Online Marketing Research

If you're a beer fan, you may have noticed Magic Hat has begun giving their mystery beers a more "traditional" name. In the past, they've named their one-off mystery beers with numbers, by the batch number. The mystery beer now is called Odd Notions and includes the year and season. Some of these mystery beers are released to be a regularly offered beer. When that happens how do they name their new beers? An avid beer enthusiast and I got to talking about this recent change. He suggested that they must do market research to come up with the names, and I thought maybe they ran contests. After visiting their website and some heavy investigation, we found how they do it. Feedback forms! With a description of the beer (including color, body, bitterness, malts, hops, etc.), they give website visitors the opportunity to give feedback on the beer - including suggesting a name! I can only assume the customer feedback is used when deciding whether to release the beer full time.

Depending on your organization, products and services, the name could be a critical aspect of your strategy. Market research has shown customers hate when organizations change the names of their products. But when you get customer feedback on new product names, you may find you increase customer loyalty by engaging them in your process. Customers love to give feedback, despite common beliefs, particularly when it's a easy and comes with a good experience.

If you're interested in naming the next Magic Hat mystery batch, wander over to their website and offer your feedback.