Marketing, Consumer Behavior & Surveys
Our clients rely on Analysis Group to provide rigorous, data-driven insights into consumer behavior, brand perception, and market dynamics. We support clients in a wide range of litigation and advisory contexts – including matters involving trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, patents, class certification, false advertising and unfair competition, consumer protection and privacy, mergers and antitrust, and defamation. We analyze the intersections of consumer behavior and marketing across industries such as finance, technology, health care, food and nutrition, and consumer goods.
Drawing on their deep experience and the facts of each case, our experts and consultants apply established methodologies to the research questions at issue, yielding compelling results grounded in economics, marketing research, and scientific methods. We help clients assess consumer perceptions, demand drivers, substitution patterns, pricing behavior, value apportionment, cost structures, licensing practices, incremental profitability, and reputational harm. In addition to developing affirmative analyses, we are skilled at providing robust theoretical critiques of opposing experts’ methodologies, often identifying critical flaws that undermine the validity of the opposing party’s conclusions.
Many of our senior professionals are recognized experts in consumer behavior, marketing science, intellectual property, and surveys and experimental design. We also collaborate closely with leading academics and industry specialists to deliver innovative, empirically grounded analyses and testimony. Our experts are frequently called on to testify in state and federal courts, before the International Trade Commission (ITC) and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), and in both domestic and international arbitration.
Beyond the courtroom, we advise companies on how to leverage consumer insights to drive competitive advantage through strategies involving valuation, brand positioning, and market analysis.
Our Methods
Underlying our work are sophisticated, proven methods, including:
- Test/control experiments – By designing test/control experiments, we can isolate the causal effect of a particular element, such as a product characteristic or disclosure, on consumer perceptions and behavior.
- Archival analysis – We review and analyze written content (including media articles, marketing materials, and user-generated content such as product reviews) to provide critical context for understanding consumer perceptions, product usage, beliefs, and behaviors.
- Choice experiments and conjoint analysis – Our experts use choice experiments and conjoint analyses to assess consumers’ preferences for certain products, product features, or services.
- Social media analysis – Social media analysis can shed light on consumer perceptions and beliefs, as well as the prominence of a topic on social media. We apply natural language processing (NLP) and data science models to gain further empirical insight into consumers’ beliefs.
- Marketplace data analysis – By collecting and analyzing large volumes of consumer information, including transaction-level data, we develop insights on consumer behavior that can inform our damages assessments.
- Natural experiments – Utilizing techniques often applied in event studies, we conduct empirical evaluations of the market impact of new public information – such as the release of a new product, a product recall, a reputational event, or a change in marketing – to inform theories of liability and damages.
- Purchase funnel – We apply this framework to evaluate how differing customer sets arrive at their decisions to purchase or repurchase goods or services. By examining each step of the experience, we can explain purchase drivers across different buyer types.
