Overview

The VOC is a dynamic source of all consumer understanding and information in the product domain.

The key messages in this guide are:

• The VOC is a consumer–centric document that addresses the consumer domain surrounding an interrelated series of needs and wants (for example, meal preparation, baby care, participation in sports, etc).
• The VOC is a reference point to spot change, contradiction, new behavior and different attitudes towards the consumer experience, the brand or even the consumer’s attitudes towards self and others.
• It is like a consumer knowledge bank from which you draw insights and deposit new information.
• VOC components cover most of the areas where it is possible to gain insights related to the consumer. The key to getting useful insights lies in thorough analysis of the available information.
• The VOC can become a source of competitive advantage.

In this guide, you learn:

What the VOC is and why it is important.

How to make the VOC a powerful tool of competitive advantage for your brand.

What is the VOC?

The VOC is the greatest, most up-to-date source for all consumer information. It provides a 360-degree view on the consumer, including information like demographics, user profiles, segmentation, purchase behavior, media habits, competitive issues and insights.>/p>

The VOC is about the consumer and not about the product. It focuses on the consumer domain and the inter-related needs, wants, experiences and hopes of the consumer in the context of that domain.

The VOC is a living document; it grows as your knowledge of the consumer grows. The power of the VOC lies in its ability to help spot changes/ contradictions and identify new behavior, attitudes, habits and experiences associated with the brand. However, this can be achieved only with disciplined and regular updates and analyses of fresh data on the consumer.

The VOC is a multi-level document that can be filtered down to the level of detail you need.

Why is the VOC important?

How the VOC helps identify insights

The insights process is all about consumers—how they feel, think, live, work, enjoy, interact with each other, etc, and how these affect your brand and the way consumers view it. The VOC provides all this information, filtering it down to observations that finally lead to insights.

The best insights are found by spotting change or contradiction. The VOC enables you to compare multiple data points and spot the odd behavior that most probably will have an insight hidden in it. And when you have a document that contains all available data on your consumers, you are also able to constantly assess/ reassess the data from various perspectives.

The VOC contains current insights about the consumer, domain and brand. Each insight represents potential changes to the VOC or adds to it in a unique way.

The VOC as an information bank

The VOC provides new brand team members with a steep learning curve on consumer understanding. It is also a great tool to induct new agencies or team members on current consumer understanding.

The VOC is a knowledge management tool that summarizes and stores all consumer data and minimizes the loss of information associated with employee turnover or poor information management. It also saves cost by avoiding repetitive studies.

The VOC is the reference point for all downstream processes:

• It helps identify consumer domains within which the brand exists and develop a strategy for expanding within that domain by defining the brand vision and its equity-building components.
• It guides development of the Long-term Equity Appreciation Plan (LEAP) as well as the Annual Plan for the brand.
• It is a common knowledge source for all campaign-level executions.

VOC as a source of competitive advantage

The VOC not only contains all available information on the consumer but also helps you see what is missing, thereby keeping you one step ahead of competition. The VOC is used by the brand team to generate an IWIK (I wish I Knew) list, which is then translated into One- and Five-Year Learning Plans.

A document that contains all available consumer data makes it easier to share information across all functions. It aligns the entire company along a “single source of truth” on the consumer. It also helps various functions deliver better in their respective areas, making the entire company a consumer-oriented company.

Components of the VOC

The VOC has various components:

Consumer Segments and Profiles

This includes the demographic profile, attitudinal profile and behavioral segments among various groups within the target audience. Demographic and behavioral factors, when applied on user/non-user categories, will create segments and profiles. This information can be obtained from sources such as the AC Nielsen Household Panel Data, Segmentation Studies, Satisfaction/ Dissatisfaction monitors, Consumer Tracks (like those conducted after a new product launch), etc.

Usage Occasions and Behavior

This includes information on the occasions when the product category is used and any specific behavior related to the usage of your brand. Such data helps detect insights related to product or functional needs.

An understanding of the usage occasion includes understanding the time and place as well as the consumer’s environment, motivations, interactions, mindset, attitudes and beliefs related to product usage. Functional and even emotional takeaways can vary substantially across usage occasions. For example, the functional beauty needs and the emotional takeaways of a woman getting ready to go to work are quite different from those associated with her going for a social occasion.

