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Few marketing challenges are tougher than identifying and influencing what drives customers' attitudes and behavior. Traditionally, executives have relied on a combination of quantitative data from surveys (such every bit those that track client satisfaction and make paradigm) and qualitative insights from focus groups and interviews.

Unfortunately, both kinds of research suffer from a fundamental flaw: They rely on customers' memories, which disuse rapidly. Consumers frequently retrieve a company's communications inaccurately; it's not uncommon for people to claim they've seen a company's TV ad at a time when the firm was not advertizement. And even 18-carat memories are oft biased by context: If a client has made a major purchase, she'southward more than likely to recall her experience of the transaction positively in order to feel proficient about the buy. Cyberspace-based research tools endure less from these problems because they can capture customer experiences about immediately, before retentiveness fades or becomes biased, but they tin can be used just with online interactions, which account for just fifteen% of customers' encounters with companies and their brands.

The merely traditional technique that really allows companies to record the complete range of customer experiences is ethnographic research, in which researchers shadow individual consumers and lookout man their behavior. This approach, all the same, is both labor-intensive and expensive, and information technology's also potentially misleading: It's hard to untangle the private customer's quirks from full general client behavior. Worse, the ethnographic approach introduces another bias: The customer volition probably have an unconscious want to please the researcher, who is physically present, which will affect her reactions. Corporations, therefore, face a dilemma. They must either rely on imperfect and biased memories or risk spending a ton of money on directly observing potentially unrepresentative behavior. Either way, the insights and data on which they base their marketing decisions are inherently faulty.

Marketers have long sought a research method that can capture client reactions immediately, does not intrude into those reactions, minimizes bias, and can affordably exist applied to customers in relatively large numbers. We believe that existent-fourth dimension feel tracking (RET), a new research tool, rises to this challenge.

Over the by ii years a number of leading companies—including Unilever, BSkyB, PepsiCo, Schweppes, HP, Energizer, Microsoft, InterContinental Hotels, and SAS—have been using RET to inform their marketing decisions. For instance, when Schweppes bought Abbey Well, a small-scale independent Great britain make of mineral h2o, it launched an ambitious growth campaign that began with a series of topical advertisements. Thanks to RET, executives realized within a week that the most successful ads focused on a "Schwim Free" offering giving anyone with a Schweppes Abbey Well bottle cap free entry on Mondays to a public indoor swimming pool (a valuable proposition in a climate where information technology'southward often besides cool to swim outdoors). So Schweppes immediately poured more resources into that function of the campaign, extending information technology to more than pools and all weekdays. Ultimately, 175,000 people took reward of the offer, and within a year sales of Schweppes Abbey Well had grown by 35%. Furthermore, the promotion received a lot of press coverage and generated wellness associations for the Schweppes brand, helping the sales of other Schweppes products.

This is just ane of the projects that we and the market research agency MESH Planning, which adult the RET data collection method, take conducted. Over the by two years, we accept studied the impact of those projects and advised MESH and its clients on how best to assemble and draw insights from RET data. In full we have gathered data on more than 750,000 company-customer interactions in sectors as diverse equally entertainment, telecommunications, financial services, electrical appliances, automobiles, personal care, food and beverages, and charities. Though MESH is the only bureau we know of that is conducting RET in the applications nosotros'll depict here, other organizations are adopting some of the principles behind it in their research, and we expect this arroyo to spread rapidly.

Permit'southward turn now to how the tool works.

Designing the Program

Existent-time feel tracking was built-in of two insights. First, while a market researcher can't hands follow customers around 24 hours a day, those customers' cell phones tin, and unlike human observers, they don't sway people's perceptions of experiences. The second insight was that although customers may interact with a company in thousands of ways, you actually demand to know merely four things about each encounter: the brand involved, the blazon of touchpoint (Television receiver advertizing, say, or call to the service center), how the participant felt well-nigh the experience, and how persuasive it was. (Did it make the customer more than inclined to cull the brand next time?)

We developed, therefore, a quick SMS-based microsurvey that customers can take on their mobile phones every time they encounter a company'southward brand—whether in making a transaction, seeing an advertisement, or even in an informal conversation about the make with other people. The survey requires participants just to input a four-grapheme text bulletin. And in an historic period when more and more people are texting and tweeting most their personal experiences all the time, a four-grapheme text tin inappreciably be described every bit intrusive.

A market place researcher tin't easily follow customers around 24 hours a day. But those customers' jail cell phones tin can.

In the programs we studied, a few hundred consumers were recruited to participate. The participants completed four phases of research:

1. They filled out an online questionnaire about their awareness, knowledge, perception, and use of the company'due south brand or product and those of four or five competitors (without knowing which firm was commissioning the research).

2. They texted a four-character message whenever they came beyond whatever of the brands over the grade of the research project (between a week and a month, depending on the likely frequency of encounters with the brands in question).

iii. They were asked but not obliged to keep an online diary in which they expanded on their encounters with the brands and how they felt about them.

4. At the close of the project they completed a modified version of the first questionnaire to see whether their attitudes toward the brands in question had shifted.

