

Which are the strong and weak points of your portfolio?.Are you better or worse than other parts of your organization (departments, categories, regions) or product versions?.You compare the performance of your subcategories to a bigger department, or you compare the evaluation of a test product (under development) to existing products with known market performance. In a syndicated survey you would expect your main competitors to be included. In custom research you need to collect survey data about competitors as well, yes this costs more, but without comparison you can conclude little.

Mystery Shopping: to compare satisfaction and protocols to competitors.Ad Testing: to compare your ad copies to the competitors in a diagnostic way or on a few simple awareness measures in a clutter real.Product Testing: to compare your product to competitor products, to support product development.Shopper research: to compare brands, categories or retailers on their shopper profiles, understand the role of the category in the store, purchase funnels, shopping habits, POS effectiveness etc.U&A, satisfaction or brand research: to compare brands or categories on consumer funnels, consumer profiles, brand images, brand equities.It can be used in most types of research. What are your strengths and weaknesses compared to other brands or categories (that perhaps meet similar consumer/shopper needs)?.Are you better or worse than your competitors?.You can also define your wider set: a whole department or even the whole store in case of shopper research (see our video about how it’s used in Category management). You compare your own performance to one or more competitors – or to a combined aggregate “All Competitive Benchmark”. Here are 4 common types of benchmarking used in market research – and what situations they are most helpful in: The choice depends on your goals, and your budget. Ideally, it’s a combination of several of these. It can be your direct competitors or your wider market, your own performance in a previous period, your organization’s other departments, or even a fixed reference value that you believe in.

To be able to answer the question, you need context: (at least) one other data point to compare to. When you look at your Net Promoter Score of let’s say 58% – and you ask: should I be happy or should I worry? In market research it is used in a variety of creative ways, in different study types. 4 types of benchmarking in market research – and when to use themīenchmarking is much more than just comparing your own performance to your competitors.
