What is Marketing Research? 8 Failed Cases
1. What is Marketing Research?
Marketing research is the process of gathering information related to your target market.
It consists of different techniques that focus on understanding your audience, the various different competitors, and other factors that influence how well a new product or service will perform, to name a few.
Marketing research provides a clear understanding of who your target audience is and how they would react to a new offering in the market.
The goal of market researchers is to replace any assumptions with hard facts and to provide a clear plan based on the findings.
By following a fact-based plan, you will develop activities grounded in factual evidence that will make your outcomes more accurate and predictable.
Companies or agencies that have the technological tools together with the expertise can make better and more informed decisions, thus minimizing the risk of failure.
2. Why is Marketing Research important?
This article aims to prevent you from joining the marketing failure club.
In some cases, multinational brands conduct marketing campaigns that fail and cost them millions of dollars.
Sometimes companies invest huge sums of money into an idea without properly testing it out or minimizing the risks in order to take the branding campaign down after negative branding, public and media rejection.
It can be even more dramatic for small-scale companies like start-ups that don’t have the financial means to bounce back after an unsuccessful branding campaign.
Depending on the magnitude of the failed marketing stunt, such companies are forced to shut down completely.
To avoid any major marketing failures that could ruin your company, it is important to conduct thorough marketing research.
Especially when you are launching a new product or entering a new market, you should do your homework beforehand to avoid unwanted surprises.
The next paragraphs explain what marketing research is and why it is important for your branding.
Additionally, there are also examples of what can happen when companies don’t do their research and launch campaigns that are doomed to fail in marketing.
3. Benefits of conducting Marketing Research
a. Understanding the reasons behind consumers’ actions
Marketing research gives you a more in-depth analysis of your results. It reveals the reason why your customers are performing a certain action.
For example, while analytics can show you how many people left the shopping cart in the last stage, marketing research finds out that people think that step is too confusing and they get frustrated by it.
It is key to understand why people do certain actions because only then you can replicate your success.
b. Predicting future trends
By following the developments of your target market you gain an understanding of which direction it is going.
Researching about your target audience makes it possible to forecast future scenarios allowing you to plan different strategies beforehand.
By predicting prospective revenue sources, you can focus on adapting your production to meet future demand.
c. Monitoring competitive environment
Conducting high-quality market research on competitors gives you information about their actions.
Understanding your field of competition makes it easier for you to react fast and effectively.
For example, when other companies are having a very successful quarter, performing market research on competitors allows you to determine how they did it.
Then you can adapt this to your situation to replicate their success.
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4. 8 well-known Marketing Fails of all time
a. New Coke - Coca-Cola
In 1985, when Coca-Cola felt the need to reinvent its formula, the market researchers conducted extensive research of what the flavor of the new Coca-Cola should be.
By then, Coca Cola’s branding campaigns already existed for 99 years without having changed the famous recipe once.
Market research on competitors resulted in the following facts:
While Coca-Cola poured in $34.6 million to promote their new Coke, their competitor Pepsi spent $22.4 million during the same time period.
However, the public reaction to the new soda was so negative that the company decided to bring back the classic Coke after only 2 months.
Coca-Cola realized after this huge branding campaign blunder that their market researchers didn’t take the brand position into consideration when making this decision.
The marketing research at Coca-Cola tunnel-visioned having only the flavor of the revised Coke in mind.
People bought the brand because they grew up with it and had an emotional connection with Coca-Cola’s strategy.
Pepsi was quick to react because of their market research on competitors, shortly after, releasing an ad that was mocking Coca-Cola’s decision, and encouraging people to change brands.
i. What could Coca Cola have done to avoid this mistake?
This example shows how important it is to know your target audience and what they want.
Coca-Cola failed to recognize the emotional importance of its brand to its customers.
Intangible concepts like this one are one of the biggest factors influencing our buying behavior.
While conducting marketing research for the new product, the company could have taken more variables into consideration to avoid costly surprises like this one.
b. Hotness comes in all sizes - Levi’s
In their branding campaign "Hotness Comes In All Shapes and Sizes", the fashion brand Levi’s Strauss wanted to appeal to a broader audience of women.
The branding idea was to use models with different body sizes to show that anyone can fit in their jeans.
This would have been the end of the story, however, the models that Levi’s used in their ads were well below the average body size of American women, which is between 14 and 16.
One of the ads titled "All asses were not created equal" shows a range of models with similar-looking curves which received a lot of backlashes.
i. What could Levi's have done to avoid this mistake?
Companies in the fashion industry cater to different target audiences with not the same type of bodies and shapes.
If Levi’s Strauss would have put more work into their marketing research efforts, their market researchers would have avoided the criticism and effectively reached the goal of the branding campaign.
By using the database of their existing customers, Levi’s would have immediately identified the type of consumers that buy their products and as a result, the market researchers would have prevented this shameful marketing failure.
Saving millions of dollars in the way.
c. Heineken - “Sometimes, lighter is better”
In a more recent incident from 2018, the beer company Heineken removed a new branding campaign from television that advertised a low-calorie version of their beer.
The reason was that the slogan the market researchers used ”Sometimes, lighter is better” was misinterpreted to promote fair-skinned people over dark-skinned people.
The ad shows a bartender sliding down a Heineken beer down the table.
On the way, the bottle passes by multiple black people until it stops at the white-skinned woman who drinks it.
The commercial received so much backlash that Heineken had to stop the branding campaign and apologize.
Especially in the 21st century, it is more important than ever to be politically correct, even for commercial branding.
Consumers are closely looking at the brands they purchase because they want to be represented with a brand that fits their morals and values.
i. What could Heineken have done to avoid this mistake?
This could have been prevented by having a more diverse research team.
It is not difficult to spot such a critical point in an ad if a mixed variety of people would have critically observed the ad before publishing it.
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d. Mansplaining - University of Adelaide
Universities and other higher education institutions have a very sensitive nose when it comes to their public image as they want to attract the best prospective students from all over the world.
In an effort to advertise the University of Adelaide, the institution created a billboard outside of the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
The hoardings are showing five women standing around a sitting man who seems to be explaining something by using hand gestures.
Passersby criticized the branding campaign in which the man seems to hold a lecture for the female student body.
Some people on social media used the term 'mansplaining' to describe “a man explaining something to a woman in a way that is considered patronizing, arrogant or condescending”.
Later a spokesperson from the university explained in a statement that the photo wasn’t provided by them and that it didn't represent real students:
"The photo of the hoarding has been deliberately angled and cropped to suggest that the image is directly related to the university, which it is not"
i. What could University of Adelaide have done to prevent this Marketing Fail?
Marketing research is key to prevent such inconsistencies regarding the messaging of a company or institution.
A small mistake like the one from the University of Adelaide can portray a wrong image to the customer base.
Higher education institutions want to be associated with positive change and diversity in the world.
If market researchers would have compared the ad with the brand image of the university, the marketers would have noticed a mi