

This question will help you or your agency understand your client’s long-term goals and aspirations, and you, in turn, can get a direction to start with your work. It also tells the client that you are willing to grow and improve their desired brand identity over a longer period and not consider this a one-time opportunity.

07. Who do you consider your competition?

Agencies need to understand what industry they are working with and who, in particular, the client is their direct competitor. It will give you an idea about their branding strategies and guidelines and how they approach a specific brand. Much of this information must be extracted through research and development.

08. What are your Unique Selling Points?

This question is important because this makes your ideal customers think about the factors that make their brand stand out in the market. Developing a brand that stands out is all about the impact it makes.

09. How does your Logo communicate your brand?

Just a logo speaks the story of a brand. The logo is the most integral part of a solid brand identity. There are some organizations across the globe whose logos speak louder than the brand itself. A logo must be created in a manner to suit the brand’s personality. Ask your client about their brand’s story and do they want to communicate through their logo.

10. Is there any specific target audience you wish to reach whom you haven’t?

Even if your client has a good grip on the market, there will still be a target audience that they would want to associate with. This is an untapped pool of potential people who will associate with the brand sooner or later. Your agency can keep this in mind while translating the design.

11. Who is the decision maker in your organization?

Right from the very beginning, it is advisable for you to know who is the final decision-making authority in the organization you are going to work with. It is good to accommodate suggestions, but channeling your energy in the right direction is also important.

12. Can you walk us through your approval process?

The ultimate goal of any task is to get the final approval on the ideas and design and know how exactly it will work. Make sure you have a good understanding of the client’s policies and procedures to avoid any confusion in the future.

13. What is your budget for this project?

Talking about the budget at the nascent stage of discussion is a great way to evaluate how important this project is for your client. If they offer a budget that is too low compared to the market standards, they are not a good fit for the agency. Deciding how much time, energy, and resources you will spend would be best.

14. What is the expected timeline for the project?

Branding means a lot of different things to a lot of people. Some clients won’t even have a complete idea of what they want from your agency, so you must discuss all the tangibles before the start of the project.

15. Is there anything else you would like to ask?

It is always a good idea to have one open-ended question . There should be scope for further discussion or addition to the existing brand context. It will help the client add any additional information/instructions they want you to use while designing their brand identity.

QuestionPro is a survey and research platform that offers a variety of features and tools for creating, distributing, and analyzing surveys, including branding questionnaires. QuestionPro can help you create a brand identity questionnaire in the following ways:

Question types and customization

Multiple choice, rating scales, text boxes, and other question forms are all available on QuestionPro. 

These question types can be used to create a questionnaire that collects the precise data you require for your branding project. In addition, you may alter the fonts, choose color schemes, and add your logo to the questionnaire to reflect your brand.

Logic and skip patterns

You can include logic and skip patterns in your questionnaire using QuestionPro. This feature is beneficial when specific questions should be shown or skipped based on the respondent’s previous answers. 

It allows the customization of the questionnaire experience, making it more relevant and efficient for participants.

Question branching

You can branch respondents’ answers in QuestionPro. This lets you guide participants through the questionnaire depending on their responses, showing them only relevant questions. It improves usability and reduces questions.

Collaboration and feedback

You can invite team members or clients to examine and provide feedback on the questionnaire using QuestionPro’s collaboration tools. This streamlines the review process and ensures the questionnaire fulfills everyone’s expectations before release.

Distribution options

QuestionPro offers several ways to share your branding questionnaire. These include emailing, embedding, posting, and using QR codes to share the survey URL. The software allows offline survey distribution via mobile devices or kiosks.

Data analysis and reporting

QuestionPro’s data analysis and reporting tools are powerful once respondents finish the questionnaire. Real-time reports, infographics, and data analysis help you understand reactions. Based on collected data, these features allow you to make informed decisions.

Integration and automation

QuestionPro connects with Salesforce, Zapier, and Microsoft Power BI to simplify and automate branding questionnaires. These connections allow communication of data and workflow automation for efficient data management .

LEARN ABOUT: Data Management Framework

QuestionPro makes it easy to create, distribute, and analyze branding surveys. Its features and customization choices allow you to personalize the questionnaire to your needs and provide a smooth survey experience for respondents. So, contact QuestionPro today to conduct your branding questionnaire!

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Frequently Asking Question

 The most important things you should ask about your brand are: Have we set up a frame? Are we making the most of our equal points? Are the different points of view convincing?

A branding questionnaire uses survey questions to assist companies in their goals with basic marketing and branding methods. This questionnaire will help your brand identity agency understand your preferences.

Branding helps buyers connect with your products and services. Customers will buy from you if they trust you.

An organization’s brand guidelines maintain brand consistency across channels. They establish the framework for visual, verbal, and written communication and build a strong brand.

Strong brand identity comes from high design standards that are applied regularly to every part of the brand’s strategy. This is done via a brand style guide or brand book.

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Demand Gen: Growth Unleashed.

Brand Research: Definition, Types, Benefits, & Approaches

Ron Sela / Last updated: February 8, 2024

Brand research  serves as a compass in the complex landscape of brand management. It empowers businesses to understand consumer perceptions, attitudes, and preferences toward their brand.

Knowing the minds of consumers helps brands decode the emotional and cognitive factors that drive purchasing decisions.

It enables businesses to pinpoint areas of strength that can be amplified in  marketing management  efforts and areas of improvement that require attention.

Brand research employs different methods and approaches that allow companies to gather actionable insights that inform strategic branding decisions.

It provides a clear picture of how a brand is perceived relative to competitors, identifies potential gaps between brand image and consumer expectations, and guides the development of messaging and campaigns that resonate with the target audience.

This post seeks to offer guidance through brand research, explaining its definition, types, and benefits. You’ll learn the components of effective brand market research and the best methods and approaches.

By the end, you’ll be ready to conduct your brand research, armed with the knowledge to make informed decisions.

Let’s kick-start your brand’s success together.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

• Brand research is a systematic process to understand consumer perceptions and public opinion, which is essential for refining brand strategies and forging deeper connections with the audience. It leverages various methods to provide actionable insights for informed decision-making.
• By identifying strengths and areas for improvement, brand research guides businesses in enhancing their market positioning and developing resonant messaging and campaigns, ensuring the brand aligns with consumer expectations and stands out in competitive landscapes.
• The effectiveness of brand research lies in its comprehensive approach, incorporating diverse research techniques and thorough analysis to offer a nuanced understanding of the brand’s impact on consumer behavior, aiding in the development of tailored, impactful brand strategies.

