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Employees as Consumers: Part One

January 8, 2015

As the landscape of the workforce is rapidly changing, organizations are faced with the challenges of attracting, engaging, and retaining the top talent.  While in the past good salaries and benefits were the keys to attracting good talent, employees are now seeking more.  Organizations must offer above and beyond what has traditionally been perceived as valuable.  

In a recent interview, Bug Insights co-founder Garry Spinks speaks to Todd Schnick of the popular podcast InterpidNow about the employee value proposition.   

Here is a portion of the interview with Garry:

Todd:  I don’t talk enough about human capital and talent management, but it’s a critical discussion.  I am happy to welcome Garry Spinks, co-founder of Bug Insights to our show today.  Garry, please tell us about your background and Bug Insights. 

Garry:  I have done benefits rewards work for many years, beginning my career at Hewitt Associates.  After moving around a bit, I returned to Hewitt where I was a partner for seven years.  From there, my partner and I came up with the concept of starting a company that focuses on employees as consumers, and how you market to consumers is how you market to employees.  Our thought behind this is how we can make the world a better place to work. 

We look at how organizations make their value propositions such that they keep the good talent.  The workforce is changing.  Baby boomers are on their way out, 77 million millennials are on their way in, with an average tenure of only three years.  We look at how organizations look at different segments of their employee population and if they are offering the right rewards to each employee segment.   

There are four areas to look at when considering the value propositions: financial, what the competitors are doing, whether they align with the business strategy, and what employees perceive as valuable.  We think that the last one, what employees value, get the least attention, but needs a lot more focus.  That’s the reason we started Bug Insights.

Todd: I have interviewed thousands of successful organizations and asked them why they succeed and why they are thriving.  The answer is generally that they are thriving because of their team.  But every successful organization has a more effective way to use the talent under their roof.  Even though this knowledge is out there, there are a lot of organizations that don’t seem to be focused on it.

Garry:  There is a lot that organizations can do.  Jack Welch said “the team with the best talent wins.”  That’s true in business.  Organizations needs to ask themselves how do we keep the best employees?  How do we succeed?  An engaged employee is a motivated employee.  If the employee is engaged and buys into the company, they are going to be successful.  

Todd:  I love idea of employees as consumers.  I feel like too many executives teams are worried about customers and their products.  They need to be, but it seems like employees rank third.  If they were ranked number one, it seems like the customers and product development would be taken care of.  Is this a fair assessment? 

Garry:  Yes, that is a fair assessment.  We’ve done studies with frontline employees that show that employees who are engaged are more productive.  These are the ones that aren’t are just going through the motions and collecting a paycheck.  You can increase ROI when you have a workforce that is more efficient.  Total rewards are anything that an employee gets that they perceive as valuable, and helps to keep employees engaged.  The more things that employees have that they perceive as valuable, such as free parking, off on your birthday, the more  plugged in and engaged they are to the organization

Todd:  Too many organizations are not focused on this.  How do total rewards give organizations an advantage in the war for talent? 

Garry:  It’s easy to see that compensation and benefits are valuable.  The flip side is what else do you have that employees actually value?  Free lunches?  Flexible schedules?  We have done studies that show that organizations spend $500-$1500 per employee that is wasted money or money spent inefficiently.  That money could be used to reinvest in other things that employees really value and that are generally of very low cost. 

We can ask the employee what they want through the use of a sophisticated model and treat the employee like they are buying a product.  We use conjoint analysis which is a trade-off exercise.  You can’t have it all, so you have to make trade-offs.  For example, would you prefer a week off or a 5% raise?  Capturing the data is the first step.  Our (Bug Insights) differentiation is that we quantify what the data is worth.  We can model to organizations that based on the total rewards packages they have today, if they were to make these (specific) tweaks and changes, x% of their employees would prefer these changes.  We can tell them it will save their organization “x” amount a head which can be reinvested in other employee programs that really allow an employee to grow.  We can then recommend a strategy to increase engagement and the employee value proposition without spending more.  It’s a win-win for both sides. 

Click here to listen to the entire interview.

About Bug Insights

Bug Insights is a marketing analytics company that provides prescriptive analytics to help organizations make better business decisions.  Using fact-driven data, Bug Insights consults clients how to best optimize the return on their marketing investments.  The company assists organizations with a range of actionable research methodologies including focus groups, conjoint, A/B testing, data mining, and trade-off analysis.  Bug Insights advises organizations of all sizes across a range of industry verticals.

