The Single Answer steer has been developed to identify facts rather than opinions or choices. Typically these are used at the beginning of the innovation process at the strategy stage, and are useful for gaining behavioral information about your category or product. Fully understanding your category, will give you insight that will lead you to NPD concepts and ideas.
Single Answer questions often start with: "In the last 6 months, how often did you...", "Do you have a...".
In order to obtain valid results it's important that you come up with a list of answers (which can be up to 15) that are both mutually exclusive and conditionally exhaustive. In other words, each option is unique but collectively the options cover all possibilities without duplication.
Try to phrase your questions to capture past behaviour and facts as opposed to capturing how consumers think they will behave.
For example, you can ask:
How often how have you bought baked beans in the last 12 months?
By focussing on past actual behaviour as opposed to asking consumers what 'they think they think' you will get much more robust and reliable results.
Here are the following options, from which the consumer will choose one:
* At least every week
* At least every month
* At least every three months
* At least every six months
* Less than every six months
A further option, “None of the above”, will automatically be added.
Here is an example of how not to formulate the possible answers:
Question: How often do you exercise?
*Daily
*Never
*Frequently
These answers are neither exhaustive, nor mutually exclusive. They don't offer possible choices to infrequent exercisers (not exhaustive) and make the respondent guess what "frequently" means. For many people "frequently" would mean "daily" (not mutually exclusive).
For this steer (and the Multi Answer steer) you have the option to add an image along with the question. Often you will not need one because it is a factual question, and as long as the respondent understands the question, a photo would be superfluous. However, some times it is possible that the consumer may need a photo in order to accurately answer the questions.
For example, M&S sell mini bites which are sold in bucket style plastic tubs and contain options such as mini brownies, mini flapjacks etc. If we asked a question such as
Question: When do you buy most frequently eat M&S minibites?
* Weekends
* Weekdays
It is possible that the respondent won't remember what they are unless you add a image, showing the immediately recognisable and iconic plastic tub.
Note: Where an image is not required to accompany this question, you still need to add a thumbnail image, which will not be displayed with the question, but will appear as a placeholder in the Vypr consumer's inbox of steers to answer.
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