Understanding more – taking more targeted action
Strategic market and media analyses with a focus on children and youths
How we work
We advise you on all questions regarding markets, brands and advertising impact based on the concept of morphological psychology.
With us, research and consulting are not the sum of individual findings. Instead, your questions are answered in a methodical process. The unconscious and conscious characteristics of an item are put into a unique context with clear imagery. This makes it possible to recommend strategic measures that are lastingly effective.
Corona Krise
During the coronavirus crisis, Wiesmann interviews and groups are carried out online. Find out which topics benefit from this from a depth-psychology perspective and learn about the limits of online research.
Learn moreConsulting services
A joint process
In many cases, our research is the starting point of lasting cooperation and individual consulting based on our specially developed consulting concept. Together with you, we go where others stop.
Services
Services
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Process support
Every issue is unique. This is why the market research is tailored to your individual one. The tried-and-tested concept of morphological market and media psychology and a team of experienced psychologists ensure a high validity of the findings.
The research is personally headed by Susanne Wiesmann, be it in Germany with an established team or internationally with local psychologists. ‘Forschen und beraten’ (research and consulting) is the concept we strive to live up to. We accompany the process from idea generation to empirical research and implementation. For us, consulting means not looking at research as an isolated part but as one stage in a comprehensive process that involves consumers as well as our client, researchers and creative agencies.
The standardized tools are adapted depending on the issue and the existing knowledge about the segment and the market. In principle, research can be carried out on anything that can be gathered by interviewing consumers or customers, and by analyzing their descriptions of their behavior and experience. Thus, the procedures described here are only a fraction of what is possible.
Many research topics can also be looked at in ‘quick checks’ to then decide whether or not thorough research is to be carried out. -
Basic research
Creating a knowledge base for further questions.
Market segmentations:
The rules of this market and the positioning of the brands are explored.
Approaches to product categories:
All psychological aspects of a product category are examined and compiled in a model. -
Brands
Brands are researched like living persons, including their ‘birth’, their very own evolution and their individual scope.
Analyses of reputation and brand essence:
The brand personality is made transparent from the consumer’s perspective: The brand with its strengths and weaknesses and its perceived specific tradition is made tangible in a brand model that integrates conscious and unconscious aspects.
Analyses of potential:
The brand in the market, its promise for the future, and its development principle or brand-specific ‘strategies’ become accessible and thus the decisive parameters.
Positioning and repositioning:
It is determined how interference with the brand presence – be it product innovations, packaging and design changes, or even a whole new umbrella brand – affects the brand and how it can be implemented best according to your objectives. -
Packaging & designn
The rational as well as the emotional messages of a brand become understandable regarding their sensual and visual aspects and their meaning.
Packaging analyses:
Analysis of a packaging’s form language and its haptic qualities as well as the required realization and its convenience in a specific product segment.
Design analyses:
Analysis of the imagery the design creates as an ‘image’ within the whole. For this purpose, the design elements are not examined primarily as isolated individual elements but as part of an overall design in which changing one element also changes the context of all other elements. -
Media
Every media research includes the media’s effects on everyday life, from getting up to going to bed (‘taking the cell phone to bed’). The change in attitudes regarding all areas of life due to media is made comprehensible in the medium examined.
New media:
Analysis of the differentiating frames of mind and the promises of new media
Social media:
What requirements for brand presences and viral advertising are derived from the ‘meaning’ of social media for their use in certain stages of life and at a certain age?
Analyses of TV station reputations and formats:
Analyses of TV station profiles and formats: What is the actual impact internet TV has on the reception of formats (‘parallelism of 3 media`)? When are which TV stations relevant in the course of a day? How are TV station profiles differentiated and what are their functions beyond TV? -
Advertising
It is explored to what extent advertising achieves what is intended
All forms of viral marketing
Pre- and post-test of all advertising material:
Exploration of all visual and screen advertising in the respective media environment
Media planning:
Analysis of the effective advertising strategy online and offline
Concept labs:
Concept research based on interviews (psychologists) and immediately adapted concepts (agency) -
Target groups
wiesmannforschenundberaten researches all age groups, genders and social groups. Be it B2C or B2B – we carry out research competently and based on a solid depth psychology foundation.