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Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: info@buginsights.com

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

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Millennial Marketing Mayhem

December 9, 2014

Millennial here, reporting on life as a millennial. I attend graduate school, hold a job as an associate consultant with a market research and human capital consulting firm, exercise avidly, meditate frequently, happy hour regularly and am in bed by 11.  Although I try to keep my phone out of site as much as possible, studies estimate that I check my phone about 43 times per day.  

Interestingly, although humans born from the 1980s to the early 2000s have changed popular culture, created trends like never before, and rapidly adopted new technology, advertisers don’t target products toward us. Not yet, at least. This poses a problem considering millenials push $200 billion in collective buying power per year. My suggestion, come at us with mobile advertisements, and make sure you have a great customer service department, vivid descriptions of products, and advertising finesse.

In a recent article about what matters to millennials, Christine Haskins, VP Customer Experience & Innovation Process Consultant stated: “After years of working with Millennials, I’ve seen that these consumers aren’t just interested in a new idea—they’re interested in the HOW. How is it communicated to them? How does it work in their lives? How do they engage further with social media?” This is particularly important for marketers because 68% of us care about the total package of a product. That is, a product’s online, in-store, and mobile presence.  

For a company with a questionable presence in one of these three categories, this is good and bad news. The good news is, your product is accessible on a broad scale. You have more opportunities than ever to expose your product to the marketplace. On the other hand, having so many mediums to monitor leaves more room open for error and dissatisfied millenials.  Making one marketing mistake can be detrimental because millenials make major tech purchases based on word of mouth from family or friends 93% of the time. Similarly, 93% of us read online reviews prior to purchasing a product online or in-store.

This leaves a gaping opportunity for marketers, advertisers, and researchers alike. By studying millennial consumer behavior, predictions about what products will sell, and which ad campaigns click will provide invaluable insight for the marketplace. Market researchers can run several different types of studies in order to determine which aspect of your company is falling being in a millennial filled world. Examples of these are focus groups, conjoint testing, custom surveys and concept tests.

In addition to discovering how to intrigue us, it is crucial to connect with us, to ensure that we are heard, to empower us throughout the decision making process. A 2014 article examines how loyalty marketers will offer “reputation-based rewards systems for customers who engage with their online experiences.” Allowing millennials to participate in the products directed toward us, leads to a win for profit margins, and a win for our psyches. We are hyper exposed to media and advertising on a daily basis. If we feel heard and powerful, we are likely to spend more and be happy about it. 

This piece was contributed by Bug Insights team member, Lauren White.

About Bug Insights

Bug Insights is a marketing analytics company that provides prescriptive analytics to help organizations make better business decisions.  Using fact-driven data, Bug Insights consults clients how to best optimize the return on their marketing investments.  The company assists organizations with a range of actionable research methodologies including focus groups, conjoint, A/B testing, data mining, and trade-off analysis.  Bug Insights advises organizations of all sizes across a range of industry verticals.

Connect With Us

Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: info@buginsights.com

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

LinkedIn: Bug Insights

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The Elusive Relationship Between Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

October 29, 2014

The measurement of service quality and customer satisfaction has received considerable academic attention over the past twenty-five years.  Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of people hours trying to understand and influence customers, and often assume incorrectly that satisfied customers are loyal ones.  Despite all the money invested to promote loyalty among high-value customers, it is an increasingly elusive matter in almost every industry. To increase customers’ satisfaction, firms must do more than simply track loyalty, satisfaction or defection.

Measuring Customer Satisfaction, written by Bug Insights co-founder Tim Glowa, presents a new methodology for understanding customer satisfaction and its relationship to customer behavior through the use of discrete choice modeling.

Using an empirical example of customer satisfaction, the post-paid cellular service in Western Canada, the results of this new model are compared to two traditional methods of modeling customer satisfaction data – exploring the differences between attribute performance and attribute expectation, and uncovering the relationship between attribute satisfaction and overall satisfaction. The results of the choice model are compared and contrasted against traditional results, and are found to be strategically and tactically useful.

It is highly important that organizations do a better job understanding what customers are looking for as part of their value proposition.  A big part of this is asking better, smarter questions in the survey process - questions that deliver better, more actionable data. The data and insights should be linked to a clear understanding of the ROI an organization can expect to see.