This section also provides information on whether:

• The consumer uses your product correctly,
• S/he uses any complimentary product along with your brand (system usage),
• There are any substitutes within the category for a particular need,
• The consumer uses any “home-made solutions” to meet his/ her needs in the category. Such consumer ‘adjustments’ often form the basis for the launch of new products.

Related information can be gained from sources such as AC Nielsen HomeScan Panel, National Panel Diary, Spectra or by customized internal research. Qualitative Research like ‘usage observations’ work wonders here.

Example

The need for simultaneous use of a moisturizer and a sun protection product resulted in the introduction of moisturizers with sun protection.

System usage is a common occurrence in skin care, where consumers use a wide variety of products to meet their multiple needs. After a while, though, they start compromising on the number of products used per usage occasion (especially the daily morning usage occasion) owing to convenience or value reasons. A single product that meets multiple needs, therefore, makes eminent sense in such situations.

Multiple benefit products are now a regular feature in the skin care category. L’Oreal, for example, introduced a 3-in-1 compact-cum-concealer-cum-SPF.

Brand Associations and Category Equity Map (CEM)

The CEM arranges various consumer needs—functional, emotional and price-of-entry—in a Hierarchy of Needs. The quantitative or qualitative scores of the brand and competitive brands vis-à-vis these needs are mapped to show how consumers perceive the category’s brands in terms of the ability to meet their needs.

This section also contains the following:

• Data on brand and competitive brand perceptions (a perceptual map).
• Associations such as brand personality, image, advertising properties, product category linkage and any other such direct or indirect associations.
• Latest consumer perceptions on functional attributes and benefits important in the consumer domain. This information can be derived from consumer Satisfaction/ Dissatisfaction Monitors, Brand Deficiency Studies or custom in-depth research done with consumers.

Mapping all this information together reveals the category need-gaps and opportunities.

Shopping Behavior and Needs

This section contains information on consumer behavior related to the purchase occasions specific to your product domain—annual purchase quantity, frequency of purchase, quantity purchased per occasion, SKUs most often purchased, channel/chain patronized, purchase influencers, brand switching, purchase patterns (for example, when do consumers typically buy the product?), etc.

To get useful insights it is important to know the rationale behind the numbers. Hence it is critical to understand consumer attitude towards a product on promotion. Do consumers devalue the product? Why? Why do they patronize a particular chain? What can make them behave differently in any of the areas mentioned above?

Media Consumption Behavior

Media consumption patterns across various consumer profiles help gauge the response to communication. The media habits of consumers provide insights that lead to superior media planning and communication strategy. This section holds the following information:

Broad media preferences by target–where and when the consumer consumes what type of media.

Types of shows viewed or magazines read.

Congruence of consumer values with media choices.

Media response studies (ROI by media type).

This section seeks to understand consumer response and attitude towards sponsored activities and promotions on mass media. Besides media planning, this is also an effective tool for innovative promotion/advertising planning.

Promotion Response

This section records learnings from past promotions, making it easier to find more effective promotion ideas in the furure. These could be learnings on the type of promotions that work best for your category or the ones that don’t. Learnings on execution-related issues are also documented here.

The VOC ensures that these useful learnings are not lost when the person who conducted the promotion leaves the company. The VOC records such learnings to help future promotions deliver more than their predecessors.

Example

You wish to sample a new perfumed variant of your shaving cream. Past promotions suggest that users of shaving gel do not even try the free sample if it’s in a cream form. It, therefore, makes sense to sample the new cream variant only among users of shaving creams.

The type of data contained in this section includes:

• Type of promotion vehicles considered most effective for typical marketing objectives in the category (trial, penetration, pantry loading, etc.).
• Incremental impact of promotions on the category/ brand purchase decision.
• Impact of price-/ non-price-based promotions on brand associations.

