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Article

Announcing the Groundbreaking “Integrative Physician Market Landscape 2017”

by Yadim Medore | Published on May 30, 2017
Two years ago, we set out to address the gap of available market insight into the rapidly growing category of MDs and DOs who are practicing integrative medicine. Today, I’m happy to announce after months of developing the hypotheses, fielding, quantitative analysis and qualitative interviews, that this comprehensive study is now available to the public.

Article

Your Consciousness is Your Brand

by Peter Littell | Published on December 23, 2016
Your brand’s collective consciousness creates depth that can resonate with your customers — this is the foundation for brand loyalty. Peter Littell examines how a successful brand will foster a loyal client base by keeping its consciousness in mind.

Article

The Six Participants You’re Not Thinking About

by Kim Hutt | Published on December 7, 2016
Every natural products brand keeps their consumer base in mind through every step of their development, but there are a few other crucial players that any succesful brand in this industry must be conscious of. Kim identifies some of these invaluable participants that are often overlooked.

Article

Natural Products Gatekeepers: Certification Overload

by Peter Littell | Published on November 14, 2016
Pick up just about any supplement or natural food, and on it you’ll see a variety of third-party certification seals. They're a definite player in the today's world of natural products gatekeepers, but are they confusing consumers as much as they're guiding them?

Article

Storyshowing vs. Storytelling in Natural Products Transparency

by Yadim Medore | Published on November 7, 2016
Many companies are struggling with being seen as transparent. In an effort to latch onto the perceived popularity that comes with being transparent, they mistakenly waste time and money saying that they’re transparent instead of investing time into being transparent and simply letting those actions speak for themselves.

Article

The Natural Products Gatekeepers

by Peter Littell | Published on October 10, 2016
Looking back to the natural food stores of the 1970s and 1980s, they were the gatekeepers of quality foods, supplements and personal care products. You did not have to think about whether the food was good or bad for you — you knew that when you entered. Fast forward to today and the natural food stores are acting less and less as gatekeepers. So who are the new gatekeepers of the natural products industry?

Article

The Surprising Benefits of Being a Polarizing Natural Products Brand

by Peter Littell | Published on September 19, 2016
The natural products industry is no stranger to polarization. It was built in large part on the premise that the existing conventional food system was unhealthy – even dangerous. The industry called out these processed food giants on their bad practices and as a result gained an ever-increasing and loyal customer base.

Article

If Brands Could Speak, What Stories They Could Tell

by Peter Littell | Published on September 11, 2015
People love stories. Yes, they want to know the facts about products — what they are for, how they are made. But at some point, they get tired of hearing about the same attributes: highest quality, purest ingredients, backed by science and research, mission driven, and so on. What has lasting and differentiating impact in the end are not the facts, but the story behind the brand or product

Article

The Importance of Hypotheses in Natural Products Market Research

Published on August 12, 2015
As market researchers like to say, there’s a difference between interesting data and important data. When you don’t form hypotheses to test in the research, you run the risk of ending up with lots of interesting information but no clear answers about what to do next.

Article

Research Sample Size: Confidence in the Data through Framing Questions

Published on April 6, 2015
Ways of Framing Questions Sample size isn’t the only thing that influences confidence. The way questions are asked in the survey can have an impact too. If there are a few critical questions you need the research to answer for your marketing efforts, then you need to make sure the design of your custom research

Article

Research Sample Size: Segmentation and Data Quality

Published on December 4, 2014
If you are planning a research project that involves breaking down respondents into segments, as we do with our RealPersonas™, then you’ll want to sample enough people that will allow you to work with any major segments that exist and emerge in the population. This is important because as we break down the group into

Article

Don’t Sell Me Your Natural Product. Sell Me . . .

by Peter Littell | Published on November 21, 2014
When I buy a head of lettuce at the natural food store, I’m actually not buying lettuce. I am thinking about the salad I’m going to make that night, the friends that are coming over and the good times we will all have. So, in effect when I look at that head of lettuce I

Article

Research Sample Size: When Does Bigger Stop Being Better?

Published on October 30, 2014
When it comes to quantitative market research, our natural products clients frequently ask us about the size of the survey sample. Can we get by with surveying 150 people, or do we need 300? Since there is a direct correlation between cost and size (the more respondents, the higher the panel costs), clients don’t want to have to pay more than they need to get a high degree of confidence in the results. And who could blame them?

Article

In Terms of Brand Color, Less is More

Published on January 20, 2013
When it comes to iconic global brands that are known throughout the universe for their strong and confident use of a single color, which brands come to mind? Tiffany or Facebook for blue? Starbucks or John Deere for green? Red for Coca-cola or Target? These brands, like countless others, have built a presence and following with their loyalists around one unified and recognizable color that, through years of exposure and great branding efforts, has turned something as simple as color, into their brand’s most valuable equity element second only to their logo.