In today’s fast-paced world of AI-powered dashboards, real-time metrics, and instant feedback loops, businesses are flooded with data. But despite this access to information, many teams are still struggling to truly understand their consumers.
Why? Because understanding doesn’t come from data points alone. It comes from empathy – the ability to see the world through your consumers’ eyes.
Empathy is not just a soft skill. In a business context, empathy for your consumer is a strategic asset. And when used intentionally, it becomes a competitive differentiator that can unlock sharper decisions, faster innovation, and stronger brand resonance.
Empathy in a business context goes beyond surface understanding: It’s the process of cognitively and emotionally connecting with your consumers’ experiences, motivations, and needs.
Consumer empathy allows teams to:
And most importantly: it allows your team to move beyond assumptions and act with confidence.
What we see most notably, with the rise of AI, more and more executive teams are pushing for faster, leaner decision-making. But without a connection to real-world consumer behavior, speed risks becoming shallow, and very costly. From an insights perspective, developing empathy within organizations and training teams isn’t a nice-to-have or a luxury – it’s a necessity.
And these are just some examples. Empathy fuels smarter decisions at every level of the business, in all departments.
Whether you’re a CMO rethinking brand positioning or an Insights Director building your learning plans, here are some key tools to bring empathy into strategy:
Spending time in your consumers’ real environments (their homes, their workplace, neighborhood stores, their daily routines, even in their cars) allows you to uncover insights that would never surface in a focus group or controlled environment. Watch for routines, artifacts, interactions, and decision-making moments. What feels normal to them might be revealing for your team.
Ethnographic interviews are perfect to use when exploring new segments, refining product strategy, or understanding how a category fits into everyday life.
Understanding how people actually make choices at shelf (or online) tells you more than any survey can. What stops them? What persuades them? How do they navigate the retail space? How does your product show up relative to your competitors? Shop-Alongs and Path to Purchase Observations are perfect when optimizing in-store experience, packaging, or online conversion strategy.
These immersive, multi-day learning experiences are designed to help teams step into the shoes of their consumers – literally. Whether it’s joining farmers on their land or shadowing a parent on a morning routine, empathy treks bring brand teams (and senior leaders) closer to the emotional context that drives decisions. It’s a common tool to aligning cross-functional teams, inspiring innovation, or uncovering core brand truths.
Mobile mission software, accessed through smart phones, gives you visibility into your consumers’ world in real time or over time. From what they eat and wear to how they talk about brands, these tools capture lived experiences in context, without disrupting them. Digital diaries are perfect for when businesses are looking to understand rituals, routines, and the evolving emotional process of the consumer journey.
Empathy doesn’t end with the research. In fact, it’s only the beginning, and companies should strive to embed it in their day-to-day businesses. But how? That’s where tools like Insight Activation Sessions come in, to help teams translate empathy into action by reframing findings as strategic questions, idea starters, or business moves. A perfect move to embedding insights into planning cycles or cross-functional decision-making, for long-term results.
At SIVO, we love helping clients across industries uncover powerful insights through empathy-driven methods. Here are just a few examples of past cases:
A leading electronics retailer struggled to connect with their consumers – their messaging felt clinical and cold. By stepping into the real lives of their target market, in their own homes, we uncovered the emotional language that truly resonated. The result? Clear direction on positioning and communication strategies – and a renewed path to success in a challenging category.
A global beverage brand was losing relevance across key consumption occasions. Through immersive virtual ethnography, we helped them see how emotions, rituals, and motivations shaped beverage choice across six countries. This empathy-powered understanding led to sharper messaging and inspired marketing activation across core segments.
An electronics brand expanding globally needed to understand what truly drives consumer decisions – but sales data alone weren’t cutting it. Through ethnographic interviews and in-store observations across multiple countries, we uncovered key journey moments that shaped how and why people buy. The insights directly informed their brand growth strategy.