We have special expertise in research including mothers, parents, education professionals, teachers, doctors and midwives. Research into all products and brands that are relevant for these groups is more valid and better founded thanks to this expertise. Consulting on the implementation of research findings for tailored promotional approaches or the development of long-term concepts is in the best hands with us. Thanks to our experience, we are able to provide reliable support in every area in which children are looked after, educated or cared for in an institutionalized fashion. Research on parents also comprises research on children, who are ‘interviewed’ either together with a parent, alone, or with a friend.
Morphologial psychology is an everyday psychology and thus better suited than any other concept when it comes to determining consumers’ behavior and experience in the context in which products, brands and media offers are applied. It makes transparent the fact that products and brands are successful if they help making the life of one’s dreams and one’s ideal self more of a reality in the ‘mundane’ everyday life.
Every issue is unique. This is why the market research is tailored to your individual one. The tried-and-tested concept of morphological market and media psychology and a team of experienced psychologists ensure a high validity of the findings.
The research is personally headed by Susanne Wiesmann, be it in Germany with an established team or internationally with local psychologists. ‘Forschen und beraten’ (research and consulting) is the concept we strive to live up to. We accompany the process from idea generation to empirical research and implementation. For us, consulting means not looking at research as an isolated part but as one stage in a comprehensive process that involves consumers as well as our client, researchers and creative agencies.
The standardized tools are adapted depending on the issue and the existing knowledge about the segment and the market. In principle, research can be carried out on anything that can be gathered by interviewing consumers or customers, and by analyzing their descriptions of their behavior and experience. Thus, the procedures described here are only a fraction of what is possible.
Many research topics can also be looked at in ‘quick checks’ to then decide whether or not thorough research is to be carried out.
Creating a knowledge base for further questions.
Market segmentations:
The rules of this market and the positioning of the brands are explored.
Approaches to product categories:
All psychological aspects of a product category are examined and compiled in a model.
Brands are researched like living persons, including their ‘birth’, their very own evolution and their individual scope.
Analyses of reputation and brand essence:
The brand personality is made transparent from the consumer’s perspective: The brand with its strengths and weaknesses and its perceived specific tradition is made tangible in a brand model that integrates conscious and unconscious aspects.
Analyses of potential:
The brand in the market, its promise for the future, and its development principle or brand-specific ‘strategies’ become accessible and thus the decisive parameters.
Positioning and repositioning:
It is determined how interference with the brand presence – be it product innovations, packaging and design changes, or even a whole new umbrella brand – affects the brand and how it can be implemented best according to your objectives.
The rational as well as the emotional messages of a brand become understandable regarding their sensual and visual aspects and their meaning.
Packaging analyses:
Analysis of a packaging’s form language and its haptic qualities as well as the required realization and its convenience in a specific product segment.
Design analyses:
Analysis of the imagery the design creates as an ‘image’ within the whole. For this purpose, the design elements are not examined primarily as isolated individual elements but as part of an overall design in which changing one element also changes the context of all other elements.
Every media research includes the media’s effects on everyday life, from getting up to going to bed (‘taking the cell phone to bed’). The change in attitudes regarding all areas of life due to media is made comprehensible in the medium examined.
New media:
Analysis of the differentiating frames of mind and the promises of new media
Social media:
What requirements for brand presences and viral advertising are derived from the ‘meaning’ of social media for their use in certain stages of life and at a certain age?
Analyses of TV station reputations and formats:
Analyses of TV station profiles and formats: What is the actual impact internet TV has on the reception of formats (‘parallelism of 3 media`)? When are which TV stations relevant in the course of a day? How are TV station profiles differentiated and what are their functions beyond TV?
