FAQs

Razi Imam

113 Industries began with the knowledge that traditional focus groups and surveys can be good tools for addressing specific questions, but not necessarily for identifying consumer needs or product ideas. We now use machine learning, AI and natural language processing to get to the root of insights that typically aren’t revealed in traditional marketing research methods.

In focus groups or surveys, consumers might know how to answer specific questions, but what ends up happening is consumers don’t share their unarticulated needs. We believe insights aren’t generated by asking questions, but rather through observations. If you look at the methodologies to generate insights, the most powerful one is ethnography—the study of how people go about their daily lives. When you’re able to observe how people live their lives, you’re able to learn about everyday behaviors that may not be revealed in a focus group or survey.

The next question we had to answer was how to scale this ethnography. How could 113 make it more democratic and affordable so everybody could use it comfortably? We discovered that if we want to view organic behavior, we needed to capture organic data that’s readily available in the digital world. People are constantly talking online about what they’re buying, consuming and how they’re using products. Using methodologies like machine learning, AI and natural language processing, we can capture this data, analyze these organic conversations, and then pull out those insights to find those ethnographies.

Anupam Singh

Consumer Behavior Modeling (CBM) analyzes various online forums and social media to gather information on consumer preferences and behaviors. Surveys and focus groups are often applicable for answering specific questions you ask about a certain product, brand or preference. Our approach reveals important information and insights that may not be revealed with traditional market research practices.

With Consumer Behavior Modeling, 113 Industries simply listens to what consumers are saying online. We don’t ask specific questions. That means if there is something that’s very important to the consumer, it’s going to be expressed very differently in our methodology through various online conversations.

Alina Imam

Consumer Behavior modeling is a process 113 Industries created to help inform your business initiatives. CBM was born out of the fact that 113 Industries was looking at so much data and we were struggling how to organize all of it for our clients. We created the Consumer Behavior Model to answer seven main questions clients might have about their consumer:

• Consumer Segments
• Behavior Segments
• Competitive Landscapes
• IBM Watson Personalities
• What Data Points Matters
• Understanding Purchasing Habits Exist

113 Industries puts that data into a model and organizes it to help us and our clients understand what’s important and what’s not. For one client, the consumer behavior might be more important because that’s what drives the purchasing, but another client, the competitive landscape might matter more.

When a client has so much data, combined with data from other research, it gets very loud and it’s hard to know what to listen to. Consumer Behavior Modeling helps us focus in on the data that matters and cuts down on the noise.

Alina Imam

Depending on your project goals, 113 Industries can provide an actionable, strategic plan that can be dispersed among various departments to serve as a guide for targeting consumers or provide insights into category data for innovation.

Consumer Behavior Modeling can be applied as broadly as your overall business planning, or as focused as creating focus group questions. There are a variety of ways our clients use the work we do. Some clients use CBM very literally when we create language matrixes, reference charts and deep segmentations—all driven by consumer behavior. This information can be given directly to marketing departments or brand teams. Other clients use our work differently, almost like a consultancy. Once they understand our model and what matters, they look at all the business questions they have to answer and how 113 can help them make those decisions.

The best part about our model is that it’s not a plug-and-play model we deliver and walk away from. We build that model with you, educating your team to understand our insights and strategy, and then execute it with those teams. We’re on the ground with you, helping you make all kinds of decisions from product packaging to what questions to ask in your next focus group to even your entire company’s marketing strategy.    

Alina Imam & Anupam Singh

IBM Watson provides new levels of data that most research approaches don’t go into. While many consumer segmentations explain behavior, intent and channel shopping, with some even going as deep as to show you other brands consumers shop, IBM Watson can offer one more layer on top of that consumer segmentation.

113 Industries uses IBM Watson in a very specific way: for something called Personality Insights. This includes Watson’s use of the Big 5 Personality Model also known by the acronym OCEAN. Once you understand a person’s preferences, traits and overall psychology, it helps you understand how people make decisions in their day-to-day lives and that’s obviously very important to your consumer efforts.

By layering IBM Watson onto a segmentation, our clients are able to get a better idea of how their customers think. They can therefore design products, brand messaging and advertising accordingly. It’s targeting consumers in a way that really resonates!

Alina Imam

Taking our lead from focus groups, which are a tried and tested staple of market research, we know we need to trust the anecdote of the consumer. The same thing happens in the 113 Industries process. We understand that listening to these anecdotes does two things: It helps us understand what matters to consumers and even what else might matter without the consumer even realizing it—the unarticulated need.

The reason we know what consumers say is actually what they’re doing or how they’re behaving is because these conversations are organic. People don’t go online to talk about products because they’re bored. They might need help or advice, want to vent or just talk about their passion for a product. There’s an actual reason behind the action. By listening to organic anecdotes, we can learn what actually matters because the consumer took the initiative to get online and talk about it.

Razi Imam

113 Industries has analyzed everything tuna to Toyota Camry, juice to joint replacement. We’ve analyzed so many categories that you would never think consumers would be talking about online—but they are! The reason there is a transition of consumption and consumption behavior of either adopting or rejecting a product is because the consumer finds a better project to do the job they need it to do. That’s called firing an old product or service and hiring a new one.

So, if you ask us which industries we operate in, it’s simple. We operate in any industry where a customer needs to fire an existing product and hire a new one.

Razi Imam

One question we’re often asked at 113 Industries is whether or not people are even having online conversations about a company’s product or category. The short answer is yes! While there are a few obscure categories that may not see the same volume of conversations as broader topics, they’re still seeing tens of thousands of people talking about them online.

Think about it like this: A focus group or survey might reach around 100 – 500 people, whereas the 113 Industries methodology reaches 100,000 or more people. Even 10% of that number is a far bigger sample size than you could reach through traditional market research methodologies. Even small sample sizes of online conversations will contain multiple times the data you’d collect in a focus group or survey.

Razi Imam

When we first started, the belief was that the 113 Industries methodology would only pull in people from younger generations who were actively using social media. However, after over 140 projects, we’ve come to realize that it really depends on the topic.

For example, if we’re analyzing online conversations about hip replacements, the people talking about it are probably older. Conversely, if you’re looking at ACL tears, online conversations might be coming from younger, athletic consumers. The way age demographics skew all depends on the topic we’re analyzing. Everybody is talking on social media, no matter their age!

Anupam Singh

Typically, before our clients come to us, they already have data about their sales, demographics and who is and isn’t buying their products.  What 113 Industries is able to do is help them understand why a certain type of consumer might be buying or staying away from their product. Our methodology’s primary focus is to uncover the unarticulated needs and reasons behind consumer data.

Once we understand which behaviors or characteristics are important to our client’s brand, we can use other methodologies like Prediction Markets for Innovation to get a really good idea of the overall market size. We can also use traditional marketing methods such as surveys and panels.