The exhibit "Real-Fourth dimension Experience Tracking in Action" illustrates the four phases of the plan.

Home electronics is one sector where companies need to understand how diverse touchpoints add together upward to a customer's determination to buy. In this typical study (a composite of several projects), a manufacturer asks 500 people to report on their encounters with five home electronics brands over the course of a month. Here's what each participant does:

1. Fills Out a Survey

Answers questions about her awareness, knowledge, perceptions, and employ of the brands.

two. Texts Feedback

Reports on her encounters with the brands by prison cell phone. For each run across she inputs just four characters: a letter indicating the brand involved, a second alphabetic character for the blazon of encounter, a numerical score indicating how positive she feels almost the encounter, and another score for how persuasive it was.

3. Describes Encounters

Elaborates on her encounters in an online diary, which displays her text responses and allows her to upload photographs of encounters when she has time in the evening. A pull-down card lets her specify each touchpoint's subtype—for case, whether a give-and-take-of-mouth encounter was initiated past her or another person, or simply overheard.

4. Revisits the Survey

Completes a second questionnaire meant to uncover how her attitudes have changed as a issue of her encounters with the brands.

Challenges and Limitations

To ensure a balanced, representative sample, you demand to profile potential respondents through a series of questions. A sample that matches the firm's target market on demographics and other relevant criteria can then be assembled. For instance, the sample can exist checked to make sure it isn't overly skewed toward people who are technologically savvy or innovative. Other factors to consider are the respondents' marketing literacy, assertiveness, shopping enjoyment, and confidence in obtaining information from peers online or off-line. If a sample is still skewed following those checks, the results can be adjusted by giving greater weight to responses from underrepresented sections of the target market, but as in political polling. In highly diverse sectors, a larger sample is sometimes needed so that different segments (say, center-aged Mexican women versus young Italian men) can be analyzed separately.

In setting upwards the text surveys, it'southward important to provide a reasonably comprehensive listing of touchpoint types, covering both directly encounters, such as sales visits, conversations with call centers, visits to the firm'due south website, purchases, and so on, and indirect ones, such as contact with other customers, seeing the brand in the news, or interactions with the firm's agents, distributors, or retailers. Mediated interactions often have a huge impact. The most positively received TV ad we've seen in our research, for example, was for an alcoholic beverage—simply the ads were not the brand'south. They were placed by a major supermarket, in a Christmas promotion. The respondents' texts and diaries showed that the ad, which offered the product at a substantial discount, did not cheapen the brand: Consumers assumed that the retailer was merely running the promotion every bit a loss leader. Information technology'due south likewise very helpful to have an "other" category for touchpoints that cannot be predicted, which participants can elaborate on in their diaries.

Participation in the surveys inevitably raises respondents' awareness of the product category during the report menstruation. And then the purpose of the 2d questionnaire is to unearth the relative changes in respondents' awareness, cognition, perception, and use of the various brands or products. You can also bargain with the problem by taking a randomized control group from the initial sample. The participants in this group skip the text messages, but filling in an adapted survey at the start and end of the study flow. Shifts in their attitudes or key behaviors over that time frame tin then be compared with those of the principal group.

One might expect that it would be hard for RET participants to remain engaged in the programme, given the level of delivery needed. But most notice that the minimal extra effort involved is outweighed past the engaging nature of the process, and many report that they bask reflecting on their customer journeying. Nosotros believe this can be explained past the fact that they initiate the microsurveys themselves. Respondents to traditional surveys, by contrast, detect many of the questions and touchpoints completely irrelevant.

Fifty-fifty relatively passive touchpoints made differences in customer behavior. People who saw the product in a friend's house, for instance, were iii times as probable to buy it as people who didn't.

Clearly there are limitations to our arroyo, and we expect it to evolve. For instance, when doing research in some sectors, we have to vary what we ask participants to score encounters on. With nonprofits, we ask participants to provide a score for how much they learned well-nigh a charity from the see, rather than how positive they felt about the encounter. Also, we cannot assess the effect of an individual consumer'due south media consumption habits without burdening the consumer with more than questions, or runway the location of the touchpoints purely through a text message. It is, of class, possible to runway some such details through smartphones, just using only participants who owned them would at this fourth dimension brand obtaining a balanced sample difficult. More cardinal is the problem of touchpoints whose contexts forestall texting. For example, tracking real-time contact with an airline is a challenge considering the utilise of mobile phones on planes in flying remains very express. We are confident, however, that technological innovations will enable usa to discover ways around such problems.

What the Data Tell You

A benefit of tracking an individual over time is that you can often cover a complete client journey from the identification of a need to a buy. And with statistical tools, you can employ RET data to identify not only what most motivates customers to buy your brand but also how various touchpoints combine in a chain to influence the customers' decisions. Here are some useful analyses you can bear:

Fundamental drivers.

Applying simple regression analysis to the RET data can chop-chop tell yous which touchpoints are most closely correlated with individual customer behaviors, such as a request for more information or an actual purchase. A good way to present this information is in a diagram called an odds analysis, which quantifies—and compares—the relative likelihood that diverse touchpoints will lead to the behavior in question.

