Ink Research

Shopper and NPD insight for the real world

OUR SERVICES

New Product Development

Whether you are looking for simple idea prioritisation, concept optimisation or full volume modelling, the Ink NPD model gives you everything you need.

Measure: Our unique shelf-led system provides proven accuracy for product and concept potential measurement, including year 1 volume and value modelling, price sensitivity and portfolio cannibalisation.

Diagnose: Our range of diagnostic tools get under the skin of shoppers’ purchase drivers and barriers, identifying weak points to address and strengths to drive launch comms.

Optimise: The Ink team of insight specialists will help guide your development process, highlighting the critical issues to be addressed and showing what elements will drive sales in launch comms.

Shopper & Category

We know that shoppers’ purchase decisions are a complex mix of unconscious cues, heuristics, rational thinking and value perceptions. At Ink, our shopper research goes beyond rationalised questionnaire responses to get a deep understanding of the way customers make decisions are made – and most critically, why. Focusing on specific, recent purchase occasions, we put shoppers into a buying mindset, before leading them through and understanding their decision processes. Our innovative techniques are designed to give you robust insight for commercial decision making, while squeezing the most out of your research budget.

Price-Range Optimisation

Shoppers evaluate price and range at shelf and online with a combination of conscious evaluation and unconscious mental shortcuts – and direct questioning can only uncover the (usually less important) conscious choices. 

At Ink we have a range of methods to evaluate price and range via real shopper choices.  For simple questions, we employ monadic shelf tests or expected pricing techniques;  more often we build  powerful choice-based market models, calibrated to panel data which allow us to calculate choice, volume and value implications in almost any retail scenario.

 

Backed by our unrivalled category optimisation expertise, we advise on portfolio, range, price and discounting strategies across different markets, channels and retailers to maximise volume and value sales.

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Brand and Comms Tracking

Our brand and comms tracking offering goes beyond basic level understanding and generalised, flat KPI reporting. The Ink philosophy of bespoke design and built-in flexibility, backed up by rigorous commitment to research fundamentals, ensures that trackers remain fresh and interesting even years into the future. We apply innovative analytical tools, such as control charting, to identify changes even when traditional wave on wave figure comparison lacks the sensitivity to do so.
Your brand and objectives are unique – make sure you choose tracking that can support your planning and stay relevant and sensitive for years to come

OUR WORK

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The Ink NPD Model
Optimising line extensions for brand growth
CASE STUDY: Category Growth Deep Dive
Why range and price optimisation so frequently gets it wrong
Applying research to growth planning: The importance of calibration
Concept testing for business forecasting
When Consumers CAN’T Tell the Truth: Creating real insight using flawed responses
Is Half Your Instore Marketing Budget Wasted?
Measuring the Impact of Covid on Shopping Behaviour
Plastic free packaging conjoint
The fragmented wellness market (and how we overstate its value in our lives)
Optimising your brand tracking – the key pitfalls to avoid

About Ink

At Ink we understand the complexities of consumer decision making and behaviour and the way we go about our research reflects this: we believe in challenging the way research is done, re-evaluating research in the light of emerging knowledge about decision making processes.

We focus on matching our research to the way decisions are made in the real world: a mix of conscious and unconscious, impulse and list driven. We understand the power of the shelf in purchase decisions and measure accordingly. We have a healthy distrust of human memory and get that shoppers often can’t or won’t tell us why they are making certain decisions – so we use a range of implicit and modelled techniques to give us insight into real world choices.​

We translate our research into concise, business-focused and above all, actionable insight. We pride ourselves on delivering tailored results in a format that’s just right for our clients’ key stakeholders. We know you need to demonstrate the ROI of your research – and that’s what we aim to do on every project.

Research quality is fundamental to our offer. Our research is conducted with a deep understanding of the fundamentals of market research, developed over 25 years of industry experience: we work with only high quality sample providers, design concise questionnaires which elicit the most revealing insight and use sophisticated analysis techniques to get under the skin of the data. In short, we concentrate on the quality of the insight so that our clients can work on implementing it.

THE TEAM

Barry Noble

Managing Director

Barry began his research career over 25 years ago with TNS and made his way through IPSOS and NFO before founding Ink with Xede in 2015. Over that time he has developed NPD, shopper and campaign effectiveness insight programmes for some of the biggest FMCG, Retail and Media names, UK and internationally.
Praxedis Page

Director

Having gained an MSc in Sociology (Research) from the London School of Economics, Xede has over 10 years’ experience of FMCG and media research for blue chip clients. She has been responsible for the build of several bespoke research programmes and has set up and implemented a range of panels and communities.
Jodie Purvis

Senior Research Manager

Jodie’s 5+ years as a researcher have allowed her to build on her Psychology degree and keen interest in human behaviour. She has worked across a vast range of different categories and methods, including NPD, conjoint pricing and feature development, and path to purchase studies.
Rhiarna Harris

Research Manager

Having graduated from the University of Queensland with a first class Honours in Psychology, Rhiarna is passionate about understanding consumer behaviour through research. She works with the wider team to uncover opportunities for clients.
Ervin Boyes

Research Executive

Having graduated from the LSE, Ervin brings a strong understanding of market dynamics and modelling, which he applies to the consumer goods, retail and media clients on a daily basis.