It is explored to what extent advertising achieves what is intended
All forms of viral marketing
Pre- and post-test of all advertising material:
Exploration of all visual and screen advertising in the respective media environment
Media planning:
Analysis of the effective advertising strategy online and offline
Concept labs:
Concept research based on interviews (psychologists) and immediately adapted concepts (agency)
wiesmannforschenundberaten researches all age groups, genders and social groups. Be it B2C or B2B – we carry out research competently and based on a solid depth psychology foundation.
We have special expertise in research including mothers, parents, education professionals, teachers, doctors and midwives. Research into all products and brands that are relevant for these groups is more valid and better founded thanks to this expertise. Consulting on the implementation of research findings for tailored promotional approaches or the development of long-term concepts is in the best hands with us. Thanks to our experience, we are able to provide reliable support in every area in which children are looked after, educated or cared for in an institutionalized fashion. Research on parents also comprises research on children, who are ‘interviewed’ either together with a parent, alone, or with a friend.
Morphologial psychology is an everyday psychology and thus better suited than any other concept when it comes to determining consumers’ behavior and experience in the context in which products, brands and media offers are applied. It makes transparent the fact that products and brands are successful if they help making the life of one’s dreams and one’s ideal self more of a reality in the ‘mundane’ everyday life.
Our customers
References
About us
Team & institute
“wiesmannforschenundberaten” - that is Susanne Wiesmann and an established research team of experienced morphological psychologists who work wherever needed. If necessary, they are supported by young colleagues who ensure the next generation’s perspective.
In order to guarantee valid and efficient research also in other countries and on other continents, we cooperate with competent institutes and renowned psychologists around the world.
We are able to complement our research experience gained in various countries with the research experience other psychologists gained in additional countries, thus expanding it to every country – provided that research can be carried out there.
Susanne Wiesmann
Curiculum Vitae
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2007
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2001
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1997
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1995
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1992
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1987
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Going where others stop
Our approach is special because of the time we allow the consumers to take. This time enables them to describe the everyday procedures in which a product or brand obtains its specific significance.
Another important special feature of our settings is the form of deepening and analysis. It starts with the way of further questioning within the settings, where nothing is evaluated or counted as a mere ‘statement’ without closer description. This means an initial analysis takes place already during the settings together with the interviewees. The growing understanding of correlations is the criterion of ‘depth’. In the subsequent team analyses, the statements and dynamics during the settings are used to model the specific structure that makes visible all statements regarding a brand and all ways of dealing with it based on one construction. This construction is the basis of understanding for all further measures.
This goes far beyond mere collections of quotations and tables.
Our settings:
wiesmannINTERVIEWS – face to face, duration 2h
The most intensive form to glean empirical material. One is able to align oneself with the conceptual world of the interviewees and follow them. Even embarrassing ideas can be voiced within the protected environment of such an interview. Thus, all rational and all unconscious aspects of a research topic become transparent.
wiesmannINTENSIVE GROUPS – 6-8 persons, duration 2.5h
Just like a sculpture standing in the middle of a room, each participant of a group describes the research topic from their point of view. It is not about individual opinions that are counted. Instead, the statements made by the group outline the imaginary sculpture – the topic as a whole. While each participant recounts their individual story, it is a joint experience told by many that gradually becomes transparent. The number of participants and the duration guarantee that the intensive frame of mind is maintained and one is able to act from a context for the entire session.
wiesmannPAIRS – two friends, duration 2h
The pair interviews are used to crash test attitudes: two attitudes toward a brand, a product category or a means of advertising challenge each other, thus revealing arguments for or against an item in a distinctive fashion. This setting also makes visible compromises that are possible without the brand losing its profile.
wiesmannCREATIVE SETTINGS – 3-6 persons, duration 2 or 3h
The creative settings are mostly about non-verbal expressions. With adult interviewees, this is the case only if actual material is to be handled and changed creatively. With children, this is the one form that allows them to express unconscious notions. Children’s verbalizations, on the other hand, are to be considered paraphrases of their actions. With these settings, the analysis after the settings, both adults’ and children’s settings, is the decisive aspect. The creative processes need to be translated. They do not speak for themselves.
