Resources to Read

READ our latest whitepapers on best practices.

What does “belonging” mean to a student? How can a university ensure all students feel like they belong on campus? In an increasingly diverse higher education landscape, these are important questions. San Francisco State University set out to understand its Latinx student population’s sense of belonging, gather feedback on both positive and challenging experiences, and better understand their experiences with university activities and programs. In a 2-phase mixed methods approach initiative sponsored by SFSU and the Latinx Student Center, KNow Research conducted market research among the Latinx student population to provide the university actionable steps to create more inclusive and supportive environments.

This research revealed the importance of feeling represented, respected, and connected to faculty, staff, and fellow students in fostering a strong sense of belonging. Importantly it also showcased the barriers to belonging that universities can help their students overcome.

How do marketers make sure they are serving up the most relevant and timely information? They ask them! KNow recently had the opportunity to help our 2023 pro bono client, Peace by Piece International, uncover important audience insights that set the course for their next year of marketing and communications strategies.

KNow leveraged a thoughtful qualitative approach with mixed audiences and methodologies in order to unlock a unifying 360-perspective. By connecting with key audience groups, including business decision-makers and consumers, we can identify similarities and differences across demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and attitudes. The goal was to inspire our client teams with insights from a mosaic of perspectives that can ultimately help them address their business needs.

Sometimes truly understanding shopper behavior takes more than an analytics team’s predictions.  With the help of website and data teams, the KNow Research team connected with online shoppers when their shopping carts were full, but at the specific time when the data suggested they were likely to leave the site without purchasing. With our Booth® Insights methodology, our team helped the brand understand its website conversion by uncovering specific navigation and communication opportunities after talking to customers.

Originally pioneered by the tech sector to “hack” programming problems, Hack Days can be an all-hands-on-deck opportunity for your team to collaborate and problem-solve with meaningful and productive outcomes. KNow Research included a Hack Day at our 2022 company offsite, and we’re here to encourage other teams to take advantage of the method to elevate, improve or design deliverables or offerings as a team

Illuminating the "Human" in Humanities

KNow’s 2022 pro-bono research project recipient was the Chicago Humanities Festival (CHF).  This year, the organization’s top priority was to invest in a re-positioned, forward-looking brand to achieve growth goals among its target audience, feeding directly into CHF’s strategic plan.

Our researchers helped CHF understand which promises, and benefits (and ultimately messages) to prioritize both for current supporters and future audiences. We were able to help CHF build bridges of shared messaging between both audiences, and learn their shared core values around humanities.

With this knowledge, CHF’s marketing committee can bring these findings into future campaigns, so they can center their programming around culture – through connection and experience.

PARTICIPANT INTEGRITY 'knowresearch'

Learn fraud prevention best practices from our Integrity Initiative.

We offer thought starters and resources to the insights industry to protect the integrity of qualitative insights from participant fraud.

We went straight to the source – to ‘fraudsters’ and ‘professional participants’ themselves, to understand their motivations and strategies for qualifying for studies so we could determine how to better safeguard against them.

Building Personas Knowresearch Whitepaper

Learn about how KNow Research and our quantitative partners band together to develop, validate and deliver actionable personas!

Brands need to revisit and refresh their audience personas often to ensure updated and actionable personas. Over the years, we have found 4 key steps to persona design that any brand can use to Assess, Revisit, Validate and Illuminate these crucial customer groups.

Leveraging Virtual Collaborative Whiteboards 'resources-to-read'

3 Ways for Customer Insights Professionals to Leverage Virtual Collaborative Whiteboards…

The team at KNow sought ways to make our interactions with participants, clients, and remote teams more interactive and engaging, so we explored and experimented with virtual collaborative platforms to find the best fit. We discovered that not only can we use these platforms to recreate the backroom experience for participants and clients, but we can also use them for analysis and reporting – an unexpected and exciting outcome!

Future of Money Study Whitepaper 'resoucres-to-read'

From April 2020 to April 2021, KNow Research joined forces with the quantitative financial insights experts at Logica Research to contribute qualitative insights to our ongoing Future of Money study. Together we completed 4 rounds of research, strategically scheduled at key moments since the beginning of the pandemic.

KNow stepped into complement Logica’s study by providing a qualitative picture of how people were financially affected by the effects of this pandemic year. The goal was to provide color on how people:
1. Make money
2. Spend money
3. Save or invest money
4. Engage with financial brands

By adapting the technique to the changing times, we brought the quantitative insights to life in the key four areas…

KNow Research Booth Insights™ Case Study

KNow Research’s 2020 pro bono study was for Financial Gym, a personal financial services company that takes a fitness-inspired approach to their clients’ finances. Their initial plan for 2020 was to do a traveling roadshow across the US, connecting with customers nationwide in order to expand their offerings. And then, well, 2020 happened…

We stepped in to help them learn from their prospective customers despite not being out on the road, using a combined approach with our new Booth® Insights methodology and social media research tools. Click through to find out what we uncovered!

Read more about our Booth® Insights methodology HERE!

Inclusivity and Diversity 'knowresearch'

Brands want to ensure their communication comes across as relatable, authentic and in touch with the needs of their audiences. So they turn to insights professionals, who keep a pulse on audiences’ outlooks and reactions to brand’s representations of the world by way of:

– Best practices for brands to effectively strike the right balance.

– Ideas for researchers to generate insights to guide brands in these efforts.

KNow Research Qualitative Market Research Cannabis Whitepaper

Our friends at SoapBoxSample’s February 2020 CANNApinion poll revealed that 42% of cannabis consumers were planning to gift cannabis products for Valentine’s Day!

We were curious about the development of this new tradition. Could cannabis begin to replace wine or champagne as a romantic date night staple? Would cannabis-infused chocolates become the go-to Valentine’s Day gift?

Find out the implications of cannabis’ growing acceptance and how it will affect Holiday 2020.