About Bug Insights

Bug Insights is a marketing analytics company that provides prescriptive analytics to help organizations make better business decisions.  Using fact-driven data, Bug Insights consults clients how to best optimize the return on their marketing investments.  The company assists organizations with a range of actionable research methodologies including focus groups, conjoint, A/B testing, data mining, and trade-off analysis.  Bug Insights advises organizations of all sizes across a range of industry verticals.

Connect With Us

Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: info@buginsights.com

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

LinkedIn: Bug Insights

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4 Key Inputs to Consider When Designing a Total Rewards Package

February 26, 2015

Total Rewards can be defined as anything an employee receives from his/her employer and perceives as valuable. This extends beyond  the elements that typically come to mind such as compensation and benefits, including environmental factors like culture and work-life balance, as well as employee development opportunities such as career advancement and coaching/mentoring. 

Creating and designing effective total rewards packages is critical to the success of any organization, particularly as the landscape of the workforce is drastically changing.  Millennials are beginning to take on leadership roles in organizations, yet their average tenure is only 3 years.  Baby boomers are on their way out and coupled with slow job growth, this means that the workforce is shrinking.  Studies show that only 63% of Americans are working or are actively seeking work, a trend that is projected to continue.  Retention and engagement is getting increasingly difficult with over 20% of the U.S. workforce indicating they intend to change jobs within a year and over half the workforce not currently engaged.  Consequently, organizations are faced with the challenge of adapting as the way we do business is turned on its head.

 Research shows that companies are wasting on average $500 - $1,500 per employee per year by offering things employees do not value or appreciate, making total rewards one of the most important areas where organizations must adapt in order to continue to manage cost while still attracting and retaining top talent.   

 In order to design the optimal total rewards package, organizations must align inputs from four different dimensions:

 Factor #1: Financial Impact.  Financial impact refers to the cost of employee rewards.  One of the largest expenses that employers face, the financial impacts are often the first input that organizations consider; however most companies strictly look at the cost of the investment, without consideration around understanding the return.  The investment in benefits and rewards is typically the third largest expense a company faces after salaries and cost of goods sold. In the U.S., healthcare is one of the largest drivers of this cost. The Towers Watson 2014 Health Care Changes Ahead Survey indicates that employers on average are currently spending $10,233 per employee on healthcare alone, and these costs are projected to increase by at least 4% in 2015. This does not begin to factor in other components like compensation and additional benefits costs per employee.

 Factor #2: Competitive Assessment.  The competitive assessment is another input that organizations continue to rely on.  Questions such as “how do we compare to other organizations of the same size?  Same industry?  Same geographic location?” are routinely asked.   While the idea of establishing norms and benchmarking against the reward packages of competitors has become a standard practice in most Human Resources departments,  this practice has turned the rewards packages we offer into a pure commodity.  It’s important to understand what your competition is offering, but when you simply consider the cost to deliver a reward program and benchmark it against your competitors, you leave no room for differentiation in your offering.  No one wins the race to the middle. 

 Factor #3: People Strategy.  People strategy, though traditionally treated as less of a consideration, is increasingly becoming a larger factor in the design and delivery of total rewards programs.  Understanding what you want to be known for and the type of employee that you want to attract, retain, and engage is an important input when you establish your total rewards package.

 Factor #4: Employee Needs.  Employee needs are arguably one of the most essential inputs when designing and delivering a total rewards strategy and yet, they are almost always overlooked over the course of the decision making process.  Significantly more attention is paid to cost and market competitiveness.  Few organizations have discovered the best way to measure and apply employee needs and are falling short when attempting to deliver the most efficient and cost effective total rewards package.  

 This lack of understanding of employee needs creates a gap in the delivery of rewards programs and means that no matter how carefully you are considering your strategy, your competitive positioning and the cost of delivering rewards, you could be missing the mark on delivering the right mix of rewards at the right level of investment.

 About Bug Insights

Bug Insights is a human capital and marketing analytics company that provides prescriptive analytics to help organizations make better business decisions.  Using fact-driven data, Bug Insights consults clients how to best optimize the return on their investments.  The company assists organizations with a range of actionable research methodologies including focus groups, conjoint, A/B testing, data mining, and trade-off analysis.  Bug Insights advises organizations of all sizes across a range of industry verticals. 