The exhibit "Analyzing the Odds" compares the effects of several touchpoints on the decision to purchase a item home electronics brand. Predictably, people who noticed the brand when browsing in a store were far more likely to buy it, whether online or in another store visit, than people who didn't. Merely even relatively passive touchpoints, such as hearing about the brand from other customers, direct mailings, and Telly ads, made observable differences to client behavior. People who saw the product in a friend'south firm during the study period, for case, were iii times as probable to buy information technology as people who didn't.

An odds analysis uses data gathered through real-time feel tracking to determine which touchpoints influence client behavior most. Here's what a typical analysis (based on a composite of several studies) for a home electronics production might await similar. It reveals that in-store visits have the near affect: People who have come across the production in a shop are vii.5 times every bit likely to purchase this brand as people who have non.

Competitive analysis.

You lot can likewise meet how constructive your touchpoints are at driving behavior and shaping attitudes relative to the touchpoints of your competitors. A good way to nowadays this is with a touchpoint impact matrix, shown in the showroom "Checking Out the Contest," which compares the performance of five touchpoints of two U.k. jail cell-telephone-network providers. From this comparing, one can see that although people like Make A's Boob tube and paper advertisements, these take but a limited impact on purchases, because many consumers are also hearing negative comments from current customers who are unhappy with coverage, packages, and responsiveness. Brand B has less discussion of mouth, just what word of mouth does occur is very positive. Information technology is clear that Make A's communications spending is going to be largely wasted until the company fixes its service problems, so it would do meliorate to divert investment from marketing into service and operations.

This comparison of two similar cell-telephone-network brands reveals that their most constructive touchpoints are markedly different. It also shows that when it comes to moving customers closer to buy, Make A clearly is underperforming Brand B, which has invested consistently in service.

Note that you tin employ versions of this technique to outcomes other than purchase, such as overall brand perception or willingness to recommend the brand.

Bondage of touchpoints.

Customers' reactions to each exchange are shaped by their previous interactions with a brand. The conclusion to get into a store might result from a conversation with a friend, seeing the store window display, or something else. Of course, the act of visiting a store increases the chances of making a purchase. And the quality of the purchasing experience will in turn influence the likelihood that the client will purchase the brand or product again or recommend it.

RET data can indicate where such bondage might be broken. For example, when the moviemaker Fox looked at its RET feedback, it saw that its spending on posters and newspapers was relatively ineffective, though some designs worked improve than others. The information likewise showed that picture trailers were effective at getting cinemagoers into theaters, but viewing them online rather than on TV or in the movie theatre had the groovy advantage of being only a few clicks from ticket purchase—and hence drove more sales. As a result, Fox allocated more spending online and started to steer customers toward trailers on YouTube or Facebook in its posters and ads. Those moves led to a big increase in digital views of trailers, which strongly predicted purchases.

From Real-Time Insight to Existent-Time Activeness

Insights gained from RET can exist acted on immediately—a smashing advantage in new production launches or marketing campaigns conducted in fast-changing environments.

Energizer's introduction of a new Schick Hydro razor in Germany was intended to bring about a step modify in make performance. The launch team used RET during the 12-week campaign, adapting its strategies along the way on the basis of feedback gathered. An analysis of the outset few weeks of information revealed several opportunities for improvement: For example, shifting the focus from TV advertising to online spending would increase purchases among the young male target market. The information as well suggested that print-media advert was less cost-constructive than Television receiver sponsorship (through extensive product placement in a Tv bear witness). The launch team retooled the second half of the campaign past increasing TV sponsorship, redesigning TV ads, and calculation supporting online activities, such equally pop-up ads with the aforementioned theme every bit the Idiot box ads. As a effect, the campaign accomplished greater bear upon with lower spending. Analeptic executives calculated that the new measures led to a threefold improvement in advertising toll-effectiveness and increased Energizer's revenue in the razor category by x% in less than four months. And the lessons learned from the launch held considerable value for the company's other brand campaigns, especially given that Energizer had significantly less to spend on communications than its main competitor, the marketplace leader.

Responding to RET findings in real time is easier in theory than in do, however. That's because RET covers the complete customer journey, which means the data it generates are useful to almost every customer-facing role of a house—from marketing communications and PR to operations and service delivery. Reaching, mobilizing, and coordinating all the relevant determination makers, therefore, presents a huge challenge, especially for products and services that are promoted and delivered through multiple channels over large areas.A tremendous corporeality of valuable piece of work has been washed on improving our power to rail and learn from customer behavior with the help of new technology. But as market place researchers, nosotros've found that the emphasis on beliefs has rather dominated the literature and practice. Existent-fourth dimension experience tracking, which goes across recording beliefs to help usa proceeds insight into the rich perceptual and emotional worlds human beings live in, helps redress the imbalance. And because RET enables companies to appraise and respond in real time to customers' reactions to products, services, or branding efforts, it tin play a central role in allowing customers to help design their own experiences with products. As RET and tools like it emerge, we expect that marketing volition cease to be a game of stimulus-response and will evolve into a continual procedure of cocreation.

A version of this article appeared in the September 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review.