Are you wondering what moves a customer from the initial awareness stages to becoming a life-long customer? Well, like most business questions and objectives - there’s a market research study that can answer this quorum.
Customer motivation surveys are used by businesses to understand what motivates shoppers to move from awareness to interest to ultimately making a purchase.
Knowing what motivates customers also helps set businesses up for success with customer satisfaction and loyalty.
For instance, 83% of consumers say they trust the recommendations of friends and family, which will motivate them to make a purchase. Other common factors may include price, quality, past experiences, and more.
However, surveying your target audience is the one tried and true way to know the exact top factors that drive buyers to engage with your brand.
In this blog post, our market research company discusses the power behind motivation surveys. We outline its benefits, steps to follow for execution, and provide sample questions to help get you started.
What is a customer motivation survey?
A customer motivation survey typically includes 20 to 25 questions and takes 5 to 6 minutes to complete. A customer motivation survey aims to understand why and how customers move through different stages of the path to purchase.
Moreover, once a customer is aware of a product or service, what makes them interested in purchasing it?
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Then, what motivates customers to complete the purchase?
These surveys typically cover:
- Awareness
- Factors of importance
- Satisfaction with different factors
- Motivations
- Ease of purchasing
💡 The Key Takeaway: Factors that motivate customers to buy can be discovered in a survey. This research method targets both why and how a customer comes to a purchasing decision.
What are the benefits of a customer motivation survey?
In addition to better understanding what motivates customers, these surveys may also measure other key performance indicators like the ease of ordering, price evaluation, likelihood to recommend, and likelihood to purchase.
In addition to measuring KPIs, customer motivation surveys can also shed light on awareness, usage, and satisfaction with competitors.
Up to 57% of businesses consider competitor research a main priority. Thankfully, there are multiple ways to use market research to beat your competition.
If you specifically want to gain a leg up against the competition - market research is absolutely the answer for you. It eliminates assumptions and gathers data from your target audience.
Using this data to drive decision-making leads to more impactful outcomes.
💡 The Key Takeaway: By conducting these surveys, customer motivation strategies provide a whole host of benefits. Along with measuring important KPIs, they can also help you compete against rivals.
What is the process of a customer motivation survey?
The process of a customer motivation survey follows the typical market research process.
1️⃣ The first step is to request a proposal from a market research company.
During this process, the market research company will define the study’s goals and objectives, length of the survey, target audience, timeline, and cost of the project.
2️⃣ Once the proposal is approved, the next step is to hold a kickoff meeting.
During this meeting, the teams will re-confirm the study’s goals and objectives and discuss the next steps.
3️⃣ After the kickoff meeting, the team moves on to drafting the survey.
Sometimes, surveys only need one or two drafts to be considered final. Other times, there’s more back-and-forth and editing required.
Once the survey is considered final, the next step is to prepare for fieldwork.
4️⃣ Preparing for fieldwork begins with programming and testing the survey.
Once this is complete, market researchers often do a soft-launch before fully launching fieldwork for the survey.
This helps the team ensure everything is working correctly, and questions are comprehended as intended.
Learn more about programming a customer motivation survey in this short video.
When the completion goal is reached, the market researcher will run data quality checks.
💡💡 Here are some tips to quality check a survey data file.
Once fieldwork is complete, the next step is to begin the analysis and report.
5️⃣ Once the report draft or final deliverables are complete, the final step is to hold a debrief meeting with the client on the results.
After this meeting, any final adjustments can be made to the report before it’s considered final.
Example customer motivation survey questions
Here are some example questions in a customer motivation survey...
- What is your perception of the following brands?
- What do you know about the following brands?
- Which of the following brands have you used?
- How satisfied are you with the following brands you’ve used?
- Why did you choose to purchase from [insert brand used]?
- Which of the following factors are most important when deciding to purchase [example product]?
- How satisfied were you with each of the following factors when you purchased from [insert brand used]?
- How easy was it for you to purchase from [insert brand used]?
- How likely are you to recommend [insert brand used] to a friend or colleague?
💡 The Key Takeaway: The questions listed above are common questions asked in customer motivation surveys. As you can see, it’s important to be succinct, ensuring the respondent can easily understand the questions.
Results of a customer motivation survey
As we mentioned in our previous section, the final deliverables for any survey hold the weight when it comes to decision-making.
This is one of the most important aspects of this process–understanding what customers have to say about your brand. At Drive Research, clients are given an engaging final report to summarize survey feedback.
Presented in a concise, organized format, final deliverables will be used to see what’s working (and what isn’t) for your customer base. From there, you can make the necessary changes to your outreach strategies.
Here are common points covered in a customer motivation report draft:
- Overview of main objectives
- Key survey findings
- Next steps moving forward
First thing’s first–what were the client goals of their motivation survey? What were the issues they presented with?
Additional information on the research method/s used will be covered. This step holds serious weight–it takes the client back to the beginning of the project, reminding them of why they chose to run a survey in the first place.
Secondly, the key findings cover the feedback that customers gave in the survey. Able to be shown in a variety of different formats, this feedback gives the client an idea of their current position with customers.
Lastly, the report will offer suggestions on what to do with this feedback.
Clients may feel overwhelmed by receiving so much information–that’s why we always provide our suggestions for going forward.
A final report is essential for any market research project and can help clients understand customer motivation strategies.
💡 The Key Takeaway: A final deliverable or report draft is a huge factor in any market research project. When dealing specifically with customer surveys, this step is essential in moving forward with the provided feedback.
Recommended Reading: Breaking Down a Market Research Report Into 10 Pieces
Contact Our Online Survey Company
Drive Research is a full-service market research company located in New York. Our experts have helped organizations from across the country launch successful customer motivation surveys.
Interested in partnering with our team? Contact us through any of the 4 ways below.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Emily Taylor
As a Senior Research Analyst, Emily is approaching a decade of experience in the market research industry and loves to challenge the status quo. She is a certified VoC professional with a passion for storytelling.
Learn more about Emily, here.
