Meet Market Research Expert Laura Hazzard

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand with guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey there, product launch hazards. Welcome to another office hour expert introduction. And today I'm really excited because your introduction is to another Hazard. This is my sister in law, Lara Hazard, and she is an expert in market research. And why I'm so excited is because I promised you that we were going to protect you from the other hazards, product launching. And I think that so critical to that is the market research hazard. Like do people want to buy what you have to sell? Are they going to respond to it? What features should be in this? What do they value? All of these questions come up in your mind and market research is a great way to answer that. And so I'm not only excited that you're here and being able to listen to this important topic, but you have a hazard who's gonna help you to go through it. So I'm really excited about that. She is married to my little brother. That's who I consider him because he was four when I met him. And so anyway, I want you to listen to her because she is brilliant and she has this great background and expertise with very, very big brands. And big brands make a lot of mistakes. If you've heard me speak before, they make tons of mistakes and they still do this stuff. And so when you're not doing it, you have an even greater risk for making mistakes. So this is why she's going to be such a critical expert for you to tune into and ask great questions and utilize her services and things like that. So I'm going to have her, rather than me, read her bio, which sounds a little like nepotism, but it is. I'm so proud of her. So I'm going to have her tell you a little bit about how she got started in market research, came right out of college and went into it, and the kind of clients she's worked with and the brands she's worked with because it's going to astound you.

Thank you.

So, hey, Laura. Hi. Yay. I'm so glad we're finally doing this. So please tell us about how you got started in market research.

Definitely. Okay, so I am a Midwestern girl, grew up in Ohio. I went to school at Indiana University. I studied marketing and I opted to go the research route. I am a curious girl that's just sort of kind of nerdy too.

You like to ask questions?

Yeah, I love to ask questions. I'm not afraid to ask questions. So that's why I went the consumer research route. So since college I moved to Los Angeles, met Chris, your mother in law. But I've been working for consulting firms in Los Angeles ever since then. So big brands were my clients. I worked with Target, Starbucks, Disney, Fox, Sony. The products I've worked on really range. I've done everything from plus size women's apparel to kitten cat food and everything.

Between foods and fashion and like all.

Kinds of product areas, bakery, electronics, bath and body perfumes, things like that. I've sort of worked the gamut. I mean these big brands, when you're working with your mask merchandisers, they sell a lot of different types. So I have worked across, across it.

All well and I think this is really important because, you know, what goes on at mass market is really hard. And a lot of them have what I call very frequently the shotgun approach. There's like, let's just throw it out there and see if it happens. But you know what, it's not cost effective for big brands to do that. And that's why they dive deep into market research. That's why they have a process for test marketing. So they don't even take what people say. They then test run it and see if people will buy it. And so having a yourself is so critically important when you're a small business, you're an inventor, you're an Amazon seller, you're you know, e commerce seller in general and you've got very limited bandwidth to make a mistake. So that's, you know, why it's more and more critical to ask the important questions. So when we've talked before and you know, I'm a little more in the know than most people, so I want to do a little bit of deep dive on some of the definitions of things you're gonna say over time because that's my job to demystify what's going on with market research. And so you know, I know you threw out some terms called qual quant and I hear it all the time from other people in the industry and in big brands and in the know. But what does that mean?

Okay, so both are important. So don't let anyone tell you one is more important than the other. Quant. Quant is your data. It's your numbers, it's your return on investment, it tells you, you can size the market. It gives you something to grip onto and benchmarks. It's a starting point. It's really important for brand health. It gives you. It's data, it's talking to people, and it's talking to a lot of people. At least 500.

That's a statistical size that works.

I mean, you can go a little lower, but it's what I feel most confident in. We've done. You know, it all depends on lots of things as most things in product launching. Everything has a story and a different nuance. But 500 is where I feel comfortable. It's representative. We want to hear from every age, every ethnicity, income group, your different cities in the country or in the world. You know, start with 500. A statistical. And it's like you can extrapolate from there. So that's your data side, and that's usually done with something as easy as an online survey. And it's just typing in, you know, a lot of this. Maybe you've had a touch point here with political polling. That's your data. That's an example. Or your satisfaction. You go to Best Buy and they say, hey, take this survey. Give us a 1 through 10. That's quant in a very kind of basic way, but just to kind of put in perspective, Qual on the other side is just as important. So this is the people, the feelings, the emotions, the stories. So you can't necessarily make a judgment call on qual alone, just like you wouldn't make one on quant alone. So qual is your focus group, where everyone sits around the table and you have a moderator and you ask questions. Questions. It's also in depth interviews or even observations. Sometimes you have to stand in the Target store and watch people shop the aisle. Oh, yeah, Tracy, I know you've done this.