A recreational vehicle company wanted to identify new opportunities for innovation and product improvement efforts – but needed to understand the deeper feelings associated with their utility vehicles. The SIVO and client team spent quality time with farmers and hunters on their properties, riding in their vehicles to see and feel how these vehicles integrated into their consumers’ lives, their farming businesses, and leisure time.
Empathy isn't just a buzzword or about "feeling good" – it's about making better decisions, for you, your company, and your consumers. When you understand the world your consumers live in, you can make decisions with more clarity, alignment, and confidence.
Ready to move from unaware to empathetic?
Let’s explore how empathy can drive better decisions across your company!
By Cindy Blackstock, CEO and Founder
Customer experience—say it and everyone’s ears perk up. CX is influencing and intersecting with consumer insights across most business sectors: CPG, Retail, Automotive, Financial and Healthcare, to name a few.
The X Factor
Despite it being a buzz worthy term, there doesn’t seem to be a singular, agreed-upon, industry-wide definition for the term customer experience, affectionately referred to as CX. Definitions and approaches to CX vary but most just want to know what that “X” factor means for categories, brand, and products.
Here at SIVO, we have our own perspective:
In truth, we have been working to reveal the customer experience all along. For us, it’s not an intimidating or nebulous concept, because we are quantitative and qualitative research experts who are skilled at understanding people to reveal their truths. Through the optimal combination of quantitative and qualitative research approaches, we get to the “what” by collecting customer experience data, identifying the touchpoints along the customer journey. Then, we get to the “why” behind the customer experience data—the stories, emotions, pain points and delights—and translate it into actionable ideas that businesses can use. The two research approaches go hand in hand with the discipline of CX.
Data + Stories = A Winning Formula
Many market research vendors try to capture the customer experience primarily through quantitative research techniques. Survey data is essential for quantifying the various paths and touchpoints along the customer journey. It plays an important role in validating the experience, so teams can also measure change over time. But the process can’t stop there. Survey data is necessary but is not a comprehensive measure of the customer’s voice.
SIVO believes clients need a better blend of data and stories to get the complete picture. It is the human component, in a truly “experiential” in-context setting, that brings the customer experience to life. To make a business impact, organizations need that qualitative, intimate understanding of the experience, to find out what is truly happening during each touch point. In other words, we believe that quantitative research helps identify what to improve, and qualitative research helps identify how to improve the customer experience.
The Steps to Insights
Your customers are on a journey. There may be many individual stops on the route that make up the overall experience. For example, access may be acceptable, customer service may be satisfying, but there may be positive and negative aspects of the product experience for the user. All these individual touchpoints may net to an acceptable customer experience but may not reveal the nuanced opportunity areas that could lead to an improved experience. Brand teams need to talk to customers and ask, “How are you doing?” instead of, “How are we (the company) doing?” These questions reveal the crucial and detailed human element of CX.
SIVO stiches together a map, an outline of the touchpoints that make up the journey of the entire customer experience. SIVO’s typical approach is 4 Steps:
With preliminary insights that build team intuition, quantitative survey data to build and validate the journey, followed by qualitative deep dives to uncover the nuanced details, the true customer experience can be revealed. Teams can map customers’ interaction with the brand across each touchpoint, identify opportunity areas to act on and then track the customer experience annually, to ensure the quality of the experience remains positive or improves over time.
With the journey maps in hand, SIVO’s best practice is to facilitate an Activation Session so that client teams can immerse themselves in the journey and the voices of the customer. A few group discussions and exercises help teams to digest the learning, translate and prioritize into an action plan that can be shared with key stakeholders across the organization.
To discuss your customer experience research needs with experts from SIVO, please reach out to our team at Contact@SIVOInsights.com.
By Kerry Juhl
Fast changing marketplace dynamics and consumer behavior tied to the recessionary economy are putting businesses at a crossroads. Teams need to quickly assess their priorities and pivot to new revenue and profit growth strategies. But in times of upheaval, the activities of teams can take over and they run the risk of confusing activity for progress. The alignment gained by pausing and reflecting as a team can keep the momentum going on key priorities while letting go of the rest.