Advertising Response

Response to advertising is the best way to validate the strength of an executed insight. It also throws light on what works/ does not work in advertising, besides providing theories on consumer understanding, needs and wants. This section typically contains the following:

• Effective benefit visualizations.
• Benefits most used in advertising.
• Analysis of recall and persuasion scores to identify underlying communication preferences of consumers in the category.
• Response to insight used in advertising and reasons for the response.
• Study of typical visuals and emotions that consumers tend to perceive as offensive or as being in poor taste (ugly cartoon characters in children’s products, excessive competitive advertising, etc).

Brand Loyalty

Understanding who your loyal users are and why is a great way to get some more. This section provides information related to the loyalty for your brand and learnings from past loyalty-building initiatives.

Typical parameters used to identify loyalty are amount of usage, frequency of purchase, share-of requirements and loyalty program memberships. Recommendation of brand is considered a very important loyalty measure.

Insights that help increase brand usage can also be gained from studying what makes the loyal user stay with your brand and the differences in usage or experience between the loyal and the infrequent user.

Example

Most people who tried your brand for the first time in the winter months were found to stay loyal users. So, do the winter months give your consumer a better product experience? If yes, you may consider increasing your media spends and promotions to generate new trials in winter.

Competitive Framework

This section allows you to stay aware of competitive threat by listing your weaknesses from the competitor’s point of view. This is done by using the role-play method (which offers you different perspectives on your weaknesses) or through competitive intelligence research such as published interviews of executives from competitive companies. This section can cover other topics like equity issues, trend changes that may be taking your brand away from the consumer (e.g. lower importance to your core emotional benefit, weakness in distribution or manufacturing set-up).

Example

You are a woman’s brand whose core emotional benefit has always been “Confidence”. You have owned this equity for years. However, times have changed and women are now looking at “winning” as a more important emotional benefit. A competitor may see this opportunity and move fast to capture this equity.

Consumer Insights

This section contains all the consumer insights identified over the years, providing numerous observations and theories that will ultimately result into insights. Learnings generated through the years, when compared with the existing insights, throw up newer, stronger insights that fill existing gaps in consumer understanding. The most appealing insights are then implemented on the brand.

To know more about Insights go to What is an insight?: Guide.

To pick out insights from all the data refer to How to become an insight detective: Guide.

How to develop a VOC for the first time

The VOC document is created only once for each brand. It is then updated regularly to keep it relevant and useful. Developing the VOC for the first time could take some time. Spend adequate resources at this stage to ensure you have a sound base document.

Developing a VOC for the first time involves the following steps (please adapt this to suit your organization structure):

• Step 1 – The BIM or RM assembles all available data and information under each of the VOC component sections.
• Step 2 – The insights team (brand management and market research) sits together to analyze available data, compare various data points and conclude bases for the observations.
• Step 3 – Key observations and findings in each of the sections are listed. These observations are the bases of future theories that will lead to insights.
• Step 4 – These observations are then circulated to a wider team, including sales and R&D. Various team members provide theories that explain the observations.
• Step 5 – Theories are then linked together by the insights team to generate insights.
• Step 6 – The BIM RM summarizes the VOC (first section) and the consumer insights section (last component) and passes on completed VOC to the insights team.
• Step 7 – The marketing expert approves final VOC.

Go to How to Analyze the VOC: Tips for more details

How to keep the VOC alive

The VOC is used as a reference for all marketing activities. For the VOC to be such a master document for the brand, it also needs to be updated and enhanced as the knowledge on the brand increases. Look out for anomalous data, inter connections between data points, specific changes in each consumer segment, etc.

If you don’t find the answer in the VOC, make an IWIK list to update the VOC or to validate your hypothesis. These IWIKs become the basis of the Annual Learning Plan and Five-Year Learning Plan. Update the information received as answers to the IWIKs in the VOC.

When you get new data, evaluate it by asking the following questions:

Is it already in the VOC?

Does it support the VOC and add additional perspective?

Does it contradict the VOC? If yes, is that due to incomparable data sets?

How does it impact the consumer’s Hierarchy of Needs? Does it tell us anything new about the underlying emotional drivers?

Does it suggest a consumer needs-based or behavioral segment not contained in the VOC?

Based on answers to the above questions, take the following action:

Add new knowledge and data supporting current knowledge to the VOC.

Discard repetitive data.

Submit contradictory data for further examination.

Find out IWIKs and submit the same for exploration

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