I do it. I do it all the time.

Yeah, that's cool. So we can all say, how satisfied are you with the product? One through five. And if I give you a four, well, how do we improve? What does that mean? You know, qual tells us the why. Here's a little bit more. Here's the consumer voice. And this also helps for marketing messaging. So how does your client or your prospective buyer talk about your widget?

Because this is what happens. We talk about this all the time on my shows. You get caught up in your what, right? The thing that you invented. The what you sell. You're in the know on it. You have industry terminology, you have shorthand. You have like, you know, you call it these things, but that doesn't mean the consumer perceives it that way. And that's not the terms they use. And so that's where your messaging can really go wrong in that you think, hey, I've got the best thing here. But if it's not communicating to them, if they're not perceiving it. And so I use this term, I'm wondering what you think of it is. My definition of brand is that while it's not what you say you are, it's how people perceive that you are.

Absolutely. Definitely. I would say that's exactly right. Yeah.

And so you got to check it, right?

Yeah. Well, ultimately it doesn't matter what you think about your product because you're not going to make money doing that way.

Like you're not going to buy it day in and day out yourself.

I mean, listen, if it's a passion project, that's totally different. But if you want to make money, if you want to grow a brand and really make something, it matters what other people think about you and the product.

So glad you said that. So let's talk about what that looks like though, in practice. So, I mean, I know a lot of inventors, a lot of designers out there, they get all really upset about the term focus group.

Yeah.

Because they see focus groups as being not innovating, not getting it, not happening. And so that's where they have this sort of like, I don't know, dissatisfaction and say, no, I'm not interested in market research because that's the only thing that they know.

Yeah. So focus groups can be old school. I mean, there's like SNL spoops about focus groups. They've changed a lot. And I think it also, it just comes down to the moderator and the questions you're asking and how you are including everyone. And consumers are not dumb. I mean, if anyone who's done even a little bit of research knows consumer's not dumb, and they are creative thinkers, we will screen for that to make sure they're articulate and are thoughtful and emotional, but they can absolutely be creative. And I have seen some incredible ideas come out of focus groups that I have designers in the back room saying, oh my gosh, I never thought of that. Because they're in their own little world, their own little box.

So here's kind of my guidelines that I like. I like to do focus groups earlier rather than later. So this is why I think it gets a bad name. Is that that sort of old school style of focus group that you're referring to? Is this, like, we've got this widget, it's going to market now. You know, someone at the top goes, oh, wait a minute. What did the focus group say of it? And they were like, oh, well, we skipped that part. And so now you've, like, gone so far down the road, and then the focus group says something negative, and they're all like, it's too late. Like, you know, they're wrong. And, like, it gets to be this war instead of if you do it really early on, you can design into it. And so that's where I like to be.

Totally. And with that, I think, you know, at the very, very, very early stage, even just doing a small group, a group of moms in a living room. I mean, focus groups have really changed. We meet at coffee shops, we meet at homes. We meet at different places that are inspiring. Start there and you'll have your answers. You'll have big answers and aha. Moments from the very early phase. And if it falls flat there, there's a lot of work to be done before you go into prototyping and further into distribution and all of that.

Yeah. So there are lots of different ways to approach that. But the number one thing that I always say is that you shouldn't ask your own questions. Tell us why that is from us from a making market research significant and important. Tell me why that is.

Well, I mean, it also is why big companies like Disney have outsiders write their questions for them too. I mean, and these are really smart Harvard MBA people that don't even ask their own questions about their own products. The reason is because you're biased. You love it. You've been living and breathing it. Sometimes your job is staked on it. Your livelihood, your family, the food on your table. You want it to succeed. And you know, when you write your own questions, first, you're gonna have a bias. You may forget about some of the criticisms that could be coming up. And you also might be missing something, especially if you're not totally ingrained in the industry yet. If it's new and you're still learning, you might not know all the questions to ask. You might miss something. And, you know, especially if a conversation, you can take so many different tangents. And, you know, as a moderator, because I do moderate a lot of my own focus groups, sometimes tangents are bad, but sometimes they're really powerful.