An important step amidst a consumer learning initiative is to reflect, assess, and decide on next steps. It can happen in-person or virtually and can take as little as 60-90 minutes of the team’s valuable time. For this critical step in the journey, an outside, unbiased facilitator can be your most powerful tool.
There is no better time than now to consider these top 5 benefits of engaging a professional facilitator:
1. Unbiased Professional
A trained facilitator brings the valuable benefit of being an objective leader who can listen to all points of view, not vested in a particular position or outcome. This creates the conditions for a more open dialogue and opportunity to see possibilities that otherwise may be missed.
2. Participate in the Discussion
Ask yourself where you can add the most value. Should you try to participate and facilitate or focus 100% on participating with your team? Engaging a trained facilitator does a couple of things. It sends a message that this work is important. It also allows you, the owner, to invest your energy into the discussion while allowing an expert facilitator to customize the process and tools around your needs and objectives.
3. Full Engagement
Critical to success is hearing from everyone in the group. This can be tricky, particularly if there are strong (or silent) opinions and voices, and now you are not in the same room! Facilitators are skilled at navigating the group dynamics and engaging all participants into the discussion to ensure each voice is heard. They also know how to keep the ideas flowing when the group might get stuck.
4. Stretch Thinking
One of the most valuable benefits of a trained facilitator is the ability to stretch the group’s thinking. They are experts at quickly capturing ideas, summarizing, asking the right questions to build on ideas, connecting the dots between ideas, and pushing participants to think outside the box.
5. Drive to Solutions
With a process designed to meet the objective, the facilitator continually uses techniques to ensure a successful outcome with clear next steps, accountability and buy-in from the group.
Through the stages of Immersion, Interaction and Ideation, we help our clients gain empathy and develop the strategies and alignment needed to boost momentum and forward progress toward the team’s goal. Please contact Kerry.Juhl@SIVOInsights.com to learn how we can customize an approach with the right professional facilitator to meet your needs. We have a team of seasoned professionals who are passionate about working with like-minded clients and would love to talk to you!
SIVO Interview with Mary McIlrath, Children and Family Market Research Expert
By Kerry Juhl
Recently, SIVO, Inc. was lucky enough to have Mary McIlrath join our expanding team. Mary has amassed a wealth of experience in Children and Family market research. She is a recognized expert in the generations space, having established a successful Generation Z and Generation Alpha research practice in her past role. She has taught MBA courses in Qualitative Research at the University of Wisconsin and Quantitative Research at the University of Illinois and lectured at Northwestern University.
I recently sat down with Mary to discuss her experience with studying families and generational differences.
Question: Mary, you have been studying families and generational differences for most of your career. How did you become a subject matter expert on this topic?
Mary: I have always been fascinated by understanding generational differences and family dynamics. I come from both industry and academic perspectives—it’s common for former academics to work in industry, but it’s rare birds like me who keep a foot in both disciplines over a career. I’ve been able to harvest the best of both worlds. For example, my academic experience instilled a mindset that respondents should benefit as much or more than the researcher. This is particularly important when working with children and adolescents. Their needs come first; when they are met, the client also benefits. Industry experience has helped me be effective and efficient in conducting research. My dual expertise gives me a deep toolbox of constructs and methods to help my clients achieve their business objectives, with the well-being of the family at center stage.
Question: Mary, what does a typical U.S. family look like today?
Mary: It’s something in continuous flux. Sometimes it’s single-parent households. Sometimes it’s families with two dads. Sometimes it’s blended homes containing multiple generations. What has gradually become less common is the Norman Rockwellian image of two opposite-gender people raising a gaggle of kids with traditional gender roles. For instance, in 1968, 85% of children under 18 yrs. old lived with two parents (regardless of marital status) but that number has dropped to 70% in 2020. About 25% of children live with a single parent in the household.*
Question: How are manufacturers and marketers responding to the needs of today’s children and families?
