Global Consumer Segmentation – Who are the people behind your data?

WMT now works with the Global Insights teams of most of the major Global FMCG manufacturers.

One of the key challenges we help solve, is how to connect their business and other stakeholders, with the real people that make up their Global (and local) Segmentation.

In most organisations these teams are trying to demonstrate that while cultural and language differences obviously exist, these segmentations can and do appear in different cultures in different ways.

So how is this to be achieved when travel budgets are under increasing pressure and the number of countries being targeted is also increasing?

There is an incredibly simple and yet consistently effective approach, which has rapidly become global best practice for many of our clients, which I hope may be helpful to anyone less familiar with video immersions.

1. Using qualitative recruiters, participants who match the exact criteria for each of the segments are recruited in the countries of interest.
2. These participants self record a range of videos in the natural time and environment of consumption which help explain a bit about them and their lives, their relationship with the category and the brands they use.
3. Fully translated transcriptions and all the raw footage (with English subtitles) are made available on a sentiment based search platform for all teams to use.
4. The consumer insights team facilitate workshops, where they help other colleagues understand the segments while reviewing some of the footage of the participants.
5. Using the search, clip and extract function on our platform, these teams then select the video bites that best capture what that particular segment means in their country and culture.
6. Our video editors create summary reels that can be shared with the internal and external stakeholders Globally.

The result?

Everyone currently employed in the organisation, all those new employees in the future, plus any external stakeholders you decide to share with, begin to understand in a much more refined and cross-division, cross-culture, cross-company way how real people from around the world act and react in these different segments, together with the similarities and differences that exist globally.

This process will not be as “beautiful” as the stock images or the professionally created videos with actors, that are sometimes used with segmentations.

But if your goal is better understanding through more authentic consumer connections, this approach delivers every time.