By Kerry Juhl
The Responsibility & Privilege of Serving Customers
“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider to our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so.”
– Mahatma Gandhi, 1890
This quote is more than 100-years old, but it is still true today. The opportunity to serve customers is a privilege. The responsibility of that privilege is ensuring the customer’s voice is heard and understood. Brand teams need to know what their customers need and what they value, as decisions about products and services are made on the customers’ behalf.
Defining Customer Value
Understanding customer value can be a differentiator for companies in today’s challenging market. Simplistically, if a brand team has $1 to invest – or needs to cut $1 in spending – knowledge about what customers’ value must guide these business decisions to stay competitive.
So let’s talk about customer value…In everyday conversations, value has many meanings including price, worth, or even benefits. It is imperative for organizations to operate with a common understanding of customer value. From a marketing and branding perspective, it helps to think about customer value as an equation:
Customer Value equals Benefits minus Cost (CV=B-C).
Benefits include the advantages of quality, service, image, brand, experience, and the functionality one gets or emotions one feels when using the product or service. Cost is not only price – which we think of as cash, credit, interest, even service fees - but it can also include non-price terms such as time, effort, energy, and convenience.*
When teams define their Customer Value Equation, they can clearly identify growth opportunities by emphasizing or improving aspects of an offering that customers value (where to invest) and they can identify cost savings by eliminating aspects of the offering that customers do not value (where to cut).
Developing the Customer Value Equation
SIVO employs a 5-Step Process to develop your Customer Value Equation. In partnership with our client teams, we Mine, Explore and Quantify the customer value drivers leveraging Functional, Emotional, Life-Changing and Social Impact values. Note that the Quantify Step can be qualitative consumer learning, a quantitative survey or ideally, a combination of both. The design of this step is dependent on how much past learning that the team already has in hand.
Four Categories of Customer Value
We then partner with teams to Develop & Refine the Customer Value Equation. Lastly, we help teams Apply their equation by assessing where their products/services are over/under-delivering and facilitate them through the generation of ideas to improve the customer experience.
The result of our process is rich with discoveries. These insights provide a unifying understanding of the target customers’ purchase drivers, must-haves and nice-to-haves regarding a product or service – giving teams confidence and clarity on what to do with $1 more or $1 less.
Our Offer to You
SIVO is interested in sharing our Customer Value Equation experience and case studies with you and your insights team! Our “CVE Download” can easily be part of an in-person or virtual “Lunch & Learn” or your next team meeting.
If you can answer “yes” to at least one of the following three questions, please reach out to SIVO.
To learn more, contact us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com.
*Referenced article by Gautam Mahajan https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2394964320903557
As 2026 planning season approaches, most leaders are focused on big decisions: where to invest, how to grow, and which bets to place. But the strongest strategies don’t begin with goals, they begin with your consumers.
In fact, the annual planning season is the perfect time to pressure-test assumptions. Before you finalize budgets or commit to growth strategies, it pays to refresh your understanding of today’s consumer landscape. What’s changed? What’s emerging? And what gaps in understanding could derail your decisions?
This post outlines how to approach annual planning through the lens of consumer truth, so you can build smarter, more aligned strategies. Let’s dive in!
For many organizations, planning still begins with internal goal-setting: revenue and profit targets, innovation and growth priorities, and cost cutting. And high-performing teams know that successful strategy isn’t just about setting ambition, it’s about aligning that ambition to current market conditions.
Consumer behavior is one of the most dynamic variables in that equation, and often, one of the most overlooked. Market assumptions that were true a year ago may no longer apply. Purchasing patterns, motivations, and category expectations can shift quickly, especially in volatile economic environments like the current one. And if your plan doesn’t reflect those changes, it’s much more likely to underperform.
This consumer-centric understanding is foundational. It informs product decisions, pricing, messaging, innovation, and channel strategy. Without it, even well-intentioned plans can quickly drift out of sync with real consumer needs. Starting with the consumer also accelerates alignment. It gives cross-functional teams, from marketing to finance to sales, a shared understanding of where the business is heading and why. It moves planning conversations from opinion to evidence and from speculation to strategy.
If the case still isn’t clear, consider this: even well-resourced plans fail when they aren’t aligned with current consumer behavior. It’s often not about effort or execution, it’s about starting with the right inputs. Let’s look at a few examples:
Outdated consumer insights can lead to misdirected efforts, misaligned messaging, missed opportunities, and unnecessary risk. To illustrate what this looks like in practice, here are two common scenarios where strategy easily goes off track because the consumer context was never fully validated.
