6 simple ways to test consumer preferences

What are consumer preferences?

Consumer preferences are subjective individual tastes, likes and dislikes, and predispositions. When you’re building or marketing a product to your target consumers, you need to consider their personal preferences to get the best possible results. What are their motivations? Which distribution channels do they tend to buy from most? These are important questions to answer, and can be easily tested with the help of a consumer insights software.

The 11 types of consumer preferences

1. UX preferences

UX, or ‘User Experience’, is a critical element of any software or product. It’s also subject to consumer preference – not everyone will like all types of user interface equally. For example, some may prefer a simple, intuitive user experience, while others may prefer something more technical that allows them to do more complex things.

2. Convenience preferences

Convenience plays a key role in consumer behaviour, but it may influence some more than others. For example, when choosing one e-commerce site over another, consumers may rely on which is more convenient for them – fast delivery, for example, is much more convenient than slow delivery.

3. Communication preferences

How do you like to receive information? It differs for everyone – and it’s yet another exactly of consumer preference. Some people may like very technical language and a formal approach, while others will lean towards a storytelling angle with emotion-led language.

4. Repeat purchase preferences

When you need to buy something, do you go for your old, reliable favourites, or do you try something new? Some consumers will prefer repeat purchases, while others opt for variety.

5. Effort preferences

There’s a lot of fulfilment in expending effort – but there’s a limit. While some prefer to pour effort into a project, like building something from scratch, others have a preference for minimal effort, and keeping things as simple as possible.

6. Sensory preferences

These are exactly what they sound like – preferences related to the senses. These are especially important in industries like food and beverage, where taste and smell will overwhelming influence buyer decisions, but sensory information like look and feel should be considered in everything from packaging designs to ad campaigns.

7. Service preferences

When it comes to customer service, people have different preferences in the style of service they’d like to receive. Some consumers will seek out friendly, amicable service that goes the extra mile. Some will look for the answers to their questions as quickly as possible, and nothing more.

8. Time preferences

Are you someone who likes things to be short and snappy, or someone who likes to draw out decisions and consider every detail? Time is an important consumer preference to consider – if your ideal consumer doesn’t like to be rushed, you shouldn’t opt for snappy, time-related phrases like ‘buy now’, for example.

9. Values-based preferences

Brand purpose is becoming more and more important to consumers. For lots of them, how closely a brand matches their personal standpoints and ethics is a deciding factor in whether or not they choose to buy from them. For example, some might seek out brands that are eco-friendly and sustainable, while for others this won’t sway them as much.

10. Risk preferences

In the start-up world, risk preferences are a well-known entity. This refers to a person’s propensity for taking up new things. This might mean going for the underdog brand over a well-known corporation, or trying out a new innovation over a tried-and-tested method. Some consumers will be risk-averse, and it’ll be harder for small brands to win these people over.

11. Customer experience preferences

Experience preferences encompass a lot of things – these are more about the overall experience someone has rather than the individual attributes. For example, how does someone feel about your brand from the very first moment they became aware of it to completing a purchase? Is the journey consistent all the way through, and were any bumps or things that didn’t match their preferences overshadowed by the things that did?

How do consumers prefer to do business with you?

So you’ve got a great idea for a new product? Before you blow your budget on bringing it to market, there are a number of key questions you should get answered.

What motivates consumers to buy a product like yours? What product features are most important? Where do they go to buy products like yours? What do they think of your packaging design? Who are your competitors and what do consumers think of them? How much would they be willing to pay?

Testing consumer preferences not only helps you hone your product offering, it enables you to shape effective international marketing messages and choose the most profitable distribution channels. You don’t need to get out on the road with your product, online consumer surveys offer a great way to reach out to hundreds or thousands of your target customers, so there’s no excuse for not doing it! Check our guide to find the right customer profiling tool for your brand, or read our consumer profiling case studies.

And if you’re looking for even more detail on developing your customer insights strategy, here are 6 ways to test consumer preferences online and 5 of the best consumer insight platforms.

Feature preferences

Testing feature preferences is something that should be done at the very outset of designing your product or service. It could help you avoid some costly mistakes, for example by wasting time and money developing a wireless fan, when all people really care about is its air cooling abilities.

To work out the product features your customers really value, you can utilise a multiple choice question listing all the features you’re considering. You might ask, “If you were looking to purchase an electric fan, what features would be important? Tick all that apply.” This process can help you categorise product features into “need to have” and “nice to have” (Don’t forget to include an “Other” choice in case there’s anything vital you’ve forgotten).

However, it’s not always about can’t-do-without features, sometimes you’re looking for a point of difference. In that case, you might ask, “Which features would make an electric fan stand out from the crowd?” Being wireless could be a great point of difference, but you should also qualify if they’d be prepared to pay a bit extra for it. (In this case, you can ask a follow-up question asking them to tick the price-point they’d expect to pay for this, relative to other products on the market.)

As well as shaping your product, identifying consumers’ feature preferences can also help you select what angles to focus on in your marketing campaigns. For example, if consumers tell you that it’s important for soft drinks to be low in sugar, you can emphasise that your product is kind on teeth (and waistlines) in your advertising.

Simple A/B product test

Your designers have been hard at work and you now have the final options for the look of your product or its packaging nailed down – you just need to know which one your customers will like best.

To find out, you can present consumers with images and ask them to vote for their favourite. It’s a worthwhile step, because it might not be the design you think that will come out on top. Attest conducted an interesting study recently examining consumers’ response to minimalist packaging designs.

