What is a Consumer Insight, Anyway?

Let me give you my definition of a Consumer Insight:

A statement defining the lens that a person views their situation in life, regarding a specific issue, which incorporates their psychological motives (fears, desires), and points to a potential solution.

Many marketers make the mistake of using observations of what consumers do, what products they use, what their attitudes are toward a category of product and confuse those things with consumer insights.  These things will give you “insight” into product usage and consumer behavior, but they are not consumer insights.  Observing consumer behavior allow us to view the actions consumers take based on their beliefs, but they are not insights and therefore may be misinterpreted.

Real consumer insights reveal how an individual consumer thinks about his or her situation related to the product category being studied. They are fraught with personal anxieties and hopes, they are essentially the underlying paradigm (framework) of self.  They lead to clear behavior and attitudes.  An insight that applies to a large group of consumers is fertile ground to position a solution (brand) that would have strong appeal to many.
Here is a short video I created that may help explain:

Lets use another “Bob” example – this time using healthy snacks – to help explain the differences between observations and insights:

Observation 1: Bob is trying to lose weight – you may have uncovered this from a simple survey.

Observation 2: He is choosing new foods and signing up for new diet programs – you observed this with your shopper data and on-line tracking of him following healthy brands

Observation 3: He says he wants to lose weight to “stay healthy at his age”.  You observe he is cutting out carbs from his diet and he tells you in focus groups that it is because it is an easy way to give up something.   He may have also “let it slip” that he secretly wants to look better too.

Many marketers stop here, believing they have cracked the consumer insight for their weight loss positioned product.  But they would be missing the Consumer Insight which is actually different than all of the above::

Bob is afraid of losing his youth and his identity – He sees people his age  getting older and has recently observed that he looks (and sometimes feels) like the best years of his life are behind him and will soon end up being irrelevant and falling behind.  However, just like everything good he has succeeded at in his life, he knows he holds the keys to his future and has the power and tools needed to make huge, visible changes through weight loss and exercise.  He can’t stick to any program requiring willpower and doesn’t want to be embarrassed by not succeeding

Now that you know far more about me than you should, I hope you see the difference between an observation and an insight.  Imagine the power of having these insights to positioning products to your target.

Have you uncovered your brand’s real consumer insight?