Mary: It’s a sea change from how brands thought about families in the early days of youth research in the 1980s and 1990s. Those who used to make simple toys, TV shows, or food and beverages for kids are now thinking of how to stay relevant with their offerings and communication in the Metaverse. They are thinking about what is to come in Augmented Reality (AR) since Pokemon Go flipped the script. They are brainstorming what Virtual Reality (VR) will look like. That’s no small task, especially since children’s sense of balance and depth are still developing and putting them outside 3D spaces risks hampering their natural brain development.
Question: What is the latest regulatory environment for marketing and advertising to youth and families?
Mary: If you work on kid brands, it is critical to understand global ethics around marketing and advertising to children and families. Countries around the world have differing laws about when it is acceptable to advertise to young people. Those in the U.S. are the least restrictive because of industry self-established watchdogs like CARU (Children’s Advertising Review Unit). This organization does regular and thorough audits of marketing campaigns to children and calls out/suggests changes to anything that seems unfair.
Question: How does this impact conducting market research with kids and families?
Mary: In the U.S. it’s allowable to do research directly with children with a parent’s consent. It’s “cleaner” data coming straight from children rather than filtered through parents who mistakenly think they know what their kids truly want.
Question: What are a few of your best practices for conducting market research with kids and families?
Mary: Here are a few tips from my experience:
SIVO is excited for Mary to join our team and strengthen our Children and Family market research capabilities. To learn about how kids and families interact with and think about your brand, please reach out to us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com.
*source: 2020 Census Bureau's Current Population Survey
The great resignation took a major toll on businesses across industries in the last few years. Businesses that prided themselves in workplace culture, flexibility, and benefits saw long-time employees step down from their roles. At the same time, more and more companies face transformative restructuring, like acquisitions and mergers. Following such major changes in the world at large and within organizations, the opinions and beliefs held by workers changed tremendously, and even the most forward-thinking businesses have suffered the consequences.
With that, many businesses are looking for a path toward improving performance and commitment in the workplace. How can they avoid employee attrition in the future? How can they improve their processes to boost efficiency and support employees? How can they redirect leadership to provide the support those employees need? At the end of the day, organizational intelligence gets data-driven insights to answer all these questions, and much more.
First thing’s first, what is organizational behavior? Organizational behavior is how individuals interact and behave in groups. It’s especially relevant when looking at the workplace. Forward-thinking businesses take their organizational behavior seriously, because it greatly impacts employee satisfaction and engagement, leadership performance, and overall workplace efficiency and effectiveness. If organizations do not understand their employee behavior, perceptions and opinions, they miss out on insights that could holistically improve their business. The best way to get those opinions, and translate them into a strategic action plan is to leverage organizational intelligence solutions.
Who should gather organizational behavior data? Your team is full of subject matter experts on your business and your industry, but when it comes to gathering information on organizational behavior, they may not be the right facilitators. Internal teams will have natural bias and may have subconscious results in mind, and could therefore not ask appropriate, unbiased questions. Plus, when it comes to listening to your employees, you want to get thoughts from a wide range of team members. That means allocating the task to an outside expert, to increase cooperation by maintaining employee confidentiality. Ultimately, this gives every employee the opportunity to provide their opinions, maintaining employee anonymity while removing all potential bias from the initiative.
So, what are the keys to improving performance and commitment in the workplace? Understanding what motivates your team members is key to educating and empowering leadership to create a path toward a better future for your company. Get a breakdown on employee insights, leadership development, and strategic planning facilitation below:
What are the honest opinions of your employees when it comes to your business culture and processes? When leadership asks them directly, they will likely get a much different answer than an unbiased facilitator. However, there are many ways to gather this information from your team. An organizational intelligence expert can identify a custom learning plan based on your business, and implement solutions designed to get the most valuable feedback from employees. According to the Harvard Business Review,
“High-OQ (organizational intelligence) leaders foster an understanding, or ethos, of “who we are.” When leaders move from managing individuals or small groups to leading entire organizations, they need to create a shared understanding of what’s important and what the organization stands for — in other words, an ethos.”
