That's What She Said: Research to address consumer needs

Companies in today's market are “without borders,” so to speak. With the sophistication of technology, the ability to expand an organizations market is more and more attainable. Today, more companies are strategizing ways to promote their goods or services in untapped markets. According to an article published in the New York Times on August 11, 2010 many companies are focusing their efforts to target the Muslim market abroad.

Why? Because the market is growing. The article states that “For decades, many Western company [sic] failed to appreciate the unique needs of Muslim consumers, marketing experts say. Worse, some companies offended potential customers by not understanding religious sensitivities. But as the Islamic population has grown in size and affluence — there are now 1.57 billion Muslims worldwide — more multinationals are seeking to tap into the market.”

But, as this quote points out, the Muslim market in Malaysia, for instance, is a whole other ball of wax than the Western market we are used to in the United States. Therefore, there are considerations when advertising to these markets. These considerations are addressed by first conducting social research. In the case here, employees at Unilever's Sunsilk division had to ask Muslin women about their concerns about their hair. This exploration is crucial to ensure that any campaign launched does not cause any offense to the intended audience. No small task when you consider that “with Muslim-majority countries spread from Southeast Asia to Africa, and Muslims speaking numerous languages and adhering to varying standards of dress and other customs, approaching the group as consumers can be complex.”

So, they did their homework. Or, in other words, their social research (see, I told you this would all circle back to research). To get started, the research designers would have had to begin by defining the purpose of their research – exploring the needs and wants among Muslim women in countries such as Malaysia, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The research here is largely exploratory in that it is trying to understand a topic of particular interest. For instance, one company highlighted in the article, Ogilvy Noor (an arm of Ogilvy &Mather) put together a survey study that asked consumers to rate brand appeal. For Sunsilk, they may have used such methods as consumer surveys and/or focus groups asking women about their hair care needs and desires.

Next is to analyze the data and try to see how it answers the question you asked in the beginning. In this case, we wanted to know what concerns Muslim women and their hair care. Unilever found that many Muslim women who wear the tudung, a traditional head covering, reported that they suffered from oily scalps after wearing the headpiece all day. Sunsilk Lively Clean & Fresh shampoo was developed to combat exactly this issue, so Unilever created the television commercial featuring a Muslim woman wearing the tudung and espousing the benefits of the shampoo.

Unilever is a smart company. They didn't release a commercial aimed at Western women, which feature images such as women tossing their shiny long locks. They knew their market because they had done their research. And it was good research. They listened to the concerns of their publics – that their scalps were oily – and they developed and offered them a product to address this need. That's using good research for smart PR.