Connect With Us

Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: info@buginsights.com

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

LinkedIn: Bug Insights

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Stop Wasting Money on Bad Market Research

November 14, 2014

Organizations spend tens of millions of dollars annually on market research, but most of it is wasted because it delivers little value to the organization, employs the wrong methodology for the research problem at hand, is detached from business outcomes, and is little more than a data dump left up to the reader to interpret. We often hear colleagues complain about the frustration of spending time and energy working on a report, only to know it will do nothing more than collect dust on a desk somewhere, with little chance the nuggets of insight will ever see the light of day.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

In order to change, the research industry needs to pull up its collective bootstraps, and start to deliver greater value and insights. Make recommendations that are linked to business outcomes. Be prescriptive, and not descriptive. This isn’t hard, just uncommon. Here are some suggestions for organizations looking to get more value out of their research work conducted by consultants:

Demand your partner use the right research tool to solve your problem: Like many business functions, many researchers focus on specialty areas, either due to personal interest or seeing a professional opportunity, and will naturally look for ways to generate more work using this specialty. While some of the time this is a great win-win for the consultant and the client, too often researchers recommend the wrong methodology. Focus groups, for instance, are a great qualitative approach, and helpful to uncover the “why” and “how” questions, but because of the limited size of groups, should never be used to project findings to a broader audience (ie. 80% of focus group participants believe satisfaction should be improved).

Demand a link to business outcomes: The reason market research is being considered in the first place is the organization has a problem, and would like insights on how to fix it. It could be a customer acquisition problem, maybe a product optimization one, or perhaps it’s a customer satisfaction issue. Too often, researchers react to the client request (we need a survey!) without asking why research is needed in the first place. Sometimes the linkage is to profitability or revenue, sometimes it is to retention. Most times this linkage will be an estimate, but an educated estimate, with assumptions detailed so they can be challenged and adjusted if needed, is better than not.

Demand more than a data dump: Much of the research that is produced can be classified as a data dump – it excludes any insightful analysis, and simply reports number such as “60% of our customers are satisfied”. Great – what do you do with that? Is 60% a good number or a bad one? Perhaps if there is a historical reference (last year, satisfaction was 50%) there could be value in a number like that, but tables of numbers rarely help drive business changes. This type of research is descriptive – it describes, often poorly, customer or stakeholder mindset at a point in time. Alternatively, research that is prescriptive is far more effective, useful and valuable (if we make this change, we could expect customer satisfaction to rise 5 points, or if we lower prices 3%, we would expect to see market share increase 5%).

Market research can be an incredible tool, one that helps organizations solve complicated problems, but like many efforts, it is only as good as the effort put in.

About Bug Insights

Bug Insights is a marketing analytics company that provides prescriptive analytics to help organizations make better business decisions.  Using fact-driven data, Bug Insights consults clients how to best optimize the return on their marketing investments.  The company assists organizations with a range of actionable research methodologies including focus groups, conjoint, A/B testing, data mining, and trade-off analysis.  Bug Insights advises organizations of all sizes across a range of industry verticals.

Connect With Us

Website: www.buginsights.com

Email: info@buginsights.com

Blog: Bug Insights Blog

Twitter: @buginsights

LinkedIn: Bug Insights

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The In-House Research Department as a Competitor

There is an interesting article about the Canadian Government starting to analyze market research findings in house instead of using consultants. I am surprised more organizations are not doing this.

Market research vendors need to add value to ensure they stay relevant. Value to a client needs to come from delivering more than just data, it comes from delivering insights, recommendations and implications for the organization.  Recommendations need to be actionable, specific, and understand all the challenges (including cost, distribution channel logistics, and communication, timing, pricing elasticity and so on) that marketing executives face each day.

If market research vendors deliver just data, the value of what they produce will be become a commodity, and firms will shop that the lowest cost provider and few vendors today have the low-cost structure in place to handle competing on price with boutique firms or offshore.  Unless a client is willing to pay for insights, costs will rule – The Canadian government is bringing its analysis in-house in an effort to bring down the costs of its public opinion research:

…the federal government has begun to analyse some of the public opinion surveys it commissions rather than use the impartial analysis of the polling companies themselves – four out of 20 studies have been analysed in-house in the last six months. The newspaper claims that the result is that some findings have become less transparent.