Yeah. So you know when to stop it and when move on yet this is just droning on here. Let me fix that. So, you know, that's really interesting. So you know, we're actually working with you, you on. On it for part of our business and sort of doing a, like, I'm going to call it a customer satisfaction survey. But at the same also is getting a better understanding of why they chose to work with us. And that is something like, we think we know why, but is it true? And so sometimes you need that validation to understand is, is it the way we set it? Is it the way it's happening? Is it, you know, let's validate that in the process, because we might be able to design better market materials, we might be able to design better products, services, whatever that might be around that, if we understand those things. Yeah.

And, you know, the way you phrase a question could give you totally different answers.

That's what I was just thinking because, you know your niece, Linnea, right? So she's.

Love her.

She's almost nine. And I went to her school for back to school, you know, for the. I wouldn't say it was a report card because it wasn't a reporting period, but it was kind of like that parent teacher conference idea. And so she said, well, you know, I know Linnea reads really well, but she doesn't seem to, you know, do as well on reading comprehension. And I said, is it because she's not answering the questions or she's answering them wrong, or is she just answering them in a different way than you imagined? And she goes, yeah, she's kind of creatively answering them. And I said, I don't think it's because she's misunderstanding the question. Her perception is, though, that that question means something else. And that's what happens a lot when we pick our own questions. It's like we're in this, like, okay, we're an adult and we're choosing these questions for reading comprehension, and we think they're at a kid's, but not a creative and innovative kid like my daughter, who's gonna go, yeah, you don't mean that.

Well, and I think that's a great point. Different ages perceive things differently, different groups depending on where you are in the country. You know, if you're designing something for a teenager and you're 50 years old, you may not know how to ask the question properly or you might be not thinking about another piece in the context of their world. I mean, that's why we do both quant and qual, because we want a representation of everyone and every thought process. Like, this is America. There are all different ways we construe questions. But, you know, you want to keep things basic and open and have a direction as well.

You know, this is an interesting kind of area because it also comes to what I'm going to call it bias in the data. We have a lot of bias in our data. I mean, I think it's becoming more and more clear as we move into an artificial intelligence and AI world at which the data is very important. And if the data is already skewed and biased to begin with, then do we need to have the qual to kind of offset it and validate it and question it? And so that's really where I come into the world saying, hmm, that data is interesting, but is it reflective? So this happened. Question everything. Yeah, question everything. Right. And so I was writing an article, really interesting research report that was put out, it was about maybe a year and a half ago, on brand perception and how there's this gap between how big brands perceive themselves. So Procter and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, Target, right, all of those level of brands, and they perceive themselves and what their executives and organization think of themselves as how they rank in the industry or how they, you know, how. What consumers think of them. And so they have this rating scale that they utilized, and then they did that with consumers and so wanted to assess the gap between the perception that the internal has and the gap that the external has. Pointing out this perception issue. And so there was this really, like, significant gap between how highly rated it was internally and how, you know, it was like, I would say probably at least a 35 to 40% differential lower across every one of the different ways that which you were perceiving it, like perceiving their service, perceiving their quality, perceiving their product line, like it was a perception in all the categories. And they were always different, like that much lower than how they thought of them themselves. And so I asked the researcher and he was really, like, excited about it. He was really proud of it. It was really statistically, like, it was a big research. I mean, it was not small at all. Yeah, it was thousands. And I said to him, do you think, and this was just my last question. Do you think that the. Is that consumers are made up of 86% or more women and the executive, we know from all the surveys of retail and big consumer brand executives that the mix is very, very low and that they have a very small percentage of women there. Do you think there's a perception gap because of that? Did you filter out for gender? And he went, no, I'll have to get back to you on that. And he never did. Right. You got to weigh that data. And so it was a bias in how they took the data, too, because they didn't screen out for. Because I guarantee you, when they did the survey and they said, oh, we surveyed a thousand executives. That's great. But were you not matched with the same gender for.