What is Brand Research?

Brand research  refers to a systematic examination of the perceptions, emotions, and attitudes held by consumers toward a specific brand to refine strategies, cultivate authenticity, and forge deeper connections.

It unravels the brand’s identity, values, and resonance to inform strategic decisions that enhance its  strategic market positioning , communication strategies, and overall impact on consumer behavior.

Brand research is a vital tool that helps you understand your brand’s current standing and future potential.

Ahead, we study the various types of brand research. You will learn about the diverse research techniques that can help you gauge brand recall, measure brand equity, or assess brand perceptions.

Equipped with this knowledge, you can select the right type of research that aligns with your specific objectives and needs.

Types of Brand Research

Brand research can be categorized into different types, each serving a unique purpose and providing distinct insights into your brand’s performance and perception in the market.

Understanding these types and their applications can help you decide which research best suits your business context.

Here are some common types of brand research:

• Brand Awareness Research : This research measures how consumers recognize and recall a brand. It helps understand how well a brand is known within its target audience.
• Brand Perception Research : This research aims to uncover how consumers perceive a brand. It involves studying people’s associations, feelings, and attitudes toward a brand.
• Brand Equity Research : Brand equity refers to the value a brand adds to products and services. This research assesses the financial value and intangible benefits a brand brings to a company. It often involves measuring factors like brand loyalty, perceived quality, brand associations, and brand recognition.
• Brand Loyalty Research : This research examines the level of  customer loyalty  and repeat business a brand enjoys. It helps understand how likely customers will stick with a brand over time.
• Brand Identity Research : This research delves into the visual and verbal elements of a brand’s identity, such as logos, slogans, colors, and messaging. It assesses how well these elements  communicate the brand’s  values and personality.
• Brand Positioning Research : This type of research helps determine how a brand is positioned in the minds of consumers relative to its competitors. It aims to identify a unique and compelling position that differentiates the brand.

Each type of brand research serves a specific purpose and provides insights that can guide brand strategy, marketing efforts, and overall business decisions. The choice of research type depends on the specific objectives and questions you want to address about your brand.

Key Components of Effective Brand Research

Brand market research has components that make it effective and reliable.

What exactly are these components? What factors should be reflected in your research methodology? How does each component contribute to a comprehensive understanding of your brand’s standing in the market?

• Audience Analysis:  Understand your target audience’s demographics, psychographics, behaviors, needs, and pain points. This forms the  foundation for tailoring your brand  to meet their preferences effectively.
• Competitive Landscape :  Analyze your competitors to identify their strengths, weaknesses, unique selling points, and market positioning. A competitive analysis helps you differentiate your brand and capitalize on gaps in the market.
• Market Trends:  Stay updated on industry trends, consumer preferences, and emerging technologies. This knowledge guides your brand’s evolution to remain relevant and forward-thinking.
• Brand Perception:  Assess how your brand is perceived by customers, stakeholders, and the public. Identify strengths and areas for improvement to align your brand’s identity with its intended perception.
• Customer Journeys:  Map out the customer journey stages, from awareness to loyalty. This helps identify opportunities to engage customers effectively at each touchpoint.
• Measurement Metrics:  Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of your brand efforts. These could include brand awareness, customer engagement, conversion rates, and loyalty.
• Brand Value:  Assess your brand’s perceived value and reputation among customers and stakeholders. Brand value measures the overall impact of your brand on customer decisions.
• Long-Term Strategy:  Develop a comprehensive brand strategy integrating research findings, goals, tactics, and a roadmap for consistent  brand development .

Effective brand research goes beyond surface-level insights, diving deep into understanding your audience and marketplace. It provides the knowledge needed to create a brand identity that resonates, messaging that connects, and strategies that position your brand for success.

Methods and Approaches

Now that we’ve explored the types of brand research and the key components that make it effective, let’s dive into the methods and approaches used in conducting this research.

These methods are as diverse as the brands they study and range from traditional techniques like surveys and interviews to modern methods leveraging technology and artificial intelligence.

Each method offers unique benefits and is chosen based on the research objectives.

Surveys and Questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are quantitative research tools you can’t overlook when conducting effective brand research. They’re simple, cost-effective, and offer a wealth of information about your target audience that you might not otherwise discover.

They allow you to ask  consumers what they think about your brand directly . You’re no longer guessing or making assumptions. You’re hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth. That’s invaluable data right there.

Designing an effective online survey requires careful thought and planning.

First off, get clear on what you want to learn from respondents. Then, craft questions that are straightforward and easy for them to understand. Avoid leading questions that may skew results.

Survey completion rates are often less than the response rates and can be influenced by the length of the survey. According to SurveyMonkey , the average completion rate drops by 5-20% if a survey has more than 8 questions or takes longer than 5 minutes to complete.

When it’s time to analyze the data, don’t rush through it. Take your time to ensure accuracy and glean insights that can help shape your brand research strategy moving forward.

Focus Groups and Interviews

Focus groups and interviews can provide in-depth insights into customer perceptions and preferences.

Unlike surveys, these qualitative research methods allow for a more interactive and dynamic discussion. They let you delve deeper into the consumer’s mind, understanding what they like or dislike and why.

In a  focus group , you gather a small group of people who fit your target demographic. You’d have them discuss your product or service under the guidance of a moderator.

It’s like eavesdropping on a conversation about your brand. It doesn’t get more real than that! The dynamics of group interactions often spark valuable insights that individual responses may miss.

On the other hand,  interviews  are  one-to-one  sessions where you probe further into individual thoughts and experiences. This format allows deep insights into personal feelings and opinions regarding your brand.

Though time-consuming, it’s worth it as you better understand their emotional and rational responses.

Remember, while focus groups and interviews give rich qualitative data, they aren’t statistically representative of your entire market.

Use them alongside quantifiable brand research methods to create a holistic picture of your audience’s views. That way, you’re covering all bases effectively in your brand research.

Observational Research

Observational research is a valuable approach to brand research, particularly when understanding consumer behavior and interactions in real-world settings.

This research method involves observing individuals or groups in their natural environments, allowing researchers to gain firsthand insights into how consumers engage with brands, products, and services.

By observing without direct interaction or intervention, observational research provides an unbiased view of consumer behavior, capturing genuine reactions and behaviors that may not be fully expressed through other research methods.

One specific type of observational research that holds great potential for understanding real-world interactions is  ethnographic studies .

