Spark S-Factor

Companies want to go green, however they can’t do so without in-depth market research. This is where Spark S-Factor comes in.

Our Spark S-Factor product helps companies:

• Measure and track brand perception
• Compare your business’ sustainability against key competitors
• Understand where your business currently sits at an industry level
• Focus on the key areas of your brand that need renovation

Ultimately, the S-Factor helps your business understand exactly what needs to be done to grow the perception of your brand from a sustainability perspective.

What methods does the S-Factor tool use?

The product breaks ‘sustainability’ into:

• Specific metrics
• Specific KPI’s
• Specific Consumer Sustainability Segments, allowing you to track your score against clusters of the population to see what groups you are effectively influencing

It also allows your business to:

• Prioritise (through data) the areas of focus for the business
• Assesses the marketing communications required
• Works as an ESG consultant to your business

The Spark S-Factor helps answer those all-important questions.

• How does our brand fare in terms of local perception?
• Is our brand passionate about sustainability?
• How do consumers see your brand?

Why S-Factor?

S-Factor can be used as standalone tool, but it can be used as a valuable barometer of performance over time when used as a periodic tracker, showing the impact of communications and initiatives on brand performance. It can also be used in addition to qualitative research, a combination of deep understanding of consumer mindsets with the benefit of a robust market view of brand performance in the Sustainability space.

What is a good S-Factor Score?

Scores range from x to x.

• A ‘good’ score is anything above 50.
• Where we split these into ‘Forward-thinker’ (51-75)
• and ‘Pioneer’ (75 and above)

You can expect to find the likes of Patagonia and Lego to be at the forefront, with oil companies generally lagging behind in the eyes of consumers. However, it’s not just for those brands who are at either ends of the scale, and in fact, it’s often the brands who are in industries such as retail, banking, telcos who struggle to stand out in this space. S-Factor can help shape their Green Agenda and areas of focus, to both stand out in the market as making a difference, as well as where to focus comms and initiatives to deliver a greater impact.

The Spark team have created a product that helps fulfil your green marketing services. The way we’ve done this is by benchmarking across many brands so we can assess your brand on our measurement framework.

It allows you to understand where your brand currently sits and where you’d like to evolve to.

Why Choose S-Factor?

We can offer anything from basic annual tracking to full research programmes with qualitative exploration. We also have a lot of experience in consultancy and proposition design, using stakeholder workshops to bring stakeholders together to design and shape strategic planning, using consumer insight to drive action and focus. Whichever option you choose we’ll help you get ahead of the curve, enabling you to develop customer centric sustainability solutions that enable brand growth and commercial success.

Why transition towards sustainability?

Consulting on a brands sustainability helps the brand understand a little clearly where they are in the process of achieving their ESG goals. However, why should a business consider going towards sustainability in the first instance?

Plenty of environmental consultancy firms can tell you that sustainability is changing the way many businesses operate. There’s pressure coming from several angles – consumers now demanding true commitment to sustainable operations, ESG targets and supply chains requiring a rethink in the face of economic pressures.

Transforming a traditional business into a more sustainable model, requires significant innovation, process, policy, and product changes, as well as a strategic brand rethink to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. This is at a time when challenger brands are coming in with no baggage and can create a fresh story which targets sustainability early adopters.

Qualitative

As a marketing concept, understanding why people don’t do something is equally as important as understanding why they do. If you think of numbers and statistics in terms of a painting, the numbers represent the outline and then qualitative market research begins to add rich colour to the picture.

It is an immersive technique used by qualitative market research companies that involves observing, documenting, and questioning people and attempting to find out why they do what they do.

Find out more about qualitative research

Why should your brand go green?

We understand that becoming sustainable has come sharply into focus over the past number of years. Protecting the environment and preserving our planet for future generations is a mindset here to stay.

• Consumers are becoming eager to adjust behaviour in small ways whilst expecting companies to look after the big issues.
• Brands deemed to be unsustainable risk being shunned, whilst the forward-thinkers go from strength to strength.
• Being a truly sustainable brand isn’t just about being reactive to the latest media buzz topics, it’s about taking a proactive approach.

It’s time to measure your Sustainability

Measuring progress is a challenge. Often the changes made are slow due to the scale of what’s needed to shift the dial, they can be behind the scenes and not consumer facing, and some industries face different perception challenges of the role they need to be playing in making the world a more sustainable place.

It’s not a ‘one and done’ situation, or something that a brand ad can address, it needs to be continual, meaningful, and backed by evidence for today’s consumer to really believe in it. It is important to track the progress of this transformation with consumers and stakeholders, asking where we are now, where would we like to get to (and how) and how are we tracking vs that target. Good news: Research can deliver this insight!

Expertise in abundance

At Spark, we’ve worked with clients on green market research projects across a range of industries and sectors to understand attitudes towards sustainability and how their brand sits within consumer minds. This research has been used to define and drive sustainability strategy and prioritise strategic initiatives in relation to their Green Agenda and ESG targets.