All Project Types

Category Exploration

Enhance the adoption of your product or service with the Category Exploration template

Want to understand behaviours in a specific market or category? Want to identify the motivations and barriers behind choices? Want to assess gaps in your offering or unmet needs in your category? This is the right template for you.

Who can you speak to with this template?

Reach across multiple markets

You can get rich responses from real people across 22 different markets.

Qualitative responses at scale

You can collect responses from 150-1,000 people per market, depending on the markets selected.

Use our audience, or supply your own

You can use the template to speak to our community of consumers or your own customer base.

What will you discover with this template?

Habits & Drivers

Delve into behaviours and the underlying motivations behind them, including the types of products or services people engage with, the specific occasions in which they engage with them and why. These insights will unlock a comprehensive understanding of the rituals and routines of your target audience.

Benefits & Features

Uncover perceptions around specific benefits and features to get a comprehensive view of the aspects that resonate most with your target audience. These insights will help you enhance the perceived value of your product or service and tap into the underlying motivations you have identified.

Improvements & Unmet Needs

Highlight gaps within your offering and potential areas for improvement, along with unmet needs in the broader category. These insights will help you identify whitespace opportunities and refine your existing products or services to ensure optimum satisfaction from your customer base.

What type of business question can you answer with this template?

Why are fewer people purchasing organic food products?

You can identify purchase or usage barriers e.g. understanding the hurdles people face when deciding to buy organic food products, their overall market perceptions and the top factors that influence their purchasing decision.

Which conditions are people more commonly using natural remedies to treat?

You can identify preferences and routines e.g. understanding the motivations behind choosing natural remedies for some conditions over others, as well as what natural remedies they’re using and why.

What are the top preferences when it comes to electric vehicles?

You can identify purchase or usage motivations e.g. understanding attitudes towards electric vehicles, including the motivations behind a purchase, the challenges that discourage adoption and the perceived benefits of owning an electric vehicle.

How do people choose and utilise fitness tracking apps?

You can identify competitive drivers e.g. understanding the factors that motivate people to choose a specific fitness tracking app and identifying potential areas for enhancement to increase competitive advantage.

How it works

How does SBX turn rich conversations into robust data?

You’re no longer restricted to a static list of questions. Instead, our LLM-powered chatbot will create unique conversation paths for each respondent to dig deeper into their specific answers and discover the nuance behind the numbers.

However, to ensure every conversation captures the information needed to support or challenge your hypothesis, SBX will create a conversation guide as part of your research brief. This will include the questions the chatbot must ask during the conversation.

01

These parent dimensions are part of the Category Exploration template and will ensure that all of the data points needed to answer your business question are gathered during our conversations with consumers or customers.

02

The parent dimensions are then tailored based on your specific brief. In this case, the brief was centred around understanding preferences and usage occasions for different deodorant formats.

03

Lastly, the tool transforms these dimensions into a list of survey questions, which will be optimised in real time based on what the respondent says. This ensures the chatbot is able to delve deeper into their responses, just like a qualitative interviewer would, to get to the ‘why’. 

Usage Landscape (Sub-category)

Preferred types of deodorant.

Could you tell us what type of deodorant you usually purchase?

Usage Landscape (Brand)

Preferred brands of deodorant.

What brands of deodorant do you usually purchase?

Usage Landscape (Variants)

Preferred variant of deodorant.

What are your preferred variants of deodorant?

Usage Landscape (Formats)

Preferred deodorant format.

What are your preferred formats of deodorant?

Usage Landscape (Occasions)

Occasions for using specific formats of deodorant.

We'd love to know when you usually use deodorant. Could you share some occasions with us?

Drivers of Choice

Reasons for preferring a specific deodorant format.

Why do you choose that specific deodorant format in these occasions? What makes it the right choice for you?

Drivers of Choice

Perceived effectiveness of different deodorant formats.

How do you perceive the effectiveness of spray deodorants?

Improvements & Unmet Needs

Dissatisfactions and desired improvements to spray deodorants.

What are the reasons you choose not to use spray deodorant as your most used deodorant?

Key Benefits & Features

Thoughts on environmental impact of deodorant.

What features do you value most in your deodorant?

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How have other brands used this template?

Beauty

 Identifying whitespace opportunities for portfolio innovation.

A leading beauty company wanted to understand whether consumers had different perceptions and use cases for lip balms vs. lip treatments, in order to effectively innovate in these areas.

Beverages

 Informing product and marketing strategies for milk-based solutions.

A coffee machine producer sought to uncover the decision drivers behind consumers’ milk preparation choices for pod-based espresso.

Electronics

Developing communication strategies and product features to enhance appeal.

A consumer electronics manufacturer wanted to uncover motivations, barriers, and unmet needs amongst hybrid/remote workers who opt for external webcams over built-in options.

Beer

Evaluating the motivations behind a growth in sales.

A leading brewing company wanted to understand what was driving the growth in sales of small beer cans, compared to standard size cans, and if this was a short-term or long-term behaviour.

Frequently asked 
questions

What sample can I target?

What information do I need to provide about a product or concept I’d like to test?

How many key variable cuts can I have?

Can I add my own questions to my survey?

Do you offer immediate response collection and delivery?

More templates

Examples:

  • Products & Services: Would the market be receptive to a new pet grooming subscription service?
  • Features: Are audiences prepared for multi-angle viewing on their streaming services? 
  • Ideas: Is there public backing for expanded green zones in major UK cities?

Innovation

Create or refine a best-fit product or service by testing your new or existing concepts with your target audience.

Examples: 

  • Definitions: How do pet owners judge the ‘healthiness’ of the food they buy their pets? 
  • Relevance & Impact: Is sustainability relevant for mobile phone customers? 
  • Engagement & Consideration: How can I improve perceptions of my brand's quality among millennials?

Trends & Topics

Grow your brand in a specific segment by identifying what a specific topic, concept or trend means to your audience. 

Examples:

  • Awareness & Associations: Do consumers associate our brand mission and values with our products? 
  • Motivations & Barriers: Will the introduction of eco-friendly packaging increase sales? 
  • Key Metrics: How is our brand performing on ‘trust’ compared to our competitors?

Brand

Make your brand more relevant to your audience by defining the emotional and practical perceptions of your brand.

See how SBX can make data accessible for you

Join some of the world’s leading companies in leveraging SBX for rich, robust insights.
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