Ethnography involves immersing researchers in the target audience’s environment and culture, enabling them to observe and understand the contextual factors influencing consumer behavior.

Ethnographic studies often involve spending extended periods with participants, allowing researchers to observe daily routines, rituals, and social dynamics that shape individuals’ perceptions and interactions with brands.

This qualitative approach helps uncover deep insights about consumer motivations, needs, and preferences, which are valuable for informing brand strategies and developing more meaningful and impactful brand experiences.

Online Analytics and Social Listening

Online analytics and social listening are increasingly becoming the go-to tools for understanding customer behavior and perception of products or services.

You can use these tools to track user activity on your website and monitor conversations about your brand on social media platforms, blogs, forums, and other online spaces.

Imagine this: you’ve just launched a new product. Using online analytics, you can see how many people visit your product page, how long they stay there, what actions they take, and where they visit.

This data gives you a clear picture of who’s interested in your product and why.

Then there’s social listening. What are your customers saying about you? Are they praising your new product? Or do they have complaints?

This feedback is invaluable because it helps you better understand your customers’ needs so that you can improve or adjust marketing initiatives as needed.

There’s no one-size-fits-all in brand research. You’ll benefit from using a mix of these research methods. They’ll complement each other and provide a more holistic view of your brand’s standing in the market.

Steps in Conducting Brand Research

The journey towards effective brand research is a meticulous process. What steps should one follow?

Here’s a guide to the key steps in conducting brand research:

Define Research Objectives

Before diving into brand research, you must clearly define your research objectives.

This crucial step builds the  pillars of your brand’s  success. It’s all about understanding what you want to achieve, such as improving your marketing strategy or better reaching your target audience.

This focus keeps you on track throughout the research process.

Remember, your objectives guide your brand research. They’ll help you gather the right information and insights. You’ll be able to answer vital questions about your brand and its position in the market.

Defining your research objectives isn’t just a step in the process. It’s the compass that guides your journey to a stronger, more successful brand. So don’t skip this step. It’s your roadmap to meaningful and impactful brand research.

Choose Research Methodology

Choosing the right methodology for your study is essential, as it’ll directly impact the quality and relevance of your findings.

When conducting brand research, it’s crucial to choose a research methodology that strikes a balance between qualitative insights and quantitative insights. This research mix will give you a comprehensive understanding of your brand’s performance.

Qualitative insights provide a deep, nuanced understanding of consumer behavior and emotions. On the other hand, quantitative insights offer hard numbers that can be used to make data-driven decisions.

So, whether diving into customer motivations or measuring brand awareness, ensure you’re leveraging both insights.

Ultimately, your chosen methodology will be instrumental in framing the effectiveness of your brand research.

Develop Research Instruments

Having chosen your research methodology, it’s time to develop your research instruments. This is an essential step when you conduct brand research. Think of it as your toolkit for digging into the heart of your brand strategy.

You’ll want to use various tools, from focus groups to online surveys. These instruments are designed to help you gather the information necessary for a comprehensive  brand analysis .

Focus groups, for instance, can offer rich qualitative data about consumer perceptions and attitudes. On the other hand, online surveys can provide a broader quantitative perspective on consumer preferences and behaviors.

Sampling Strategy

You’ll need to develop a solid sampling strategy to capture data from a representative group of your target market. Selecting a sample that accurately reflects your relevant market population is crucial when conducting market research.

This is why brand research is essential. It helps you understand your potential customers better.

Your sampling strategy should aim to include diverse perspectives within your target market. Don’t limit your research to just the most vocal or accessible customers.

Consider demographics, consumption habits, and lifestyle choices while identifying your sample. Doing so will gather richer, more robust data, making your brand research more effective and informative.

In short, a well-planned sampling strategy is a cornerstone of successful market research.

Collect Data

Next, it’s time to collect data, which can be done through various methods such as surveys, interviews, or focus groups. Using a mix of these in your brand research is crucial to get a comprehensive view of your market.

Online surveys, for instance, can provide a wealth of quantitative data, giving you insight into consumer behaviors and preferences.

You’ll also want to keep an eye on social media metrics. They’ll give you a real-time pulse of your audience’s sentiment towards your brand.

The data you collect will be the bedrock of your market research, painting a detailed picture of your brand’s current standing.

Analyze Data

Once you’ve gathered all the necessary data, it’s time to dive deep into it and discover what it’s telling you about your market. Analyzing data is a crucial step in brand research. It’s not just about numbers.

It’s about understanding the story behind those figures.

It’ll give you insights into your brand’s perception, helping you shape your marketing strategies accordingly. You may think you know your audience, but marketing research using all the data you’ve gathered can reveal surprising truths.

It’s an opportunity to see your business from the consumer’s perspective.

Extract Insights and Actionable Recommendations

After analyzing your brand research data, you can step into the next phase: extracting insights and actionable recommendations.

This is where you’ll gain insights that offer deeper business insights. You’ve sifted through the raw data, and now it’s time to uncover the gold nuggets, highlighting relevant information that can guide your future business decisions.

This phase of brand research isn’t just about understanding what the data says but interpreting what it means for your brand. It’s about transforming those numbers and trends into strategic moves.

You’re not just extracting insights. You’re crafting a roadmap for your brand’s future. And the best part? These aren’t just insights. They’re actionable recommendations that can propel your brand forward.

You’ve now clearly understood brand research – its definition, types, benefits, and approaches. Remember, it’s not just about knowing your brand’s position but also understanding your customers and competing brands. Don’t underestimate the power of effective brand research. It’s a secret weapon for staying ahead. So, let’s apply these insights and start your brand research journey today.

What is the difference between brand research and brand analysis?

Brand research is the process of collecting data on a brand’s position, audience perceptions, and competitive environment. A brand analysis examines this data to identify the brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, informing strategic decisions.

What is the difference between brand research and market research?

While brand research focuses specifically on a brand’s positioning, perception, and performance, you conduct market research to study the entire market or industry, including customer needs, market trends, and competitive landscapes.

Why is brand research important?

Brand research is important because it provides insights into how a brand is perceived, identifies growth opportunities, helps in understanding competitive landscapes, and informs strategic decisions. It ensures that brand strategies are aligned with consumer expectations and market trends.

How often should brand research be conducted?

The frequency of brand research depends on the brand’s market dynamics, the speed of change in consumer preferences, and the competitive environment. Generally, it’s advisable to conduct some form of brand research at least annually, with more frequent checks for fast-changing markets.

