How Market Intelligence Reveals Changes in Customer Behavior

MX Bites / October 30, 2024

Understanding the psychology of customer behavior reveals priceless insights that keep companies at the top of the marketing curve. Due to the ever-changing nature of customer behavior, it requires a nuanced approach in market intelligence to fully uncover how to deploy strategies to take advantage of it. In fact, due to the rapid change in behavior, companies must be constantly updated about the changes because it informs every decision that should be taken, including, but not limited to, marketing campaigns and product development/improvement. 

The ability to create new innovations and developments in response to changing customer behavior can only be revealed through the power of market intelligence, and that’s what this article seeks to provide insights on. Let’s see how it works and explore how market intelligence helps in making informed decisions in relation to customers.

How does market intelligence work? 

Market intelligence involves getting insights for navigating the market. As the term implies, it has to do with discovering strategies for deploying the market in a way that both customer satisfaction and brand reputation are enhanced. It involves a multifaceted approach that involves data collection from various sources, including customer feedback, social media comments, brand communities, and forums. The aim of this data collection process is to see the brand from the customers’ standpoint and the strategies to implement to stay ahead of the competitive curve.

For example, you, as a company, can choose to use market intelligence to discover the product features your customers, of certain demographics, like to use best and the ones they don’t want to interact with. This will help you tailor your approach towards product development to suit both their present and future demands.

It is the analysis of raw data from different sources that reveals hidden patterns in customer behavior for informed decision-making. 

How market intelligence reveals changes in customer behavior

As earlier stated, customer behavior changes rapidly, and there’s a need to deploy sophisticated technological tools to take advantage of the changes. Below are various ways in which market intelligence can reveal customer behaviors:

1. 1. It tracks trends in customer preferences. The easiest way to predict a future event is to track its pattern of occurrence. Trends are simply revealers of customers preferences. If you want to know what your customers enjoy about any product, closely follow their feedback on social media and other platforms of close interaction with the brand. For example, there’s been an increase in demand for eco-friendly products as people are more interested in sustainability. Therefore, market intelligence tools can help you discover this on time and incorporate this important quality into your products. Tools like Google Trends and social media analytics can be used to discover these trends on time.
   2. It analyses sentiments in customer feedback: Customer feedback carries different kinds of emotions, and this can only be identified and measured with the use of market intelligence tools. When customers share their feedback with you, you can detect the extent of the sad or happy emotions the feedback carries. This would inform you about the urgency at which you need to respond to their feedback and how to tailor your services such that there is a consistent increase in customer satisfaction.
   3. Monitoring competitive activity to stay ahead of the curve: An integral aspect of market intelligence is keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing and the specific strategies they are implementing to attract customers. By doing this, you can then identify specific product modifications that cause a shift in customers’ preferences and also implement them in your service or product development.
   4. Identify demographic shifts that cause change in customer behavior: One of the factors that influences customer preferences is their age range and social status. Since both are subject to change, this also affects their preferences, hence requiring an upgrade in customer service and product development. Also, as new generations enter the market, their values and preferences can differ significantly from those of older generations. Therefore, companies need market intelligence to notice these shifts and respond swiftly to them.

Sources for gathering data for market intelligence

• Customer survey and feedback
• Sales data
• Industry experts and leaders
• Field research
• Social media
• Competitive analysis

Final Thoughts

Market intelligence is a vital subject among top industries, at the forefront of their games. This shows that it’s not enough to understand your customer behaviors; you must also keep track of the changes in their behavior and device strategies to consistently achieve an increase in customer satisfaction with respect to the changes. Only companies that can respond quickly to customer behavior will have a competitive advantage.