Yeah. Anytime you're doing benchmarking from the beginning, you have to know the context of everything. And, you know, just, you know, for that example, when you're looking at corporate employees to consumers, you need to make sure you understand the context is the same. And same goes with when you're looking across brands or looking at your competitors or comparing the different regions. All of that has to be taken into consideration.

Yeah. There has to be kind of like balances that happen in that. Or shifting of it and massaging the data a little bit, but then confirming it. Right. Is true.

And this is like such an important piece to research as well. Is the gut check is you are an expert in this product. Right.

I am not.

Like, if I am your moderator, I'm not the expert. You are. And so there's always that piece after we talk to everyone, collect the data. Does it make sense? Does it pass your gut check? Is it what we thought? We always go into every research study with an idea of what the results will be. You need to kind of know where.

Like, have a hypothesis.

Have a hypothesis. Absolutely. And what story do you think we're gonna tell? And listen, if it's totally different, that's an interesting finding. But you have to ask why? Then there's more red flags. It's always good to kind of have a gut check. Is this right or is there an error? I mean, that happens, too.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So. I mean, that is so, so true. So, you know, one of the episodes that is going to be coming up is what I call the. Which is the 80, 20 color roll. Right. So you have 80% of your volume come from 20% of your colors. It's the same thing with any product line. Right. Anyway, but the issue is, is that what happens when you remove the rest of the line of the colors and you only put out those 20%, your context changes. And that's really problematic. So if you're going to. If you're thinking about doing something like that in variables, this is something to communicate to your research team about. Because if it works in one scenario, but then you remove all of those pieces, does it still work? That's always a good, good question to ask. So one of the ongoing things That I like to do is I clean up people's product lines all the time. So, like, sometimes they get to thousands of skus and they're like, panicked about it. Yeah, right. Too many about it. And so I have a good experience to know which ones. If you pull them out, the whole thing isn't going to tumble down.

Yep.

But I still like to have that gut checked. And so when we think that and when they say, gosh, this one is so important, and you know, you can't take this one away. And I'm be like, but it's draining your bottom line. Are you sure? Right. And that's the time where you should go in and you say, so if you're good. As the person that, like, we built our foundation of our business on this. Let's confirm that it's not just because your heartstrings were in it and it was your baby and it was the first one. Let's confirm that that's really the perception of the community that you're serving. And if it's not, and it's hurting your bottom line and it's draining your resources and adding complexity. These are the kinds of things that you want to check. So there's more than just launching a product that you may.

Yeah, it's research for. I mean, it's a constant. It's a moving target. We have a checkpoint in time is when we do the research and report out. But as soon as we hit that report and hit send, it changes. Especially if your demo is younger. I mean, that changes every couple months. Every age is different. I've done a ton of generational research, and every three years or so you have a different little human and the way they think about and interact. But it's always important to refocus. Every year, at least, let's just check in again, have a pulse on what's happening to make sure not missing something. I mean, time goes by, your competitors are coming in. Yeah, I know about it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's different. So, you know, this is one of the things. So people ask me all the time, well, what. What kind of market research services do you offer? And I support market research services. But actually, if you want to know, like, I'm just gonna subcontract to Laura. So you're gonna get her anyway, so you might as well go direct to her if you don't need me. So I'm. That's what's going on behind the scenes here. But we do three types that we really rec. I'm going to Call it startup brands. So if you're a new brand, if you've got some new products going in, we recommend three things and then we recommend a different set of things. If you're an established brand that's growing though, you're on a fast growth or in a fast growth industry. And I'll talk about the second. But the first three that we do is like, we really want to make sure that you've tested that people will actually buy whatever it is. So whatever questions you're going to ask, however you're going to do it, whatever the most low cost way is, we need to test buying of something, not whether or not somebody likes it. Yes, like is only like. Yeah. But will they plunk down many? Because you need to build a sustainable brand. So it's really. So everything centers around trying to get those answers as early as possible and what are the key features to make that buy happen. So if we need to ask those early on, then we do that. So that's where all the research we do in the initial stages circulate around testing that out. And sometimes that's focus groups, sometimes it's just we don't have a prototype, we don't have a product to show anyone. We can't ask them questions yet. So we just need to ask them around the idea. So that's where we survey host a little, you know, kind of very targeted market survey though. So we're always really specific. Then the second thing we test is like, let's say we do already have a product that's pretty refined and decent on our idea. And we feel pretty strongly that we've gotten good indicators along the way. Now we want to make sure that we're focusing on the biggest right market. So like, you know, is this just moms of preschoolers or is this like grandparents? You know, like we want to make sure that we understand that who. And we have this idea that lots of people go into it saying, oh, everybody will buy it. Like everybody needs it. And I can tell you right now you cannot spend the money.