What kind of exercises result in the best employee insights? This varies depending on the organization, but typically it comes down to both qualitative and quantitative research. Some examples of qualitative research include one-on-one interviews, small group employee discussions, and stakeholder interviews. Meanwhile quantitative research looks more like customized online employee engagement surveys targeted to specific employee teams, departments, functions, and regions. Often, employee engagement surveys are administered with regular frequency, e.g., annually or bi-annually, to measure positive or negative changes in employee satisfaction and engagement over time.
Your industry is constantly changing, your business is growing, and workplace expectations are ever-evolving. Is your leadership adapting to accommodate? Modern businesses must create an expectation for agility in leadership to keep employees engaged and motivated. That means regular leadership training, coaching, and development. Organizational intelligence experts can handle the task and provide tailored, relevant coaching that meets the needs of your leaders. It begins with one-on-one introductory sessions, a 360 degree leadership assessment and follow-up analysis, development planning and coaching sessions with leaders at all levels of the organization - executives, high-potential leaders, and new managers. This results in more effective leadership and impactful business management that can exceed the expectations of their teams.
What solutions are involved in leadership development? First, there is leader coaching and education, which can include leadership assessments, feedback, and career planning directly with leaders. This can take place individually or in group/cohort sessions. There is also team effectiveness training, which helps teams define their purpose, processes, roles and responsibilities, as well as individual contributions. This is especially important for businesses facing restructuring, where new teams are being formed and leadership responsibilities are changing.
You have so many initiatives in the works – strategic planning can feel like one of those tasks that could easily get pushed down the line. However, strategic planning is the high-level exercise that impacts every other element of your organization. Outsourcing guarantees timely and effective execution, especially when you pick the right partner for the job. Market research firms like SIVO offer comprehensive workshops to ensure your team develops a sound strategic plan that will successfully lead the company into the future.
These facilitated workshops are especially beneficial to newer businesses or businesses facing large changes, like acquisitions, mergers or a challenging external environment. Knowing how to bring teams together, leveraging critical and inspirational inputs is no small task. That’s why it’s beneficial to have experienced strategic planning facilitators on your side, to plan and facilitate the workshop so that you leave the session with a clearly defined vision, mission, values, plans and ownership assignments. Sessions may also focus on other topics, such as communications planning, insight activation sessions, special-interest group planning, and even competitive SWOT analysis. Regardless of the focus, each strategic planning session will help leaders develop and align on clear strategies for the future, to drive business success.
No matter the business, every employee wants to be heard. Creating a place for employees to provide their thoughts can only benefit your business. From an employee perspective, these people-focused exercises prove that leadership cares about their opinions and wants to make steps to improve their workplace experience. The same goes for dedicated strategic planning exercises and leadership development. These initiatives create a stronger, people-first organization positioned to succeed. When leaders are effective, employees are motivated, and business strategy is in place, it all adds up to improved performance and commitment in the workplace – and more success in the market.
Organizational intelligence services result in game-changing insights that can transform your business for the better – and position you for even more growth down the line. Your team members have the deep knowledge about the company and industry, and often, their perspectives can unlock opportunities that leadership would have never otherwise considered. Once those insights are relayed to leaders with actionable recommendations, you can accomplish so much more within your organization.
Are you ready to gain insights on your organizational behavior? Get information on every aspect of your organizational behavior with SIVO. Our team of organizational intelligence experts can help you lead your team through any major transition. We work with organizations across industries, and build custom insight solutions that holistically improve performance and commitment in the workplace.
Contact SIVO today to discuss your business needs and get support.
SIVO Insights brings together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence. Have a business challenge? Let's talk!
We bring together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence
