Case Study | Audience Research

Business Challenge

Corporate clothing has many different purposes: Externally, it contributes to the detectability of a company’s employees, transports the perception of a brand and must therefore fit the company perfectly – whether in terms of colour and design, professional impression or quality. Internally, too, company clothing must meet a variety of criteria in order to be accepted: The employee as a representative of the brand must identify with it and feel comfortable wearing it. Ideally, the clothing should create a sense of community and, depending on the occasion of wear, must also meet particular functional requirements.

Our client was working on the collection for their new company wear and wanted to determine at an early stage of development whether he was on the right track with the planned designs for internal and external target groups and which impact the new dress code would have on employee satisfaction. From an economic point of view, he also wanted to know to what extent the collection could be simplified or reduced – without risking the desired effect in the target group.

The project was treated with strict confidentiality in order to avoid information and designs reaching the public before the launch.

Solution

For the successful positioning of the new company wear it was essential to know the exact expectations, attitudes and preferences of the various internal and external target groups. This was the only way to avoid potential internal resistances as well as external irritations caused by misguided concepts. For this purpose insidery developed a methodical approach that was able to meet all requirements.

For reasons of non-disclosure, the decision to conduct interviews with customers, employees and management was deliberately based on face-to-face surveys directly at the point of sale. The representative selection of stores was spread all over Germany. For this purpose, the relevant image stimuli were integrated into personal device-supported surveys and the internal teams were also interviewed anonymously on site. The internal interviews were conducted one-by-one in short breaks during the employees’ working hours to ensure a high participation rate. The entire field time was chosen to be short, with a duration of one week, so that our client could use the findings as quickly as possible for further development. In addition to the detailed evaluation of the entire concept in various dimensions, the decision-making was simulated for the collection as well as for each clothing category and analyzed with suitable statistical methods: With the focus on working out the ideal range of products for the target group.

Impact

Due to the target group oriented overall approach and a dedicated analysis of the specific needs and requirements of the respective target groups, insidery worked out clear recommendations for the further development of the assortment. Now it is known where the opportunities and risks of the new concept lie in the target audiences. In addition, each item could be allocated clearly to the categories “keep”, “refine” or “reject”. This enables our client to distinguish between potential “stars” and “shelf warmers” from several hundred possible combinations at an early stage of the concept.