Commodity budget.

Yeah. You don't have the budget to get everybody to see it, to buy it. So if you're gonna focus your dollars and be focused, let's go with the market that is most likely to buy it first. And so dialing in and finding that, that's our second thing that we really try to do. What do you think of that process so far?

Sounds good. Sounds good. Okay, totally.

And then I'm on board. Yeah. And then the third piece that we do is we include some kind of survey. I'm going to call it a customer satisfaction registry card, like warranty card, if that's what you've got in your thing. And we want to make sure that we add really good questions to them or a post purchase survey, if you just email it, whatever that might want to be. We like to dial in questions around that. Once we get out of the testing phase of it. We don't, you know, testing, we're usually like, we'll pick up the phone and ask people because we know the handful of people who bought it. But beyond that, we want to do something that's a little more ongoing so that we can maybe track over time our answers starting to change. Are they the same, are they different? But getting good questions is a really critical part of that. So that's where we would utilize someone like you to put in. And that's actually what we're working on right now, is setting in those initial set of questions that happens with every client we bring in.

Definitely. And listen, I know I threw out the 500 earlier, but 10 is better than zero. We reach for the stars and see.

10 who are not your friends and family.

Yes. 10 honest people that aren't gonna care if they hurt your feelings.

Ten people who plunked down money, like really even better because they obviously made a purchase decision. Right.

So yes, definitely. Yeah, I think all of that is right on. I mean, you're still in the early phases getting some type of data. You know, if it's only 10 people, that's considered qualitative. But like I said earlier, still very important. It's still very useful and impactful.

Yeah. So then if we move on to people who are growing brands, so let's say they already are in a really great niche. And I'm gonna use, because you mentioned, mentioned Starbucks before, they're in the coffee niche. So. Okay, like, because we all know, we all know coffee and tea, this is easy. Right. So we can talk about that. Everybody, you know, everybody kind of gets that idea. So. So we're already in this niche. We already have market. We already have people buying our product, whatever it is around coffee. Right. And so now we're in that. And now we want to really. Okay, are we getting useful data? Are people filling out the warranty card or whatever that might be, you know that our survey is plugging away? Is that survey still serving? Let's refine that then. The second thing we do is we do a much more concerted market study. And so that's where we study the competitors, what are they doing, what are the features, what are they saying about their products, what are their price points? Like we do. And when we do a product within a marketplace, we're really going, like, looking online and on the shelf because it's an indicator when something hits the shelf, it's an indicator that it sold better and it's net 20%, that's doing 80% of the volume. Otherwise they wouldn't spend the money putting it on the shelf. So we watch that and we see that, but it's no good if we do it as just a snapshot for a big brand. We watch it over time.

Yep.

Because micro trends happen, seasonal trends happen. And overall, though, we want to see if the market is shifting into a particular perception and things, and we want to be aware of it rather than following a trend that isn't really there. Yeah, yeah. We want to be ahead of the things that are important, but not at the things that aren't. So then when we see these micro trends or see stuff happening now, we take that, we design into it something that's representative and we go out there and we do a good focus group and market research and validate. Is this really a, like a flash in the pan and by the time I get this to market, it's gonna be gone? Or is this something that, hey, it's tapping into an opportunity gap that people are starting to merge on, and that's where we start to find ways to stay innovative or grow our product line more in a smart way that serves the consumers we have and will grow that base of consumers.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, people get bored now. Things are changing. And as much as they love your product a to start, they're excited about the next one or the new finish or the new color, whatever is going to be different. And people get bored very quickly. Loyalty to products specifically is hard to get. Brands you can get and you can hold. I mean, let's look at Apple, those loyal Apple buyers, you got them for the rest of your life. But product loyalty is a little bit harder than brand. So I like your point. Especially if we're adding colors or adding other products, we need to know a little bit more and we need to stay current so everyone stays excited about what's coming out.