A company sets aggressive growth targets and decides to compete more directly with newer players in the category. They allocate budget toward developing a new product with features they believe will differentiate them. The plan gets approved. Timelines are set. Everyone is getting ready to mobilize fast and execute.
But the innovation was based on an internal assumption about what consumers wanted – not on recent consumer insight. In reality, consumers weren’t looking for more features. They were looking for simplicity, availability and value. The company spends $$$ getting the launch ready, but the product doesn’t gain any traction. The opportunity for a product refresh was real, but the execution missed the mark because actual buyers weren’t consulted.
Another company, facing margin pressure, looks for quick wins through cost reductions. They make the decision to cut a service element they believe is underutilized, based on operational data and internal team feedback.
What they didn’t realize is that this element was one of the few remaining differentiators in the eyes of their customers. It wasn’t used loudly, but it created trust and loyalty. Cutting it might save money in the short term, but it might erode value perception and reduce retention in the long term.
A brand team, focused on stabilizing performance, decides to stick with the same marketing and channel strategy that had worked well in the past. But in the background, both consumer behavior and category norms had shifted.
Competitors began simplifying their digital experience, consolidating touchpoints, and creating seamless mobile journeys. Meanwhile, this brand was still investing in a fragmented app strategy and outdated content flows. The team didn’t realize that expectations had changed. Consumers weren’t looking for more brand interaction, they were looking for convenience and control in one place. By the time results started to dip, the gap was already visible. A competitive audit or trend review could have flagged these shifts much earlier, giving the brand time to adapt before losing relevance.
These are not unusual cases. They reflect a planning process that moved forward before validating the reality on the ground. Other common issues include planning around outdated needs or occasions, targeting segments that have shifted or declined, or simply prioritizing the things that don’t matter to consumers anyways. None of these decisions are inherently flawed, but when they’re based on outdated or assumed insight, the risk of “planning in the wrong direction” increases.
The good news is you don’t always need to start from scratch. In many cases, the best approach is to audit what you already have, identify gaps, and decide what needs to be refreshed or revalidated.
Here are some key areas worth pressure-testing, before you commit to planning:
Many teams start with a Get Smart session. It’s a fast-turn immersion that pulls together everything you already know, from existing data to partner knowledge to internal POVs, and highlights what’s still missing. These sessions help surface blind spots, align teams, and set the foundation for what to explore further through new research or analysis, which will lay the foundation for a solid and strategic plan.
Insight work at this stage doesn’t need to be complex. It just needs to be focused, current, and relevant to the decisions you’re about to make.
The strongest strategic plans are built on a clear understanding of the consumer. When that understanding is current, relevant, and grounded in reality, teams make better decisions, faster, with less risk, and greater impact. At SIVO, we help businesses enter planning season with confidence:
Whether you need to revalidate consumer segments, understand emerging behaviors, or map new usage occasions, our team designs studies that answer the right questions at the right time. We work fast, focus on what matters to your business, and turn insight into clear recommendations for strategic use you can easily relate to in your annual plans.
Need to align insights and teams quickly? Our Get Smart sessions help you make sense of what you already know and highlight the gaps that matter most. These sessions help build internal alignment early and avoid late pivots, and are perfect as a foundation for your annual plans.
Already have an internal insights team, but planning season is stretching your resources? SIVO’s On Demand Talent gives you access to senior insights professionals who can plug into your team quickly. Whether you need a trends lead, moderator, or strategic storyteller, we match you with the right expert, without hiring delays and long-term commitments. The perfect flexbile insights approach to supercharge your insights team for the planning season!
Consumer truth is the foundation of smarter annual planning. Whether you're building that foundation or scaling your team to deliver it, we're here to help.
By Kerry Juhl
Brand positioning is a critical component of a successful marketing strategy. It defines how a brand is perceived in the minds of its consumer target, differentiating it from key competitors. A well-crafted positioning statement serves as the foundation for all marketing efforts and ensures consistent messaging across all channels.
The SIVO team has spent many years helping brand teams develop and evaluate brand positionings across a variety of industries. While every positioning project is somewhat unique, we have supported our clients with proven frameworks and research approaches, leading to the development of successful brand positionings.
The Positioning Statement
A positioning statement is a concise description of how a brand wants to “show up” in the world, highlighting the primary (and ideally, unique) benefit it provides, along with the rationale for how it can deliver the benefit. The statement typically includes the following format and elements:
For (consumer target), Brand is the only product type that provides (key benefit), because Brand has (feature/reason to believe), (feature/reason to believe) and (feature/reason to believe).
For example, Volvo’s positioning statement looks something like this:
For safety-conscious families, Volvo premium automobiles offer the safest cars on the road because they have advanced safety features, industry-leading crash test ratings, and innovative safety technologies.
The Brand Benefit Ladder
At the heart of developing a strong brand positioning is a solid understanding of the Brand Benefit Ladder, a strategic tool used early in the positioning development process. It helps brand teams articulate the value proposition by identifying benefits at four levels:
1) What it is
2) What it does
3) How it makes you feel
4) How it can transform your life
This framework ensures a clear articulation of the brand’s offerings and the emotional and transformational benefits they provide. Depending on the brand’s maturity and the competitive landscape, positioning can be based on functional benefits (what it is/what it does) or a more emotional/transformational benefits (how it makes me you feel/changes your life).
Positioning Types
There are a variety of positioning types that fit across the Brand Benefit Ladder:
Product Features:
Attribute-Based Positioning centers on specific features that distinguish the product.
Example: For homeowners, Dyson vacuum cleaners are superior carpet cleaners because they offer superior suction, advanced filtration, and allergen removal.
Value-Based Positioning is linked specifically to the price value of the product.
Example: For price-sensitive shoppers, Walmart offers everyday low prices by leveraging its extensive supply chain and scale to provide unbeatable savings on a vast assortment of goods, ensuring customers can save money and live better.
Functional Benefits:
Benefit-based Positioning highlights the key functional benefits or solutions provided by the product.
Example: For fitness enthusiasts struggling to exercise regularly, Peloton is the exercise bike that keeps you motivated to exercise because it delivers an immersive and interactive experience, world-class instructors, and a supportive fitness community.
Problem-Solution Positioning focuses on the problems that the product solves for customers.
Example: For individuals suffering from dandruff, Head & Shoulders provides effective and long-lasting relief from dandruff flakes and itchiness because it has a clinically proven formula that eliminates dandruff, nourishes, and protects the scalp.
Emotional Benefits:
Lifestyle Positioning aligns the product with a particular emotion or feeling.
Example: For athletes and active individuals, Nike enhances athletic performance and empowers athletes to reach their full potential through its innovative, cutting-edge sportswear products.
Cultural Symbolism Positioning uses cultural symbols and references to position the brand within a cultural context.
Example: For motorcycle enthusiasts seeking an authentic and exhilarating riding experience, Harley-Davidson is the iconic motorcycle brand that delivers powerful, custom-made bikes with a rich American heritage and embodying the spirit of freedom, rebellion and individuality.
Purpose-Driven Benefits:
Innovation-led Positioning sets the brand up as a leader in innovation and cutting-edge technology.
Example: For environmentally conscious consumers and tech enthusiasts, Tesla is the leading electric vehicle and clean energy company that offers a sustainable environmental solution via their innovative high-performance electric cars and cutting-edge technology.
Purpose-led Positioning centers on what the brand is doing for the world rather than the product itself.
Example: For socially conscious consumers, TOMS is the footwear brand that provides stylish and comfortable shoes while also making a positive impact on communities around the world though its One-for-One model, where each purchase directly contributes to improving lives in underdeveloped countries.
Purpose-Driven Benefits:
Innovation-led Positioning sets the brand up as a leader in innovation and cutting-edge technology.
Example: For environmentally conscious consumers and tech enthusiasts, Tesla is the leading electric vehicle and clean energy company that offers a sustainable environmental solution via their innovative high-performance electric cars and cutting-edge technology.
Purpose-led Positioning centers on what the brand is doing for the world rather than the product itself.
Example: For socially conscious consumers, TOMS is the footwear brand that provides stylish and comfortable shoes while also making a positive impact on communities around the world though its One-for-One model, where each purchase directly contributes to improving lives in underdeveloped countries.
Regardless of the type of positioning and where it fits on the benefit ladder, all positioning statements need to be clear, credible, and differentiated from the competition. It can then be used to inspire marketing executions across channels, to create consistent communications and connections to the consumer target.
Researching Your Brand Positioning
Developing effective brand positioning requires rigorous research, with the ideal approach being a combination of qualitative and quantitative research.
1. Qualitative Exploration: This phase uses one-on-one in-depth interviews with current and potential consumers to explore brand perceptions and refine positioning language. It helps the client team explore and understand the nuanced emotional and rational drivers behind brand choice and allows the team to modify and improve the positioning statements in real-time, based on consumer input.
2. Quantitative Survey: Once the positioning statements are refined, quantitative research helps identify the most motivating positioning from a handful of alternatives. Surveys and real-world experiments (e.g., testing via digital ads) can be used to test different positioning statements among a larger sample, assessing the impact on brand perception and purchase interest.
By using a combination of qualitative exploration and quantitative validation, brand teams can ensure their positioning is not only compelling but also grounded in consumer reality.