A government spokesperson is quoted as saying the shift to internal analysis is “one way departments are doing their part to help reduce overall costs for taxpayers”.

“This practice not only saves analysis and reporting costs, but also permits tracking and comparison of results over time,” the spokesman said. “Choosing to conduct analysis in-house or externally will vary depending upon the project, budget and capacity.”

Having worked on both the client and supplier side of market research for nearly 20 years, I have seen and worked for organizations that are extremely capable of designing, fielding, and analyzing their own studies. These are typically staffed with people who used to do many of the same studies as consultants, so they are fully capable.  For these firms, consultants are only used for activities that cannot be done in house (specialized branding work, or large scale telephone recruitment). But for the most part, these organizations have extremely savvy research departments that would rival many consulting firms, and are able to leverage insights for a fraction of the cost.

The studies I’ve seen done in house are typically laser focused on one topic, often using fewer than a dozen questions, and moving from problem definition to survey design to data collection to analysis to results in a matter of days, not weeks or months.

What surprises me, is that more firms don’t adopt this policy themselves, especially when some (but not all) of the reports produced today are nothing more than data dumps without any real insights or value.

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Bug Insights is hiring! To apply click the link! We look forward to reviewing applications.

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“I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts. ” -Bill Gates #BugInsights #Business #Innovation #Sydney #ThoughtLeaders #Research

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The Influential Employee

We all have the people in our life whose opinions we trust, and to whose advice we listen. These individuals are seemingly always ahead of the curve, and are tuned-in to things around them.

These people are the Influentials. Our research confirms that 1 in every 10 American is an Influential. Influential individuals have the innate ability to sway the thoughts and opinions of those around them. However to leverage the potential power of Influentials, an organization must first understand who influentials are.

This Bug Insights white paper highlights some of the key features we have confirmed about who Influentials are and how they can be your greatest advocates. Tapping into the power that Influentials possess can help organizations better serve their employees on and off the clock.

Interested in the learning more? Click here to learn more about Influentials and how utilizing their unique personalities can benefit your business.

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Exit Interviews

Innovation starts at understanding.  

Exit-Interviews might be common place in the HR space, but why have marketers not tapped into their explanatory power? Research suggests that poor data quality and a lack of consensus on best practices are the leading factors to why exit-interviews fail.

As markets are becoming increasingly competitive, an effective exit-interview can be extremely beneficial to understanding why customers switch products or services. We have identified three key elements to conducting a successful customer-based exit-interview, which can provide businesses with quantifiable and actionable data.

This Bug Insights white paper highlights the importance of conducting customer-based exit-interviews at the right time, and in a manner that is most beneficial to both the exiting customer and the business.

Interested in the learning more? Click here to learn more about how to better understand what your customers want, and how to better satisfy their wants and needs.

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Case Study: Retail Electricity Provider Attempting to Understand Consumer Behavior

August 17, 2016

Usually, giving your consumers the power to choose is a good thing. This can only be true, however, if your organization is not loosing revenue in the meantime. In Texas, a state approved website for the sale of retail electricity has been causing headaches for both consumers and for electricity suppliers because of that particular issue. Originally designed to be an unbiased resource for customers, the PowertoChoose.org site has now become a forum for electricity suppliers to create new, unheard of brands and offer completely irrational, deceptive pricing structures. A well-known Texas electricity supplier engaged Bug Insights to help them to better understand how consumers are using the site. Using conjoint, we found how power companies can best structure their products in order to compete with the irrationally low pricing structures and minimize long-term losses. Interested in the results of our case study? Want to learn more? Click here to learn more about how to identify and meet customers' unmet needs, and capture a market.

ABOUT BUG INSIGHTS

Bug Insights is a marketing analytics company that provides prescriptive analytics to help organizations make better business decisions. Using fact-driven data, Bug Insights consults clients how to best optimize the return on their marketing investments. Bug Insights assists organizations with a range of actionable research methodologies including focus groups, conjoint, A/B testing, data mining, and trade-off analysis. The company advises organizations of all sizes across a range of industry verticals including financial services, public policy, transportation, telecommunications, hospitality, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, higher education, and energy.

Founded in 2014, Bug Insights is headquartered in Houston and Atlanta. For more information, please Contact Bug Insights at 713.425.4168, info@buginsights.com or visit www.buginsights.com.