Related Posts:

• How to Build a Strong Brand Foundation
• Brand Attributes: Definition, Types, Examples, and Strategy
• Brand Analysis: Definition, Importance, and Best Practices
• Brand Pillars: Key Components and Development and…
• What is a DTC Brand? Definition, Examples, Strategy

About Ron Sela

Ron is a marketing advisor to technology-driven businesses. He has 15 years of digital marketing experience and an MBA from the University of Florida. Ron helps companies grow their revenue by developing and executing integrated marketing plans that align with their business goals. He has a proven track record of success in helping companies achieve their growth objectives.

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Writing Survey Questions

Perhaps the most important part of the survey process is the creation of questions that accurately measure the opinions, experiences and behaviors of the public. Accurate random sampling will be wasted if the information gathered is built on a shaky foundation of ambiguous or biased questions. Creating good measures involves both writing good questions and organizing them to form the questionnaire.

Questionnaire design is a multistage process that requires attention to many details at once. Designing the questionnaire is complicated because surveys can ask about topics in varying degrees of detail, questions can be asked in different ways, and questions asked earlier in a survey may influence how people respond to later questions. Researchers are also often interested in measuring change over time and therefore must be attentive to how opinions or behaviors have been measured in prior surveys.

Surveyors may conduct pilot tests or focus groups in the early stages of questionnaire development in order to better understand how people think about an issue or comprehend a question. Pretesting a survey is an essential step in the questionnaire design process to evaluate how people respond to the overall questionnaire and specific questions, especially when questions are being introduced for the first time.

For many years, surveyors approached questionnaire design as an art, but substantial research over the past forty years has demonstrated that there is a lot of science involved in crafting a good survey questionnaire. Here, we discuss the pitfalls and best practices of designing questionnaires.

Question development

There are several steps involved in developing a survey questionnaire. The first is identifying what topics will be covered in the survey. For Pew Research Center surveys, this involves thinking about what is happening in our nation and the world and what will be relevant to the public, policymakers and the media. We also track opinion on a variety of issues over time so we often ensure that we update these trends on a regular basis to better understand whether people’s opinions are changing.

At Pew Research Center, questionnaire development is a collaborative and iterative process where staff meet to discuss drafts of the questionnaire several times over the course of its development. We frequently test new survey questions ahead of time through qualitative research methods such as  focus groups , cognitive interviews, pretesting (often using an  online, opt-in sample ), or a combination of these approaches. Researchers use insights from this testing to refine questions before they are asked in a production survey, such as on the ATP.

Measuring change over time

Many surveyors want to track changes over time in people’s attitudes, opinions and behaviors. To measure change, questions are asked at two or more points in time. A cross-sectional design surveys different people in the same population at multiple points in time. A panel, such as the ATP, surveys the same people over time. However, it is common for the set of people in survey panels to change over time as new panelists are added and some prior panelists drop out. Many of the questions in Pew Research Center surveys have been asked in prior polls. Asking the same questions at different points in time allows us to report on changes in the overall views of the general public (or a subset of the public, such as registered voters, men or Black Americans), or what we call “trending the data”.

When measuring change over time, it is important to use the same question wording and to be sensitive to where the question is asked in the questionnaire to maintain a similar context as when the question was asked previously (see  question wording  and  question order  for further information). All of our survey reports include a topline questionnaire that provides the exact question wording and sequencing, along with results from the current survey and previous surveys in which we asked the question.

The Center’s transition from conducting U.S. surveys by live telephone interviewing to an online panel (around 2014 to 2020) complicated some opinion trends, but not others. Opinion trends that ask about sensitive topics (e.g., personal finances or attending religious services ) or that elicited volunteered answers (e.g., “neither” or “don’t know”) over the phone tended to show larger differences than other trends when shifting from phone polls to the online ATP. The Center adopted several strategies for coping with changes to data trends that may be related to this change in methodology. If there is evidence suggesting that a change in a trend stems from switching from phone to online measurement, Center reports flag that possibility for readers to try to head off confusion or erroneous conclusions.

Open- and closed-ended questions

One of the most significant decisions that can affect how people answer questions is whether the question is posed as an open-ended question, where respondents provide a response in their own words, or a closed-ended question, where they are asked to choose from a list of answer choices.

For example, in a poll conducted after the 2008 presidential election, people responded very differently to two versions of the question: “What one issue mattered most to you in deciding how you voted for president?” One was closed-ended and the other open-ended. In the closed-ended version, respondents were provided five options and could volunteer an option not on the list.

When explicitly offered the economy as a response, more than half of respondents (58%) chose this answer; only 35% of those who responded to the open-ended version volunteered the economy. Moreover, among those asked the closed-ended version, fewer than one-in-ten (8%) provided a response other than the five they were read. By contrast, fully 43% of those asked the open-ended version provided a response not listed in the closed-ended version of the question. All of the other issues were chosen at least slightly more often when explicitly offered in the closed-ended version than in the open-ended version. (Also see  “High Marks for the Campaign, a High Bar for Obama”  for more information.)

Researchers will sometimes conduct a pilot study using open-ended questions to discover which answers are most common. They will then develop closed-ended questions based off that pilot study that include the most common responses as answer choices. In this way, the questions may better reflect what the public is thinking, how they view a particular issue, or bring certain issues to light that the researchers may not have been aware of.

When asking closed-ended questions, the choice of options provided, how each option is described, the number of response options offered, and the order in which options are read can all influence how people respond. One example of the impact of how categories are defined can be found in a Pew Research Center poll conducted in January 2002. When half of the sample was asked whether it was “more important for President Bush to focus on domestic policy or foreign policy,” 52% chose domestic policy while only 34% said foreign policy. When the category “foreign policy” was narrowed to a specific aspect – “the war on terrorism” – far more people chose it; only 33% chose domestic policy while 52% chose the war on terrorism.

In most circumstances, the number of answer choices should be kept to a relatively small number – just four or perhaps five at most – especially in telephone surveys. Psychological research indicates that people have a hard time keeping more than this number of choices in mind at one time. When the question is asking about an objective fact and/or demographics, such as the religious affiliation of the respondent, more categories can be used. In fact, they are encouraged to ensure inclusivity. For example, Pew Research Center’s standard religion questions include more than 12 different categories, beginning with the most common affiliations (Protestant and Catholic). Most respondents have no trouble with this question because they can expect to see their religious group within that list in a self-administered survey.