Why are baby snacks better than toys?
Mothers are mobile and won’t be restricted in their mobility by their baby.
When mothers are out and about with their child, it is striking that most of them come equipped with lots of snacks for the baby or toddler but rarely bring suitable toys.
This is also the case in the interviews with mothers carried out at wiesmanforschenundberaten. During the interviews, the babies are given food whenever they pipe up. In many cases, the mothers fail to see that the babies are trying to grab something, bring their hands together or hold something in place, and they offer food instead of toys.
This mechanism has its origin in the beginnings of providing for the infant. The mothers experience the following with their baby: the baby cries – I provide food – the baby calms down. Food becomes a tool to influence the child’s emotional state, and a reliable means to calm it down. The effect food has on the baby is more convincing than all other attempts of the mothers to calm down their babies. A causal link emerges which no other measure guarantees this reliably: rocking and singing, finger games, driving around, music in bed – nothing works ‘every time’. All of this only works in context and thus requires the child to understand.
This uncertainty troubles many mothers. They frequently feel insecure anyway in trying to determine the ‘right’ way of handling their baby, and they feel exposed to numerous, often even contradictory pieces of advice, as well as to the looks of third parties in public. At the same time, they are expected to confidently deal with the child. Thinking about things, trying things out, considering the context and finding out what the baby can already understand – all these behaviors are not well regarded. Instead, mothers with babies are expected to be discreet, and dealing with them is to be no different than dealing with women without children. If the baby pipes up, it is expected to be calmed down as quickly as possible.
In such situations, mothers go for the most reliable means they know to calm down the child: food. The interviews reveal how quickly a pouch that calms down a child can be ‘squeezed in’, and how easily a child can be distracted with a cookie. Breastfeeding mothers make the baby ‘disappear’ by putting it to the breast so they can continue the interview unimpeded.
Conclusion: A snack certainly calms down a child more reliably than any toy. However, it also teaches the child that every emotion that arises is best treated with food. Companies can do a lot here by pointing out ways of dealing with children in addition to offering their food products.
My dog, the better partner
Dog and cat owners love their pets beyond measure.
People who do not own a pet are frequently at a loss when confronted with such love, and they wonder what a dog or cat can give to justify this love.
Of course, there is some level of understanding: Cats and dogs are close to us because they share the fate of our life story. With cats and dogs, however, this shared fate can be considered in an exemplary and distanced fashion. This makes one feel how precious one’s own life and that of one’s loved ones actually is.
This parallelism legitimizes getting a dog or cat. It is sufficient to say ‘I want a dog’ and everyone understands and accepts it. Some people add further arguments, such as ‘so I get out more’, ‘kids need pets’ or ‘because with a pet there’s always something going on.’
In our in-depth interviews, we see another level of love of dogs and cats that is unconscious. In Germany, people keep cats and dogs to facilitate the complicated human relationships that are difficult to influence. For this purpose, one – unconsciously – chooses the dog or cat as a stand-in for a person one loves. With a dog, one ‘has’ someone who ‘always’ loves one and who is always available. With a cat, one has a being that is like oneself: willful. A pet can also replace a person who is no longer there. It may remind one of the father who has gone to live with another woman and other children. The pet completes the broken family and makes it whole again – without one having to expressly figure it out. For a childless couple, a dog or cat may also take the place of their unborn child.
Psychologically, one can see from a dog or cat as a family member that one is always a creature of deficits, emotionally speaking. There is no ideal or ‘sound’ way of life. Something is always lacking. We suffer losses or have to do without something we long for. All human beings are in this state of need, regardless of their financial means. From time to time, everyone has to find something that helps them go on with their lives and stabilizes their current way of life. One such support construction is getting a dog or cat.
Conclusion: Life tends to deny us love or something we long for, often in intolerable ways. Pet cats and dogs offset losses by filling the role of the person that is missing, or by being better, more loyal, more grateful than one’s partner, children or parents. Companies offering pet supplies can be successful if they consider this unconscious side of pet keeping instead of merely selling functions.
