Research should not be an end in itself – information that just sits on the shelf unused – but a powerful tool that will advance your business. It should be integral to a seamless business and product strategy development cycle that begins with questions and hypotheses and leads through investigation, understanding, conclusions, solutions, validation and back again.

At Dine Discoveries, we work to deeply understand the rational and emotional drivers behind what people do and why they  do it (and why they say they do it) to create research solutions that help us generate deep-seated consumer insights. With our extensive experience, those insights become actionable by identifying optimal business strategies and opportunities, and clearly and compellingly articulating the path to achieving business objectives.

No two business challenges, categories, or consumer cohorts are the same, so out-of-the-box research processes, no matter how sophisticated, simply aren’t substitutes for starting without preconceptions and applying creativity informed by singular experience and expertise. That’s why, with each new challenge, we customize/optimize our approach, methodology – both qualitative and quantitative, technology, and team to most effectively examine specific consumer needs within their unique contexts.

Emotional drivers form a portion of every purchase decision, and although buried in the subconscious, they can be revealed and harnessed to differentiate your brand. This is the driver of our team formulation, the nature of our investigation, and the emphasis of all our deliverables.

Discovery methods

• Ideation workshops: for generating out-of-the-box ideas or building on strategic insights; organized as internal events, consumer groups, or in a combined format
• Focus group sessions: when talk and projectives are sufficient to reveal underlying drivers, various group configurations are used to optimize the dynamics of sharing, creating and reacting
• Ethnographic sessions: when environment, behaviours, and longer-term build of a sharing context are needed, a mixture of observation and depth interviewing reveal behaviour, beliefs, and values in personal settings and day-in-the-life shadowing
• In-depth interviews: for providing deep discussion and probing of needs, beliefs and values – often in tandem with other one-on-one methods, like ethnography
• In-situ research: observation in-store or other naturally appropriate setting to explore dynamics and behaviours
• Online tools: for longitudinal work on sensitive or deep-seated issues, as well as for an effective alternative to pre-work, focus groups, and ideation to augment or supplant face-to-face research

Validation methods:

• Quantitative surveys: when numbers are needed to support strategy and business decisions; crafted subtly to capture emotional drivers and delivered largely online, but alternative methods are employed as necessary
• Advanced analytics: critical to further drawing out and proving the subtle impact of emotional drivers on decisions