Right. And it is that, you know, if you're getting stale and getting old already and then you're like. And that couldn't happen in 18 months. Like, it's not like it's, you know, it can happen in a year nowadays.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, and there are product lines. Like, you know, to be honest with you, for most often we don't. I would say we do not test apparel because there's no point in it, because the fashion will be so in and out. We would waste more money testing it than we would putting it out and discounting it and disposing of it after, you know, in serious. Now, that being said, like, you were talking about doing a plus size study, right now you're talking about a significant shift in sizes, in styles, in shape, and all kinds of things that affect everything about what you're making and its effectiveness in selling in the marketplace. Those are important trends to pay attention to.

Absolutely.

But the little trends of, like, do we want a blue shirt or a pink shirt?

Do you have a belt or not? But yeah, these. I mean, specifically for that one, there are tons of influences happening, culturally, politically, celebrity. You know, that stuff hits not just apparel, but many product lines. When you have the Kardashians on Instagram selling products, things are changing quickly.

Yeah. So now here's an interesting thing. So I was talking about that. I'm curious on your thoughts on it. So I read this article about how Kim Kardashian's doing her new. Her own line. And she's doing her own line because she got sick of hawking other people's lines because they weren't good enough or they didn't really meet her needs. And I thought that that's really an interesting trend happening, and we see it more and more because I do get a lot more celebrities who contact us and, you know, are looking for that kind of thing for doing their own label. And it used to be that in order to do their own label, all they did was take the regular one and slap their name on it.

Right.

So they got like, I guess we stepped up into this place at which influencer shift was, I'm just gonna show this off. I don't even have to stick my name on it because my name being associated with it is good enough.

I don't have to do ads. I don't, you know. Yeah.

I don't have to do all this work. So that'll be. Yeah, I'll make more money this way, and it'll be easier on me. But it gets to a stage at which what's happening is, is that actually the celebrities aren't making enough money at it. The brands aren't getting enough value for it, and it's actually starting to fall apart. And so now these celebrities are going in. But what I'm really concerned about is that they aren't doing the good research behind it and they don't really understand. They're like, I have followers. Well, how do you understand who the ones that are going to buy out of that million followers, who's going to convert, who's going to care? And do you really understand what they want? Because, you know, yeah, I pay attention to you, but you know, you've got millions of dollars and your value is very different than my value. And it's not just the cost of the product, it's what the product does for me.

Right, definitely. I mean, that's when you see the influencer selling products. It's very easy to get your 30 million subscribers to buy at once. Are you going to make enough money to sustain that business with the one time buy? I don't know. Every product's different. But that is what they run into. There's not. Yeah, they have an established brand and everything they do, their followers will listen and do as they say. But most the time that's not enough to sustain a brand, to sustain a product on a shelf. I mean, you see that a lot with the perfumes. So whenever a celebrity comes out with their perfume, there's a new one every year because people aren't buying Britney Spears curiosity anymore. They're buying her new stuff every year. But that original one is done.

You know, it's so interesting is what we don't survey enough of at big brands and anywhere is customer attrition, why someone didn't buy or why someone was buying and now stops buying. So I saw this really interesting video with Isabella Rossellini, who I absolutely adore. She's amazing and beautiful and smart and all of these things. And she used to, when I was much younger, she was the representative for Tresor, the perfume line. Tresor, which is Lancome, right?

Lancome, I believe.

Yeah. And so she was their representative and it was like, you know, that product, that company was kind of to me like my mom's company. Like it was old to me at the time, but she made it young and she made it relevant. She made it, she gave it this quirkiness that I like, appreciated about. And I thought, wow, if they can put someone on there who's not like Photoshopped perfect. Like, you know, this was early Photoshop days, but, you know, Photoshop perfect then, wow, that brand has some value in it that I like. And then she hit actually my age right now.

Yeah.

And they dumped her.

Yep.