While the graphic design community loved the stripped back look, consumers overwhelmingly prefered the traditional, busy designs. It goes to show, that these big brands could well have a mutiny on their hands if they go for a packaging redesign without first consulting their customers.

Even better, if you’re going for a specific market position (e.g. premium, affordable etc.) you can ask which packaging design looks most [premium, affordable etc.] This helps remove too much subjective preference (e.g. I prefer that because it’s my favourite colour), and hones in closer to the specific outcome you’re looking for.

If you don’t have an established “look”, it’s well worth testing consumer preferences around your graphic design. It could prevent you from making some embarrassingly terrible mistakes with your packaging design or logo.

Distribution preferences

Developing a great product is only half the story – getting it in front of your customers is the other. Should you focus your efforts on getting stocked by major retailers, concentrate on specialist independent stores or adopt an online-only strategy for selling your product?

Asking consumers about their distribution preferences is a good place to start. Where do they go to buy a new mattress, for example? By using consumer preference and shopper insights asking them to rank the different places they shop by order of preference, you can identify the best distribution channels for your particular product.

You may well find that it’s important to people to be able to try out a mattress in person before committing to purchase and, as such, they prefer to buy on the high street (or you’ll need to allow for deliveries and returns if you do sell online).

As well as asking about how they like to buy, you can question them about the specific shops and websites they buy from.

Would they be more likely to go to Amazon, Argos or Currys to buy that new TV? Having customers rank their preferences will let you know where you need to be seen.

Motivations

The quantitative data you get from multiple choice questions is hugely helpful, since the findings can be generalised beyond your participant group (when you have a statistically valid sample).

However, it doesn’t tell you the full story- especially if you haven’t gone the extra mile to avoid bad customer data. For example, it might show you that 70% of customers want their washing machine to be low energy consumption, but it doesn’t tell you if that’s because they’re concerned about the environment or because they’re concerned about their energy bills. To find out, you’d have to ask them, and that’s where qualitative research comes in.

Qualitative based survey questions are ones that allow spontaneous, free-text answers and they’re great for discovering your customers’ motivations. Things you can investigate using this method include the reasons consumers buy certain brands, the traits they think are important in a brand, any frustrations they have with products in your category and what might make them consider buying another brand.

You can also find out key information about the customer journey and decision making process they go through when making a purchase. Hear in their own words what they do when considering buying new running shoes, for example. Do they ask friends for recommendations? Do they look in magazines? Do they try on in store and then go online to look for the best price? What are the factors that finally sway their decision to buy?

This insight into your customer’s mindset helps you understand how to sell to them, how to position your brand and the marketing messages you should use to woo them. Essentially it gives context to your quantitative data.  

This understanding of consumers is also known as ‘jobs to be done’ and Attest customers can get a sample survey template for this.

Pricing preferences

Setting your price can be challenging; you don’t want to undersell yourself but you don’t want to scare customers away either. If only you knew what people would be willing to pay. Undertaking price sensitivity testing can help you discover the pricing preferences of your target customers.

One way of doing this is by utilising the van Westendorp Pricing Model, in which survey participants are asked four questions:

1. At what price do you think the product/service is priced so low that it makes you question its quality?
2. At what price do you think the product/service is a bargain?
3. At what price do you think the product/service begins to seem expensive?
4. At what price do you think the product/service is too expensive?

The responses to each question are plotted on a graph called a Price Map. The intersection of certain data points indicate the Optimum Price Point (OPP) and the Indifference Price Point (IDP) to give you a better idea of where to pitch your product.

Maybe you want to have mass appeal so you chose a price that everyone will be happy with, or perhaps you want to present your product as a higher-end item? You can segment the results by various different demographics to understand who is willing to pay the most and then target those customers through your positioning and marketing.

Brand strength

What do your customers think of your brand? Would they recommend you to others? You can find out by measuring your Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS indexes the willingness of customers to recommend your company’s products or services to others. It’s used to gauge overall customer satisfaction as well as brand loyalty.

Customers are surveyed on one single question, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this company’s product or service to a friend or a colleague?” Based on their rating, customers are then classified as either brand detractors, passives and promoters. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is determined by subtracting the percentage of customers who are detractors from the percentage who are promoters. (This is done automatically in Attest.)

The score can be as high as 100+ (if everybody is a promoter) or as low as -100 (if everybody is a detractor). A good NPS is considered to be anything above zero, with 50+ being excellent and 70+ world class customer satisfaction (Apple is an example of a brand with a NPS of 70+).

As well as measuring your own NPS, you can measure that of your competitors. This helps you benchmark yourself against them – do you have a long way to go to match their popularity or are you neck and neck? Measuring regularly, especially after each marketing push, can help you track your progress.

NPS is particularly important for challenger brands, who are going up against a more established player. If you see your NPS edge ahead of theirs, you know you’re doing great and this is really something to shout about!

Conclusion

It’s so easy to test consumer preferences with simple online surveys, you’d be foolish to come to market without doing so. It’s pretty much essential for new brands to gain an understanding of their potential customers and their wants and needs before trying to sell to them.

However, it’s also vital for existing brands with a loyal customer base as it can be surprisingly easy to alienate them. You only have to look at the protests that broke out when Coke changed its formula back in the 80s!

Just because you and your consumer insights team think something is a winner, doesn’t mean everybody else will, so consider consumer preference testing to be your sanity check.

If you’re looking for a tool to help you test consumer preferences, check out our list of the top 11 Qualtrics alternatives. If you’re ready to get started, try our consumer profiling survey templates.