With 360, Quantum to delve deeper into consumer psyche

Quantum Market Research Pvt Ltd, the 20-year-old market research company, recently launched its new division, Quantum 360. This is India’s first consumer consultancy company, which helps marketers decipher the new algorithms and codes of consumer marketing. Rinita Singh, managing director at Quantum Market Research, tells DNA why it is essential for brands to include consumers’ perspectives while planning their product, communication and overall brand development. Excerpts:

What is the rationale behind introducing Quantum 360?
Over the last 10 years, Quantum has deliberated over how to take the whole discipline of the consumer universe forward. Instead of only looking at qualitative research, we are constantly looking at ways to make consumers’ perspectives an integral part of marketing. Worldwide, the consumer is becoming an important perspective to ideate about the picture, to look at what brands should go to the market and what should be shelved, the kind of communication and content that should be developed. 

So, we started this process by looking at setting up a consumer-consulting division. We are not only looking at a consumer’s consumption, we are looking at a detailed emotion. We have been spending a lot of time to understand what consumers do, their culture and where they come.

How do you differentiate yourself from other consumer-consulting companies then? Do brands realise the eminence of consumer involvement?
For most big brands today, simply having an isolated view of advertising, getting consumer feedback, developing the product and getting the logo designed separately, is no longer going to be relevant. Because most brands in the market need imagination; they need experts. That really is the genesis of the concept of imagineering (imagination and engineering). To really drive home the point, today most successful brands need to be innovative and imaginative, but at the same time they must have a solid structure and engineering in place. So, Quantum 360 is our response to several clients who tell us that even though they have qualitative research from us, they don’t know how to take it further. They want to interpret what consumers are saying to them today and how they can use it for the brand and the business. That is why we are calling it 360, because we must have a 360 degree view of the market, consumer and the brand. For example, we helped Mahindra & Mahindra create car designs that will be relevant in the future. For this, we evaluated the kind of cars consumers would like to upgrade to, how roads are changing, how the environment is changing and how the consumer is viewing transport.
We have created a separate team, which is headed by our senior vice-president Tirthankar Dash. It has a separate way of looking at our clients’ needs and is very customised.

Do you see any change in the way brands demand services now?
We are actually seeing a massive demand for this (service) and a lot of collaborative effort. It’s moving from a project-based engagement to a much more long-term association. We are seeing this change in demand in communication as well, at product development level and overall brand development. We are seeing a huge shift in clients’ demands also, who want a continuous pulse of what is going through the consumers’ mind. They do not want to let an opportunity like that pass.

At an overall group level, what kind of growth do you see for Quantum?
Since Quantum has restructured itself into qualitative research, ethnography division, and 360, we are looking at driving all three businesses very strongly and are planning the growth in two stages.  We want to grow the Quantum business by one and half times, and the other big kind of growth we are looking at is to be able to reach out to a larger number of clients.