As we near the end of January 2010 a number of brands have already launched new products, doing their best to win over customers and develop their brands.

Competition to deliver new and exciting products to the consumer or simply stay ahead of the competition with your current range has never been more challenging but we believe we can offer an integrated approach to research to ensure your brands future success.

Whilst the UK economy is now officially out of recession, albeit only showing a 0.1% growth in the last three months of 2009, we may be seeing the first green shoots of recovery and new product ranges or re-branded ranges will aim to capitalise on any uplift the economy has to offer.

This week alone has seen a number of new products launched into the market. R&R ice creams have launched a new range for the impulse sector including the Aero Double the Bubble whilst Premier Foods’ cake brand Lyons has launched a new range of Teashop Classic Cakes to capitalise on the growing teatime occasion. Elsewhere Charmin toilet tissue brand is to be re-branded as Cushelle to reflect the product’s softness and appeal to families.

There will always be consumers looking for something new and different within the FMCG sector but there will also be those families whose finances are still feeling the strain of the past two years.

How you engage on an emotional as well as a functional and practical level with all your potential customers is key to ensure they buy in to your product range(s) to maintain the success of your brand.

Developing your product range whether re-branding or offering new and innovative products that entice the consumer relies on a number of key factors:

• Excellent consumer insight
• A great reason for consumers to believe in your product as a solution
• Fantastic packaging
• A superb product
• A competitive price point.

Here at The Oxford Research Agency we’ve been working with an increasing number of clients on projects combining quantitative as well as qualitative approaches. Together with our sister agency Mimosa, The Oxford Research Agency offers a full research package or what we call, joined-up qual-quant thinking.

Our qual-quant offering has a number of distinct and unique benefits:

Understanding both Rational and Emotive standpoints: Quantitative research will give you the statistical insight and answers you need yet it will not deliver the real emotion behind the answers and this is where qual can provide that added insight.

For example it is clear that packaging design is filled with emotion and qualitative research is vital to tap into this emotion. Video depth interviews or group discussions will provide you with in-depth understanding as to how your packaging works against the competition and what you have to do to ensure your design wins over the consumer. This combined with our latest quantitative packaging research techniques, including a fully integrated volumetrics approach to enable you to test multiple designs and identify the volume this will deliver, will help provide you with standout, brand equity and character diagnostics that link to real sales.

An integrated way of working: The Oxford Research Agency and Mimosa share the same corporate values and we also have the benefit of working together within the same offices, enabling us to combine our thinking and provide clients with a complete picture from both a rational (quantitative) and an emotional (qualitative) standpoint. Our joined-up thinking spans the whole project as we:

• Look at the brief overall as one single brief: - what is the perfect mix of qual and quant research necessary to fully answer the research need? 
• Demonstrate clearly within the proposal how the qual and quant will interleave seamlessly
• Learn throughout the project, so that the qual informs the quant or vice versa and new hypotheses/ideas can be tested
• Conduct the analysis and reporting together as a team so that the qual-quant findings clearly support and build on each other to provide the full picture.

A proven track record of highly satisfied qual-quant clients...

Whether it’s on projects where the qual precedes the quant to provide the insight for questionnaire development or on projects where the qual has provided the ‘flesh to the bones’ after the quantitative survey, we are experts at developing bespoke integrated qual-quant solutions that fully meet clients needs. 

To find out more about what the unique combination of The Oxford Research Agency and Mimosa can offer you, please contact:

Emma Bearpark or Sunita Bhabra, Associate Directors at Mimosa (emmab@mimosa-qual.com / sunitab@mimosa-qual.com; 01865 20 84 03; www.mimosa-qual.com)

John Whittaker, Marketing Manager at The Oxford Research Agency (john.whittaker@tora.co.uk; 01865 72 82 72; www.tora.co.uk)