And so we were, I was like, how could they do that? She's still beautiful. She's still funny. She's amazing. And they told her that she was no longer relevant to their audience. But they just recently asked her back, and she said. And she said to them, I would like to meet with you. And she said, because I want to make sure that you don't think I'm still in my 40s, because I have aged since the last time you saw me. And so I want to make sure you don't think that you're getting that woman, because I'm different now. And so when she met with the new woman CEO of Lancome, they said, we made a mistake. We didn't understand what our brand stood for. And we understand it differently now, and we look at it as a more expansive brand. And you represent that. And by bringing you back, we believe that it's a statement to say we can make a mistake and we can fix it.

And I guarantee you that came out of research.

That's right.

They were doing some groups, and some women in there were like, what the heck happened?

Yeah, this is why I dumped you.

Right?

What?

Why? And they didn't have an answer. I mean.

Right. And so it's a great thing to ask, why not? Right?

Yes, why not? Or why did you change? Or what happened? How do we get you back? Is it even possible to get you back? Sometimes the world changes and your consumer changes as well, and you're going after someone different.

Yeah. But not asking doesn't help you. No, help you understand that, doesn't help you capture that. So that is a really good thing. Like, I think that there is a case of what I call buying under duress because there's no other options. And you got to have something. Like, it's like, you know, you hate all the laundry detergents out there, but you buy this one. Why? Because it's the cheaper one. Or it's this, you know, or it's, you know, it doesn't smell as fruity as the other ones. Like, whatever it might be is your criteria, but you could care less. Like, if a new one came out tomorrow, you'll check it out. And so that's where you buy under duress, because you gotta have something. But the minute something new comes along that might have solved that problem, you're gonna test it. And so that's where opportunity lies. So you gotta find out what that is. What is that critical factor?

Well, market research. Yeah, I know. And those are the stories that you hear. As much as we hate focus Groups. And by the way, there's so many other ways than a focus group to get that store. Exact story of what you said, that boredom, the, I guess, you know, someone just saying, yeah, I guess I'll buy it. Is that how you want people to feel about your brand? I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, we're going to wrap up here because you're going to deep dive into so many of these subjects on here and I'm super excited. So everyone, I know you have lots of questions for Laura, so make sure that you go through the platform, send an email, message us, let us know what you'd like, or join into her next office hours because they're going to be great. And you know, I think one of the significant things you should cover is the timing when you should do some of these things. We sort of touched on that here a little bit in sort of the process. But timing, I think is such a critical factor for many people. It's like, am I ready yet? Is it too soon? Is it too late? So you know you're going to get a lot of questions on that. And so that's a good reason to join in live and ask Lara those questions. Like, am I timed right? Yeah.

Will be phrased totally fine. Don't worry about that.

Yeah, no intimidation. You're asking a professional person who drops, develops questions. But, you know, that's okay.

Totally fine. I'm here to answer. I can also answer them.

Wonderful. And so anyway, so make sure you participate, make sure you do that. There is just want to make everybody aware. I keep saying this on every video, but I want to make sure that everybody's aware that there's a tab in Lara's expert profile in the experts section. And that tab will have all of her videos as she records them. They'll be added into that area, new ones all the time. And so we want to make sure that, you know, hey, if you want to, to deep dive into market research, go ahead and watch a ton of videos. Binge watch, we're all used to that, right? Binge watch, give some background and then set up an appointment with her if you need to, that you can do as well. You can reach out to her email. All her information on how to contact her is right there in the expert profile. And reach out to her and find out, because I have to tell you, and I'm not, you know, not to sell it, not to just sell her. But I mean, seriously, her pricing is really useful and the amount of, I mean, it's, it's low for the amount of money it could save you from making a mistake. And so just to not budget for that is a mistake. So that's also something else. If you're planning your launch, have a chat with her about what she thinks you need. Like do you need a moderated panel? Do you just need a survey? Like what is best for you? Because you want to plan that into your budget and spend it at the right time. So make sure you save for that. So those are great questions to reach out to her for.

Thank you. Yep, I am here. Whatever you need. And like I said, every product has its own nuance. So I think a conversation one on one can be very valuable. We can set an action plan.

Wonderful. So thank you all for listening and watching and tune in to Lara's next Office hours.

Thank you guys.

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