In addition to the number and choice of response options offered, the order of answer categories can influence how people respond to closed-ended questions. Research suggests that in telephone surveys respondents more frequently choose items heard later in a list (a “recency effect”), and in self-administered surveys, they tend to choose items at the top of the list (a “primacy” effect).

Because of concerns about the effects of category order on responses to closed-ended questions, many sets of response options in Pew Research Center’s surveys are programmed to be randomized to ensure that the options are not asked in the same order for each respondent. Rotating or randomizing means that questions or items in a list are not asked in the same order to each respondent. Answers to questions are sometimes affected by questions that precede them. By presenting questions in a different order to each respondent, we ensure that each question gets asked in the same context as every other question the same number of times (e.g., first, last or any position in between). This does not eliminate the potential impact of previous questions on the current question, but it does ensure that this bias is spread randomly across all of the questions or items in the list. For instance, in the example discussed above about what issue mattered most in people’s vote, the order of the five issues in the closed-ended version of the question was randomized so that no one issue appeared early or late in the list for all respondents. Randomization of response items does not eliminate order effects, but it does ensure that this type of bias is spread randomly.

Questions with ordinal response categories – those with an underlying order (e.g., excellent, good, only fair, poor OR very favorable, mostly favorable, mostly unfavorable, very unfavorable) – are generally not randomized because the order of the categories conveys important information to help respondents answer the question. Generally, these types of scales should be presented in order so respondents can easily place their responses along the continuum, but the order can be reversed for some respondents. For example, in one of Pew Research Center’s questions about abortion, half of the sample is asked whether abortion should be “legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, illegal in all cases,” while the other half of the sample is asked the same question with the response categories read in reverse order, starting with “illegal in all cases.” Again, reversing the order does not eliminate the recency effect but distributes it randomly across the population.

Question wording

The choice of words and phrases in a question is critical in expressing the meaning and intent of the question to the respondent and ensuring that all respondents interpret the question the same way. Even small wording differences can substantially affect the answers people provide.

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An example of a wording difference that had a significant impact on responses comes from a January 2003 Pew Research Center survey. When people were asked whether they would “favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein’s rule,” 68% said they favored military action while 25% said they opposed military action. However, when asked whether they would “favor or oppose taking military action in Iraq to end Saddam Hussein’s rule  even if it meant that U.S. forces might suffer thousands of casualties, ” responses were dramatically different; only 43% said they favored military action, while 48% said they opposed it. The introduction of U.S. casualties altered the context of the question and influenced whether people favored or opposed military action in Iraq.

There has been a substantial amount of research to gauge the impact of different ways of asking questions and how to minimize differences in the way respondents interpret what is being asked. The issues related to question wording are more numerous than can be treated adequately in this short space, but below are a few of the important things to consider:

First, it is important to ask questions that are clear and specific and that each respondent will be able to answer. If a question is open-ended, it should be evident to respondents that they can answer in their own words and what type of response they should provide (an issue or problem, a month, number of days, etc.). Closed-ended questions should include all reasonable responses (i.e., the list of options is exhaustive) and the response categories should not overlap (i.e., response options should be mutually exclusive). Further, it is important to discern when it is best to use forced-choice close-ended questions (often denoted with a radio button in online surveys) versus “select-all-that-apply” lists (or check-all boxes). A 2019 Center study found that forced-choice questions tend to yield more accurate responses, especially for sensitive questions.  Based on that research, the Center generally avoids using select-all-that-apply questions.

It is also important to ask only one question at a time. Questions that ask respondents to evaluate more than one concept (known as double-barreled questions) – such as “How much confidence do you have in President Obama to handle domestic and foreign policy?” – are difficult for respondents to answer and often lead to responses that are difficult to interpret. In this example, it would be more effective to ask two separate questions, one about domestic policy and another about foreign policy.

In general, questions that use simple and concrete language are more easily understood by respondents. It is especially important to consider the education level of the survey population when thinking about how easy it will be for respondents to interpret and answer a question. Double negatives (e.g., do you favor or oppose  not  allowing gays and lesbians to legally marry) or unfamiliar abbreviations or jargon (e.g., ANWR instead of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) can result in respondent confusion and should be avoided.

Similarly, it is important to consider whether certain words may be viewed as biased or potentially offensive to some respondents, as well as the emotional reaction that some words may provoke. For example, in a 2005 Pew Research Center survey, 51% of respondents said they favored “making it legal for doctors to give terminally ill patients the means to end their lives,” but only 44% said they favored “making it legal for doctors to assist terminally ill patients in committing suicide.” Although both versions of the question are asking about the same thing, the reaction of respondents was different. In another example, respondents have reacted differently to questions using the word “welfare” as opposed to the more generic “assistance to the poor.” Several experiments have shown that there is much greater public support for expanding “assistance to the poor” than for expanding “welfare.”

We often write two versions of a question and ask half of the survey sample one version of the question and the other half the second version. Thus, we say we have two  forms  of the questionnaire. Respondents are assigned randomly to receive either form, so we can assume that the two groups of respondents are essentially identical. On questions where two versions are used, significant differences in the answers between the two forms tell us that the difference is a result of the way we worded the two versions.

One of the most common formats used in survey questions is the “agree-disagree” format. In this type of question, respondents are asked whether they agree or disagree with a particular statement. Research has shown that, compared with the better educated and better informed, less educated and less informed respondents have a greater tendency to agree with such statements. This is sometimes called an “acquiescence bias” (since some kinds of respondents are more likely to acquiesce to the assertion than are others). This behavior is even more pronounced when there’s an interviewer present, rather than when the survey is self-administered. A better practice is to offer respondents a choice between alternative statements. A Pew Research Center experiment with one of its routinely asked values questions illustrates the difference that question format can make. Not only does the forced choice format yield a very different result overall from the agree-disagree format, but the pattern of answers between respondents with more or less formal education also tends to be very different.

One other challenge in developing questionnaires is what is called “social desirability bias.” People have a natural tendency to want to be accepted and liked, and this may lead people to provide inaccurate answers to questions that deal with sensitive subjects. Research has shown that respondents understate alcohol and drug use, tax evasion and racial bias. They also may overstate church attendance, charitable contributions and the likelihood that they will vote in an election. Researchers attempt to account for this potential bias in crafting questions about these topics. For instance, when Pew Research Center surveys ask about past voting behavior, it is important to note that circumstances may have prevented the respondent from voting: “In the 2012 presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, did things come up that kept you from voting, or did you happen to vote?” The choice of response options can also make it easier for people to be honest. For example, a question about church attendance might include three of six response options that indicate infrequent attendance. Research has also shown that social desirability bias can be greater when an interviewer is present (e.g., telephone and face-to-face surveys) than when respondents complete the survey themselves (e.g., paper and web surveys).

Lastly, because slight modifications in question wording can affect responses, identical question wording should be used when the intention is to compare results to those from earlier surveys. Similarly, because question wording and responses can vary based on the mode used to survey respondents, researchers should carefully evaluate the likely effects on trend measurements if a different survey mode will be used to assess change in opinion over time.

Question order

Once the survey questions are developed, particular attention should be paid to how they are ordered in the questionnaire. Surveyors must be attentive to how questions early in a questionnaire may have unintended effects on how respondents answer subsequent questions. Researchers have demonstrated that the order in which questions are asked can influence how people respond; earlier questions can unintentionally provide context for the questions that follow (these effects are called “order effects”).

One kind of order effect can be seen in responses to open-ended questions. Pew Research Center surveys generally ask open-ended questions about national problems, opinions about leaders and similar topics near the beginning of the questionnaire. If closed-ended questions that relate to the topic are placed before the open-ended question, respondents are much more likely to mention concepts or considerations raised in those earlier questions when responding to the open-ended question.

For closed-ended opinion questions, there are two main types of order effects: contrast effects ( where the order results in greater differences in responses), and assimilation effects (where responses are more similar as a result of their order).

An example of a contrast effect can be seen in a Pew Research Center poll conducted in October 2003, a dozen years before same-sex marriage was legalized in the U.S. That poll found that people were more likely to favor allowing gays and lesbians to enter into legal agreements that give them the same rights as married couples when this question was asked after one about whether they favored or opposed allowing gays and lesbians to marry (45% favored legal agreements when asked after the marriage question, but 37% favored legal agreements without the immediate preceding context of a question about same-sex marriage). Responses to the question about same-sex marriage, meanwhile, were not significantly affected by its placement before or after the legal agreements question.

Another experiment embedded in a December 2008 Pew Research Center poll also resulted in a contrast effect. When people were asked “All in all, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in this country today?” immediately after having been asked “Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?”; 88% said they were dissatisfied, compared with only 78% without the context of the prior question.

Responses to presidential approval remained relatively unchanged whether national satisfaction was asked before or after it. A similar finding occurred in December 2004 when both satisfaction and presidential approval were much higher (57% were dissatisfied when Bush approval was asked first vs. 51% when general satisfaction was asked first).

Several studies also have shown that asking a more specific question before a more general question (e.g., asking about happiness with one’s marriage before asking about one’s overall happiness) can result in a contrast effect. Although some exceptions have been found, people tend to avoid redundancy by excluding the more specific question from the general rating.

Assimilation effects occur when responses to two questions are more consistent or closer together because of their placement in the questionnaire. We found an example of an assimilation effect in a Pew Research Center poll conducted in November 2008 when we asked whether Republican leaders should work with Obama or stand up to him on important issues and whether Democratic leaders should work with Republican leaders or stand up to them on important issues. People were more likely to say that Republican leaders should work with Obama when the question was preceded by the one asking what Democratic leaders should do in working with Republican leaders (81% vs. 66%). However, when people were first asked about Republican leaders working with Obama, fewer said that Democratic leaders should work with Republican leaders (71% vs. 82%).

The order questions are asked is of particular importance when tracking trends over time. As a result, care should be taken to ensure that the context is similar each time a question is asked. Modifying the context of the question could call into question any observed changes over time (see  measuring change over time  for more information).

A questionnaire, like a conversation, should be grouped by topic and unfold in a logical order. It is often helpful to begin the survey with simple questions that respondents will find interesting and engaging. Throughout the survey, an effort should be made to keep the survey interesting and not overburden respondents with several difficult questions right after one another. Demographic questions such as income, education or age should not be asked near the beginning of a survey unless they are needed to determine eligibility for the survey or for routing respondents through particular sections of the questionnaire. Even then, it is best to precede such items with more interesting and engaging questions. One virtue of survey panels like the ATP is that demographic questions usually only need to be asked once a year, not in each survey.

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Planet versus Plastics

Plastic waste has infiltrated every corner of our planet, from oceans and waterways to the food chain and even our bodies. Only 9% of plastic is recycled due to factors including poor infrastructure, technical challenges, lack of incentives, and low market demand.   

“We need legislation that disincentivizes big oil from producing plastic in the first place, coupled with enforced single use plastic taxes and fines,” says Desiree LaBeaud , professor of pediatric infectious diseases and senior fellow at   Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment . “We also need truly compostable alternatives that maintain the convenient lifestyle that plastic allows us now."

Plastic presents a problem like no other. Stanford scholars are approaching it from many angles: exploring the connection between plastic and disease, rethinking how plastic could be reused, and uncovering new ways of breaking down waste. In honor of Earth Day and this year’s theme – Planet vs. Plastics – we’ve highlighted stories about promising solutions to the plastics challenge. 

Environmental changes are altering the risk for mosquito-borne diseases

Our changing climate is dramatically altering the landscape for mosquito-borne diseases, but other changes to the physical environment - like the proliferation of plastic trash - also make an impact, as mosquitos can breed in the plastic waste we discard. 

Since this study published, HERI-Kenya , a nonprofit started by Stanford infectious disease physician Desiree LaBeaud , has launched HERI Hub , a brick and mortar education hub that educates, empowers and inspires community members to improve the local environment to promote health.

Using plastic waste to build roads, buildings, and more

Stanford engineers  Michael Lepech  and  Zhiye Li  have a unique vision of the future: buildings and roads made from plastic waste. In this story, they discuss obstacles, opportunities, and other aspects of transforming or upcycling plastic waste into valuable materials. 

Since this white paper was published, students in Lepech's  life cycle assessment course  have explored the environmental and economic impacts of waste management, emissions, and energy efficiency of building materials for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts. In addition to recycled plastic, they proposed a photovoltaic system and conducted comparison studies to maximize the system’s life cycle. This work is being translated into an upcoming publication.

Stanford researchers show that mealworms can safely consume toxic additive-containing plastic

Mealworms are not only able to eat various forms of plastic, as previous research has shown, they can also consume potentially toxic plastic additives in polystyrene with no ill effects. The worms can then be used as a safe, protein-rich feed supplement.

Since this study published, it has inspired students across the world to learn about and experiment with mealworms and plastic waste. Stanford researchers involved with this and related studies have been inundated with requests for more information and guidance from people inspired by the potential solution.

Grants tackle the plastics problem

Stanford Woods Institute has awarded more than $23 million in funding to research projects that seek to identify solutions to pressing environment and sustainability challenges, including new approaches to plastic waste management. 

Converting polyethylene into palm oil

This project is developing a new technology to convert polyethylene — by far the most discarded plastic — into palm oil. The approach could add value to the plastic waste management chain while sourcing palm oil through a less destructive route.

Improving plastic waste management

This project aims to radically change the way plastic waste is processed via a new biotechnology paradigm: engineering highly active enzymes and microbes capable of breaking down polyesters in a decentralized network of “living” waste receptacles. 

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Eight simple but meaningful things you can do for the environment.

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Stanford infectious disease expert Desiree LaBeaud talks trash, literally, on Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything podcast. 

25 Qualitative market research questions (and how to write your own)

25 examples of qualitative research questions, how to write your own insightful qualitative market research questions, ask the right qualitative market research questions to the correct audience.

There’s something very satisfying about being asked a great question that really gets you thinking. And in qualitative market research, it’s especially valuable.

If you ask the right person the right question, you’ll be able to uncover next steps — both small ones and big leaps — that will lead you to a better brand.

If you approach qualitative research right, you can get rich and valuable insights into your customers’ behaviors, and how to play into them.

You’ll learn about how customers interact, their motivations, and how to be there when they need you. And, you’ll uncover things about your brand that are difficult to find out from the inside.

We’re about to show you 25 qualitative research questions across six categories, that will allow you to take a deep dive into your target customers’ brain. These research questions are perfect to use in focus groups or with Attest’s Video Responses feature .

Qualitative research questions come in all shapes and sizes. We’ve split them up in several categories to inspire you to mix it up in your next survey or interview and make them work for your choice of qualitative research question types and methods.

Descriptive qualitative research questions

Descriptive questions are effective qualitative research questions that allow participants to describe experiences, opinions and more.

• Describe how this product/service has changed the way you approach [specific task/activity]. This question digs into the tangible impacts of your product on daily life, revealing how it reshapes routines or approaches to tasks.It’s a great way to highlight the practical value and possibly discover unexpected benefits that your product brings to the table.
• If you were to introduce this product/service to a friend, what would you say? Asking this encourages users to put their experience into their words, almost like a personal pitch. It’s a fun and low barrier approach to find out what stands out to them and what they value most about your offering.
• What three words would you use to describe this product/service after your first use? If you’re looking for immediate, instinctive reactions, qualitative research questions like these work best.They allow the user to give a quick snapshot and not have to think long and hard about an answer. Encourage them to respond with the first thing that comes to mind — no wrong answers.
• What aspect of this product/service do you think is underrated? This seeks to uncover hidden gems within your product that may not be getting the spotlight they deserve — even internally.It’s a clever way to find out about features or benefits that might be flying under the radar but have the potential to be major selling points.

Understand the nuance from in your audience’s behaviors

Getting that nuance through qual research will help you explain thy why to your quant ‘whats’, and give you much-needed inspiration during ideation

Comparative qualitative research questions

Using comparative qualitative research questions you can invite respondents to talk about your brand, product or services in comparison to others. It can help you understand the differences between you and your competitors, from your consumers’ perspective.

These qualitative research questions are a great addition to numbers, scores and other numerical data derived from quantitative research questions in a quantitative study.

• What differences do you notice between this brand and its competitors in terms of value provided? This question invites customers to think critically about the unique advantages or shortcomings of your product compared to the competition.It’s insightful because it can highlight what customers value most about your brand and whether you are doubling down on the right USPs according to them.
• In what situation would you prefer this competitors’ product/service over ours? Asking this might seem a bit daring, but it’s a golden opportunity to gain honest feedback on where your product may fall short for certain users or use cases.Research questions like this can uncover specific features, price points, or scenarios where competitors have an edge, offering you clear directions for strategic improvements or innovations.
• How does the ease of use of this product/service compare to others you have used in the past? This question zeros in on usability, a crucial aspect of customer satisfaction. It offers direct feedback on how user-friendly your product is compared to others, highlighting areas where you excel or need improvement.
• When choosing between this product/service and others, what factor weighs most heavily on your decision? Understanding the key factors that influence choice can help you fine-tune your offerings and marketing messages to better meet customer needs and preferences.If you look at the answers and compare the marketing efforts of your own brand and main competitors, you’ll be able to spot where you could make improvements.
• Can you identify a feature in a competing product/service that you wish ours had? Sometimes asking what feature they’d love is tricky: it might be hard to dream up. But if you give users the opportunity to shop from your competitors’ features, it might be easier.Qualitative research questions like these are therefore a smart and straightforward way to identify gaps in your product from a user perspective.

Exploratory qualitative research questions

Exploratory qualitative research questions are used in qualitative methods to tap into potential opportunities, and uncover insights that haven’t been previously considered. Add these research questions to your qualitative research studies if you’re on the hunt for new ideas.

• What challenges are you currently facing that this product/service does not address? This question is a gem in qualitative studies because it shines a light on the gaps between what your product offers and what your users actually need.By understanding these challenges, you’re not just guessing; you’re directly addressing the needs that matter most to your users, making every feature more aligned with their real-world problems.
• If you could add any premium features to this product/service, big or small, while the price remains the same, what would it be? Research questions like these open up a playground for users’ imaginations, allowing you to peek into their deepest wishes.It’s a creative way to use qualitative research to uncover independent variables (new features) that could make your product indispensable.
• What would make you stop using this product/service tomorrow? This one might sound a bit scary, but it’s crucial. It helps you pinpoint the deal breakers that could push your users away.Think of it as a preventive measure; by understanding these thresholds, you can steer clear of them in your future updates or service improvements. This question is a cornerstone in crafting a research design that seeks to minimize risks and maximize satisfaction.
• What’s a feature you never knew you needed until you started using this product/service? These insights are gold for marketing and product development, revealing the unexpected delights that can turn casual users into loyal fans.Plus, it’s a great way to highlight the qualitative words or phrases that resonate most with your audience, giving you a direct line to what makes your product stand out.
• If this product/service no longer existed, what would be the biggest gap in your routine or activities? This qualitative question helps to understand the role your product plays in users’ lives, emphasizing its importance and potential areas for highlighting in marketing efforts.Knowing what would replace you also tells you a great deal about the value your product offers.

Experience-based qualitative research questions

These qualitative research questions focus on the personal experiences of your users, and try to understand their journey and interactions with the product or service deeply.

• Describe a situation where this product/service met or exceeded your expectations. The feedback from this research question can reveal the “wow” factors that differentiate your offering in the market. It’s a great way to identify the elements of your product or service that surprise and delight customers.These qualitative questions will also highlight the specific words they use for this will also be great to fine-tune your communications and choice of words. You might be describing the right benefits already, but maybe not in the words they relate to most.
• What’s missing from your experience with this product/service? This research question is a direct line to understanding your customers’ unmet needs and desires. It encourages them to share their thoughts on how your product or service could be more useful, enjoyable, or relevant to their lives.
• What was your initial impression of this product/service, and how has it evolved? A classic, but nonetheless a valuable qualitative research question. If peoples’ experiences with your product change their impression of it over time, it’s crucial you dig into what those experiences are, to better match your marketing to the real world.Especially if impressions tend to take a more negative turn after some experiences, but also when it’s the other way around — don’t undersell your product!

Behavioral qualitative research questions

Behavioral qualitative research questions seek to understand the actions and behaviors of consumers, particularly in relation to your product or service. Adding these to your qualitative study will make it more relevant to daily life applications.

• Have you been using products/services like ours in ways that you didn’t think you would initially? This is a good qualitative research question to learn about unconventional or alternative use cases of your product. Of course, it doesn’t mean you immediately need to pivot, but it can help you map out uncharted or ignored territory and find fans in niche parts of your market.
• Has this product/service replaced something else you used to rely on? If so, what? We’re going there: ask about the ”ex”. Knowing who or what came before you and why things didn’t work out will help you be better in many ways. So, make sure to follow up this question with another one digging into the reasons for the break-up.
• What activity or task do you most frequently pair with this product/service? This might not seem immediately relevant, but it can tell you a great deal about your customer’s behavior. Knowing what place you have in their routine or what products they combine yours with can help you uncover big possibilities for innovations or even partnerships.
• How has this product/service influenced your daily habits or routines? This question doesn’t just focus on the functional benefits of your product, but also how those manifest in someone’s daily life. Do people highlight time they won back, or pleasure gained? Have they made any other changes that are relevant to you? There’s a lot to learn from small habit changes!

Emotional qualitative research questions

These qualitative questions explore the emotional connections and reactions participants have towards a particular topic, product, service, or brand. The qualitative questions examples below specifically bring a human side to quantitative research.

• How does this product/service fit into the moments that matter most to you? This might not be interesting for every product or brand, but if your brand is aiming to significantly impact people’s lives and important moments, this is a must-ask. Are they taking your products along to big moments in their lives? Does it provide them with comfort, confidence or something else when they need it? Research questions like this go way beyond functionality and tap into emotional significance — which is great for brands who really want to integrate with people’s lives.
• How does using this product/service make you feel compared to not using it at all? Are people frustrated when they run out of your product? Sad? Do they miss it at all? This question can reveal some powerful feelings around your product.
• How does this product/service affect your mood? This is a fun question to ask and can give you a great insight into what emotions your product evokes in general. Maybe some people don’t think about how they feel with your product, but others might get a confidence boost out of it, or chuckle every time they read your product copy. This question can reveal teeny tiny details that could matter a lot.

How this team aced their pitch with qual insights

Qual research helped Barrows understand glasses wearers’ pain points and wow a prospective client.

Got a burning question? Here’s how to make it part of a successful qualitative research project.

1. Set clear objectives

Knowing why you’re asking something is what helps you ask it the right way. Ask yourself what your general research objective is and how each of your qualitative research questions helps you get to the main answer.

For every qualitative research question you ask, find out IF it leads you closer to your goals, and make sure you can explain HOW it does so.

2. Ask open-ended questions the right way

There’s an art in asking great open-ended questions. Here’s an example of both seemingly similar open-ended, qualitative research questions, but one’s good, and one’s not:

“Why do you think people say this new smartwatch is better than others on the market?”

“What feedback are you hearing about this smartwatch in comparison to other smartwatches you know?”

The first one already works with the assumption and bias that your product is great. You’re practically putting words into your respondent’s mouth/answer box. The next one lets them come up with their own, unbiased response.

Good qualitative research questions should be:

• Unbiased: avoid qualitative research questions that are leading or show any form of bias whatsoever.
• Clear: only ask one thing at a time, and make it clear what that actually is.
• Relevant: make sure your question makes sense. Not just in the whole qualitative research, but also in the place it has in your survey or interview.
• Truly open: some quantitative research questions are sometimes disguised as qualitative research questions. Make sure yours is truly open and qualitative.

If you tick these boxes, your respondents will feel encouraged to express their opinions and motivations freely, which in turn will add depth and context to your research findings.

3. Balance between structured questions and flexibility

Let’s talk about flow. Imagine the panic that would set in if your first question in a job interview would be ”and how do you tackle problems with coworkers?”

Timing matters. Mixing up the question matters. This will create a great flow and keep respondents engaged and enthusiastic, and will avoid confusion.

Make sure to give respondents space to add comments or feedback where needed, but do so in a structured way, so your data remains easy to analyze.

4. Take measures to avoid survey bias

We’re circling back to bias for a second, but just because there’s more to be said and done. Avoiding bias in your surveys and qualitative research questions isn’t just about avoiding certain words or biased language, it also helps to choose a well-mixed and representative audience. On top of that, make sure your survey churns out high-quality data, not just high-volume. Read more about how we work on keeping your data in great shape.

5. Conduct pilot testing before launching large surveys

Do a mic-check before you send your qualitative research survey out to thousands of people. With pilot testing, you make sure your survey’s research questions are as-to-the-point as you hoped it to be. Send it to a small slice of your total audience, but make sure that the pilot group is just as representative as the total one will be.

When you hit that sweet spot of the right qualitative research questions and a perfectly represented audience , the feedback you receive from qualitative research isn’t just data—it’s a roadmap to deeper understanding and connection with your audience. For those looking to dive into the rich world of conducting qualitative research, Attest offers the market research tools and audience reach you need to make every question count. Check out how Attest can help bring your qualitative research to life.

VP Customer Success 

Sam joined Attest in 2019 and leads the Customer Research Team. Sam and her team support brands through their market research journey, helping them carry out effective research and uncover insights to unlock new areas for growth.

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