Your Source for Expert Consumer Insights
At SIVO, Inc., we are dedicated to helping our clients develop brand positionings that are clear, unique, credible, and most importantly, relevant to your consumer target. We are trusted advisors in supporting your positioning development and will design custom learning plans that generate the insights needed to carve out a unique space in the market and connect with your consumers. This holistic approach will set the foundation for enduring brand success.
Contact us via our website form or email us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com today to schedule a discovery call!
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.
Through the SIVO, Inc. “Modern Ways of Working” Mini Chat series, we spoke with a strategic consumer insights leader, Helen Kurtz, Chief Marketing Officer. In this conversation with Marilyn Weiss, Helen discusses her experience with SIVO’s On Demand Talent solution. She has hired SIVO’s fractional Insights talent in two different companies that she has led, with the intention of introducing consumer insights to the organization, working with the marketing team to prove out the value of insights. Watch this insightful video or read through the transcript below!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDTSN-vB8jA
Video Transcript:
DOING MORE WITH FEWER PEOPLE:
I mean, for sure, budgets are getting squeezed and I think it's more and more the case that headcount is getting squeezed and there's a desire to do more with fewer people and to be really smart about what choices we're making on staffing.
BRING IT IN AND PROVE IT OUT:
I left General Mills and went to a sort of billion dollar company, Foster Farms and it was clear to me as I came in as CMO that we needed to absolutely elevate our sort of consumer touch points and I needed to get that consumer insight function established at the company but I didn't have the headcount to do that and so that's where I reached out to you Marilyn and we dreamed up this idea of this fractional support.
I left the company, I'm now CMO at another company, and very quickly brought Sevo in with me again for the same reason. It wasn't a function that was established in the company, again about a billion dollars in revenue. And so it was a real opportunity to bring in and prove out the capabilities of consumer insights at the same time knowing I was going to get a fantastic, no questions asked, I was going to get the best talent at the right time.
CONCENTRATED EFFORT & TEAM INTEGRATION:
I think what you're getting with this fractional talent, because SIVO is the best at weeding it out. You guys are the experts themselves. It's like you’re going to a great college. You've already been filtered through. You're picking out the best talent.
I think there's also a little bit of a mindset of a fractional talent that's really important that who we've brought in doesn't need to be pitching in front of the C -suite.
They can, but they don't need that recognition. They they're not gunning for promotions within. They're really just there to do a job. They integrate really well with my team. But again, there I can have them sort of play in the background or bring them to the forefront. It's just a much lower lift for me and my team. I would say they're really there to do the job. And in many cases to educate my team on what consumer insights excellence looks like because that was not a function that was in either of the two companies.
So I guess, again, to be more succinct, this combination of excellence and expertise in their field, as well as this ability to work very seamlessly with the team and again, not being in it to win it for promotions. They're really there to do the job. So it's just sort of very concentrated effort.
CONSUMER-CENTRIC THOUGHT LEADERSHIP:
I think it's just thought leadership first and foremost. I think most companies are, if not there already, are wising up to consumer-first and consumer-led and that's sort of like in their DNA. So if you have a declaration like that happening in your company, it's like well, what do I do with that? and who helps me execute that? So I think you know both of the individuals I've worked with have really brought that to the fore helping educate on what that looks like. How to get close to the consumer, driving education, training, and facilitating.
Again, it's not just like executing the research, but interrogating:
THE ECONOMICS ARE FANTASTIC:
Like just the economics have been really fantastic. I didn't hire a full -time person. I use a fractional person at 30 hours a week. So like, that's worked out really well. I have no turnover because this person is here and they're very committed to us. I don't have to worry about them leaving. I've got a great backup from SIVO in that, you know, the resources are there. The thought leadership is there behind my individual. I know that she consults with SIVO on questions that are beyond her scope.
Then, just this sort of seamlessness of having someone who works well with a team. You filter out for people who are really exceptional at what they do and are used to an experience with working on a team. When you're out there interviewing, you don't really know what you're gonna get. So it's just like, it's almost like a stamp of approval, I think, coming from SIVO. I have found that through and through.
TALENT CURATION & INSIGHTS EXPERTISE:
I think the biggest compliment to SIVO is that my team doesn't really know about SIVO. Like they just know Jill. They know the person with whom they work. I am the behind the scenes working with SIVO and I've found that to be extraordinarily easy. I think that the team at SIVO like really listens to what I need. When I start a project or when I moved companies, they were quick to sort of like curate who would be a good match. They get to know me as a client and what my demands are.
My team would say it's a godsend. I think my team loves in both places, loves working with this talent, and would sacrifice a lot of other things before they would give up this talent, which happily we didn't have to do.
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