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The Most Influential Generation: Leveraging Eye Tracking Technology to Understand How Millennial Women Absorb Information through Advertisements.

August 2, 2016

Initially written off as children who have been given too many participation trophies – the Millennial generation (18 to 34 year- old Americans) has now come of age. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Millennials make up nearly 1⁄4 of the US population, making them the largest generational demographic in America, and with nearly 80 million Millennials in the U.S. alone, this generational demographic has started to impact the economy as their buying power grows.

A Neilson study found that households in the US with at least one Millennial accounts for 37% of the total dollars spent in the U.S. and 31% of the trips taken annually. These households spend roughly 15% more than the average U.S. household. According to Accenture, Millennials in the U.S. alone spend approximately $600 billion annually. No longer teenagers living with mom and dad, many Millennials are now in their 20’s and 30’s, building careers, married, and having families of their own. Accenture reports that by 2020, annual spending for Millennials in the U.S. will grow to $1.4 trillion, making them the generation with the largest buying power.

In light of this generational shift, marketers too have shifted their focus, attempting to understand how to reach this digitally connected, easily distracted, socially minded, multi-tasking generation. However, even with this change in focus, marketers still seem to be ignoring a large and very influential demographic: Millennial women.

Women in general are responsible for creating and influencing a significant amount of wealth. Women in the U.S. with income of at least $100,000 (or investible assets of $500,000) control over $11.2 trillion – which is 39% of the nation’s total investable assets. Not only are women controlling the investible assists of their households, but they are also becoming primary breadwinners and business owners generating and controlling a growing amount of dollars.

Millennial women are the driving force of this shift; in fact, these women spend seven times more than their parents did at the same age, even adjusted for in inflation. A study conducted by FutureCast found that of the 6.2 million affluent millennials in the U.S. (those making an annual income of $100,000 or more), 64% are female. With women graduating from college at a higher rate than their male counterparts, and female hourly earnings slowly becoming more in line with the hourly earnings of men (92% - still not equal, but much closer to parity than it’s been for generations past), Millennial women have captured a significant stake in an ability to impact the economy, and should be a significant consideration – if not the primary focus – for marketers targeting the Millennial generation. Millennial women are exercising more power than ever interms of purchasing, but are not being targeted by marketers or brands for anything other than women-centric products, and even those sometimes fall short of reaching this specific demographic in a way they relate to.

“Boomers bought stuff because they needed it; Xers buy because they want it. Gen Y . . . are easier targets, because they have grown up in a culture of pure consumerism. They’re more likely to buy because they see buying as a part of life.”

-Rob Frankel, author of The Revenge of Brand X

USING EYE TRACKING TO UNDERSTAND VIEWING BEHAVIOR

These women are financially independent, driven, technologically savvy, but they are overextended and rushed for time. A study conducted by Radar Research, suggests that Millennial women live a faster pace of life and are easily distracted, which impacts the way that they consume advertisements. They've been besieged by media their entire lives, making them incredibly savvy in the way they digest all types of advertisements.

The Radar study concluded that like many consumers, Millennial women are unlikely to click on digital advertising; however, they are much more aware of these ads. When asked if they have discovered a new product via an online ad that they saw but did not actually click on nearly 40% reported that they had. Conversely, just over a quarter of Gen X women said the same. This raises a question around how these women view advertisements. What about advertisements catches their attention? How does their viewing behavior differ from women older than 35? How can marketers design ads that are more likely to get these women to take notice?

To answer these questions, Bug Insights designed and implemented an eye tracking study. 25 women from Houston Texas were included in the study. Participants were segmented into two age categories: Millennials (women age 18-35) and Non- Millennials (women over the age of 35). 13 Millennials and 12 Non-Millennials participated in the study – a total of 25 women – which was conducted in June of 2016. Each participant was asked to first self-report on a few key demographics, including age. These self-reported demographics were used to segment the data for analysis. The study included 16 print advertisements; each participant saw the same 16 ads presented in random order. To capture the Eye Tracking data, a Tobii X2-30 screen based tracker was used. This tracker is affixed to a screen, allowing participants unrestricted movement and captures data at 30Hz. Tobii Pro Study was leveraged for data analysis.

