Do people talk about you behind your back? If you’re an established CPG brand, or a new one that’s taking off, then they certainly do.
Whether it’s good or bad, the right thing to do is NOT to simply “rise above it all” and carry on. You need to dig in to find out exactly what everyone is saying—and why they’re saying it. Without a solid grasp of consumer perception, it can be difficult to know how to develop new products, gain more loyal customers, and respond effectively to sociopolitical events.
If the prospect of trying to get a pulse on what your target customers think about you is daunting, rest assured that it’s gotten much more manageable nowadays thanks to platforms like Highlight’s that help you track customer perception metrics and turn market research data into actionable insights.
Consumer perception refers to the ways in which people make sense of and relate to a brand, product, or service based on their experiences with said brand and also their own beliefs and attitudes. Improving people’s perception of your company is vital for attracting new customers and turning existing customers into loyal brand advocates who purchase your products again and again.
“Customer perception” is often used interchangeably with consumer perception, but there’s a subtle difference between customers and consumers. Customers are the people who actually make the purchase, whereas consumers are the ones who eat, drink, apply, wear, or otherwise make use of your product.
If you’re a parent buying juice for your kids, you’re the customer, while your kids are the consumers. You might care about the cost, the ease of opening the packaging, and how healthy the juice is. Your kids probably care most about the taste, and if it’s horrible, they might grow up to hate the brand.
Everything that goes into brand interactions, whether as a customer or consumer (likely both), matters for consumer perception. But even this doesn’t show the whole picture. Many consumers make purchasing decisions based on fuzzier concepts like values and social impact. Things that impact consumer perceptions include:
Without adequately analyzing consumer perception, your brand could make some huge mistakes when it makes specific claims on its product packaging or sends certain messages out on social media. It really pays to understand what will resonate with people and what will rub them the wrong way.
Beyond simply offering fantastic quality and usability (which you’ll verify with consumer product testing), you’ll need to connect with consumers and establish trust through your brand messaging, your marketing materials, and your contribution to the social concerns of the day (for instance, sustainability).
Larger brands can actually struggle more with trustworthiness, although they benefit from increased familiarity. This trust disparity has a variety of possible explanations: people can form closer relationships with businesses that aren’t gargantuan, and there’s a sense that smaller companies are less profit-hungry (or they’d probably be bigger). In the food and beverage sector, smaller brands are perceived as healthier and more likely to offer interesting choices.
Whatever the size of your CPG company, a few strategies can help you manage the consumer perception process in your favor:
Authenticity is paramount, and what works for one brand might not work for another. In recent years, for example, the “unhinged” content marketing style has been gaining traction, with brands like Wendy’s and Duolingo posting wacky memes and getting into spats with rivals (like McDonald’s) on social platforms. If you’re a luxury brand, however, the unhinged style will probably seem out of place.
On a similar note, responding to sociopolitical developments in a knee-jerk way can also hurt your brand. Expressing solidarity with a cause shouldn’t come across as calculated. You should still be careful in your approach and make sure your brand is a worthwhile messenger. Stories abound of brands that have been called out for virtue signaling, hijacking a crisis to sell something, or posting in support of minority groups when employees who belong to those groups feel marginalized by their company culture.
(Speaking of hijacking a crisis to sell something, there ARE ways to do it … a masterful example being when skincare brand The Ordinary recently took advantage of painfully high egg prices to get people into their NYC stores.
The dramatic shifts in public opinion on a variety of causes creates difficult-to-navigate terrain for brands. Whether this is due to people actually changing their minds, or to once-silent groups of people suddenly speaking up, it’s clear that plenty of brands have been bowled over by negative responses they really didn’t see coming.
Sometimes, people just want brands to focus on selling their products. It really depends on the brand, and it depends on the customers. If you’re at a loss whether to get involved or sit something out, you can always turn to market research. With the right market research questions, you’ll get a better sense of what your customers expect from you, CSR-wise.
Once you’ve done your research, consistency is key. Patagonia is a great example of successful, authentic corporate social responsibility that never wavers. Their customers value sustainability and environmental justice, and the company consistently delivers. Similarly, Costco successfully navigated shifting attitudes in the DEI debate by quietly, yet powerfully, sticking to their longstanding principles.
You’re not always going to know what your customers think simply by seeing how your brand performs on social media. While social media is a great tool for influencing consumer perception and getting the word out, not all types of customers are going to be voicing their opinions on public platforms.
To get a sense of how people really perceive your brand and your products, you need to ask them directly in a way that minimizes bias and puts them at ease. In-home usage testing (IHUT) works well precisely because it has customers give products a try in a comfortable, familiar environment. Here are a few sub-categories of IHUT you might want to consider:
IHUT can help you gather nuanced, authentic feedback by means of ethnographic studies and video diaries that help you truly understand your target customer. As an example, Highlight helped a socially conscious coffee company refine their brand story, taglines, and other messaging based on comprehensive feedback from a team of testers.
Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of feedback you get from IHUT? Artificial intelligence can speed up the process of gleaning insights from qualitative data like in-depth interviews and open-ended survey responses.
It’s imperative that you work to overcome biases in consumer perception data during product testing. This includes mitigating the social desirability bias, controlling for any effects that the order of questions may have on product evaluations, ensuring diverse participant representation, and understanding things like the halo effect, anchoring bias, and confirmation bias.
If you’re able to create products that offer real value, disperse marketing materials that delight and resonate with customers, and authentically display your brand’s commitment to making the world a better place, you’re probably on a path towards strong consumer perception. However, it takes looking into a mirror to really know how we appear to the rest of the world.
For brands, that mirror (ideally) comes in the form of things like customer surveys, ethnographic market research, and IHUT. (Less ideally, it may take the form of terrible reviews, social media backlash, and possible boycotts.)
The reputational stakes are too high for brands to simply trust their gut on this one—they must seek out authentic feedback from real customers.