Rheingold consumerClinic - Private Treatment to Better Understand Target Groups

By Heinz Grüne

In order to get closer to consumers, increasing numbers of clients are demanding more creativity and ever more innovative approaches from the market research industry. In order to thoroughly understand your target audience and competitors, you need to be resourceful and prepared to try out new things.
With this in mind, rheingold has been providing consumer clinics for several years now. As a market research instrument, clinics allow us to get closer to consumers, creating more intimacy and providing more authentic insights and findings.

The Methodology
rheingold consumerClinics are essentially conclaves. Participants include consumers from the target groups (one or several brands from one product category), client and agency, as well as two or three rheingold staff members. Totalling about 20 people, clinics meet for a day and a half under relaxed, “work-remote” conditions. Activities are modular and involve: discussion groups, challenges, relaxing play-focused sessions, creative parts or simply “observed hanging out”. Roles are not completely fixed. Also clients and agency staff are involved in the program. The key is not primarily to achieve a 'good' or 'correct' result, but to witness the process: How do the respective respondents deal with a specific issue? What kind of solutions and suggestions do they come up with? And how does the group resolve conflicts etc.?

As in life generally, things that happen ‘between the lines’ or ‘behind the scenes’ often prove to be very revealing. What goes wrong and why? What works completely unexpectedly? Do factions form and who complains, praises, flirts or sabotages? And about what? Every interpersonal aspect is ‘harvested’ and evaluated from a market-focussed psychological perspective. The conclusions obtained can be used for various areas of the marketing mix. Product design, packaging, communication, above and below the line activities etc. can be related and adapted wonderfully to these insights and findings.

Therefore, the aim is to comprehensively identify at a very top level psychological profiles and features that are related to a particular market segment, target group and/or specific brand usage. Since we usually do not start from scratch we can employ existing hypotheses which get confirmed, rejected or modified during the course of the clinic or evaluation!
This being said, we strive to achieve comprehensive, psychological representativeness!
This represents the most comprehensive psychological understanding of the target group’s actions, attitudes and preferences - both in relation to its own structure as well as its use of products and brands.

The approach produces high validity: Results represent very robust learnings, statements and conclusions, and thus insights into the lived reality of the persons concerned and the target group they represent.