Results demonstrated that consistently Millennial women spent half as much time viewing advertisements as Non-Millennial women did. On average Millennials spent just 3.3 seconds viewing the ads; for Non-Millennials average time per ad was 6.5 seconds. Interestingly the patterns and the way the media is viewed is fairly similar; however, Millennial women just appear to be more efficient at digesting the information. This is not surprising, given their lifelong exposure to technology and their strong ability to multitask.

For example, the images below, show a heat map of the viewing patterns for Millennials vs. Non-Millennials for one of the ads tested. For this specific ad, Millennials spent on average just under 4 seconds viewing it; Non-Millennials averaged about 7.5 seconds.

Looking at the heat map view side by side, it is easy to see that viewing patterns are similar – both demographics, essentially

view the add from top to bottom and from left to right. However, one key difference exists: the Millennial segment basically skips right over the small text just below the image that says “The stylish XT5 combines effortless power and progressive technologies so that you can focus on what lies ahead”; whereas the Non-Millennial segment spends almost the same amount of time on both text sections (the “Dare to ask, where next? Introducing the first ever XT5” text above the image and “The stylish” text just below the image). This suggests that while Millennials are still able to process information more quickly, they still will not absorb everything a Non-Millennial will. In the case of this advertisement, it may be problematic, as the text that was overlooked provides most of the detail about the car being advertised, and given a Millennial’s need to make a connection with the brand and the product, this ad will miss the mark.

Another advertisement tested as a part of the study shows the same results. A Gaze Plot indicates that both segments viewed the advertisement from top to bottom; however again Millennials do not linger over the add. Their average time of viewing

for this specific test was just over 3 seconds; for Non-Millennials, average time was just over 6 seconds. And again, Millennials followed a similar gaze pattern here, however notice the time spent (indicated by the size of the dots) was shorter and they almost completely failed to notice the “Drink responsibly” text at the bottom of the advertisement. For this specific advertisement, that may be ok. While obviously this company wants its consumers to drink responsibly, that is not the key focus of this message, and likely would not be a reason that Millennials are drawn to this brand over another.

Catching the eye of Millennials is challenging; despite their ability to process information more quickly, they still get distracted more easily and move on more quickly than their older counterparts. In the Eye Tracking study that was conducted, even advertisements that had significantly more text than others, did not catch the eye of Millennials for significantly more time – for example, some ads with large blocks of text prompted non-Millennials to take nearly a full second longer than the average length of viewing; Millennials instead took just an additional two tenths of a second. The car ad pictured to the left was one of the ads tested that included a significant block of text. For this ad, Non-Millennials averaged 8.6 seconds to view the ad; Millennials took just 3.75 seconds

What does this mean for marketers today?

Millennial women are the first generation to grow up in a truly digital age. They have been inundated with technology and advertisements since they can remember, and as a result they have developed an ability to quickly digest information and a very low tolerance for stagnation.

This female demographic needs constant entertainment and engagement, and has developed an incredible ability to sort through chaos and overwhelming amounts of information. Busy schedules, constant activity and significant drive means that women demand that information is disseminated quickly and efficiently. It is imperative that marketers use this information to their advantage. When designing advertisements, keep this demographic and the following behaviors observed in this study in mind: 1) a rapid assessment of advertisements, 2) the tendency to ignore multiple text blocks, and 3) the propensity to move on quickly no matter the amount of text. These insights should inform advertisement design and should result in creatives that are engaging but succinct. Calls to action must be clear, uncluttered and communicated efficiently, and important information should never be communicated with small fonts, long paragraphs, or at the foot of ads. Millennial women present a huge opportunity for marketers today, and with their growing ability to influence purchase decisions and impact the economy, marketers cannot afford to ignore this demographic in advertisement and creative design.

ABOUT BUG INSIGHTS

Bug Insights is a marketing analytics company that provides prescriptive analytics to help organizations make better business decisions. Using fact-driven data, Bug Insights consults clients how to best optimize the return on their marketing investments. Bug Insights assists organizations with a range of actionable research methodologies including focus groups, conjoint, A/B testing, data mining, and trade-off analysis. The company advises organizations of all sizes across a range of industry verticals including financial services, public policy, transportation, telecommunications, hospitality, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, higher education, and energy.

Founded in 2014, Bug Insights is headquartered in Houston and Atlanta. For more information, please Contact Bug Insights

at 713.425.4168, info@buginsights.com or visit www.buginsights.com.

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New Study by Bug Insights!

February 18, 2016