A Usage & Attitude (U&A) study is a type of market research that helps companies understand the who, what, when, and why behind consumer behaviors in a product category. It explores how people use a product or service ("usage") and the motivations, perceptions, and barriers that drive their choices ("attitude").

Why is a U&A study important?

U&A studies provide foundational insights that guide strategy across marketing, innovation, and customer experience. By examining consumer habits, triggers, preferences, and unmet needs, companies can make smarter decisions about everything from targeting to messaging to product development. For many companies, it's one of the first research steps before repositioning a brand or launching a new concept.

Key questions a U&A study answers:

• Who are the users and non-users in the category?
• How frequently are products used, and in what situations?
• What are the switches or triggers that drive product use or switching?
• What perceptions help or hinder adoption?
• How is the category structured in the consumer’s mind?

Benefits of usage and attitude research:

Knowing how consumers think and behave gives brands a competitive edge. Here are just a few advantages of conducting a U&A study:

• Category understanding: Discover how people define and navigate the category, helping refine your strategic focus.
• Audience segmentation: Identify usage-based segments, such as loyalists, occasional users, or lapsed users.
• Message development: Craft stronger messaging based on real consumer perceptions and values.
• Innovation clarity: Find whitespace opportunities by identifying unmet needs or overlooked usage occasions.

When to consider a U&A study:

A U&A can be a valuable investment at several stages of brand or product development. Consider it when you’re:

• Entering or expanding into a new market
• Repositioning an existing brand
• Designing a new product concept
• Evaluating shifts in consumer behavior

For growing companies who need to make more data-driven decisions, a U&A study acts like a compass – pointing to where the brand stands today, and where opportunity lies tomorrow.

With traditional market research sometimes taking months and costing six figures, platforms like Toluna are gaining traction for their speed and flexibility. Toluna is a DIY market research platform that allows users to quickly launch surveys, tap into global panels, and analyze results in near real-time. For U&A studies in particular – which require custom questions, broad audience reach, and layered insights – Toluna offers a hands-on way to bring research in-house.

Key reasons to use Toluna for usage and attitude studies:

• Speed to insights: Quickly collect data from target consumers and spot trends as they emerge.
• Built-in sampling: Access a large, diverse panel of respondents across demographics and geographies.
• Custom survey design: Tailor your questions to explore everything from brand usage to emotional drivers.
• Automated reporting: View key results and segment insights without needing external analysts.

Why strategic planning still matters

However, DIY tools don’t mean you should “go it alone.” One of the most common challenges companies face is knowing how to structure the study to get actionable answers. Defining your category structure, building an effective attribute framework, and crafting clear questions that map to behaviors and attitudes all require thoughtful planning and experience.

This is where On Demand Talent can make a big difference. These are seasoned research professionals who understand how to guide Toluna-based projects from end to end – helping ensure your usage and attitude research is aligned with business objectives, rather than just quickly executed. Many teams are using On Demand Talent to bridge experience gaps internally, without the need for permanent hires or expensive agencies.

Expert-driven DIY: The best of both worlds

The rise of AI and DIY tools like Toluna has opened up new possibilities – but they work best when paired with people who know how to ask the right questions and interpret the answers. On Demand Talent can help teams:

• Build effective surveys that reflect strong research planning
• Define attribute frameworks relevant to the category
• Uncover behaviors, triggers, and barriers with precision
• Turn data into decisions with smart storytelling

By combining powerful platforms like Toluna with expert support, marketers and business teams can get robust, insightful U&A results – without sacrificing timeline or quality.

Start with Defining the Category

Before launching your U&A study on Toluna, you need a clear understanding of the market category you're exploring. Are you researching bottled beverages, pet food, or wellness apps? Each requires a specific lens. Your category structure helps you organize how consumers view the space, the competitive landscape, and how brands are grouped in their minds.

Ask yourself: What defines membership in this category? What makes brands competitors or substitutes? For example, a consumer may group protein bars and smoothies together as meal replacements, while another sees them as distinct categories.

Map Out the Category Structure

Next, develop a category map. This visual or conceptual guide shows:

• Key players and subcategories
• Consumer decision-making paths
• How products or services are positioned side by side

Using Toluna’s flexible survey platform, you can easily expose respondents to different brand or product groupings to test your assumptions and validate how consumers categorize options.

Create an Attribute Framework

An attribute framework outlines the key features, benefits, and perceptions associated with your category. These are the elements you’ll later analyze in usage and attitude context – things like taste, convenience, sustainability, effectiveness, price, and brand trust.

To build one, follow these simple steps:

1. Conduct desk research or short qualitative interviews to gather initial consumer language.
2. List 15–20 attributes that matter to decision-making. Keep them in consumer-friendly language.
3. Group attributes into related themes (e.g., functional benefits vs. emotional rewards).

For example, in a fictional U&A study on ready-made coffee drinks, your attributes could include flavor variety, sugar content, caffeine level, packaging portability, and price point.

Test and Refine With Toluna

Use Toluna’s platform to soft-test your attribute and category structure with a small audience first. Look for:

• Attributes that confuse or overlap
• Missing themes consumers care about but you didn’t include
• Clear drivers that indicate decision-making or satisfaction

Keep in mind: your attribute framework shapes the entire U&A analysis, from understanding attitudes to identifying unmet needs. Investing the time to get this right upfront pays off downstream with quality insights and stronger strategy alignment.

Understanding the Core Metrics

At the heart of every usage and attitude study are three core insight areas: habits, triggers, and barriers. Together, they provide a high-resolution picture of consumer behavior – not just what consumers do, but why they do it or avoid it.

Habits: Capture the 'What' and 'How Often'

Habits in a U&A study reflect recurring behaviors. Using Toluna, you can ask respondents about:

• Frequency of use or purchase
• Typical usage occasions (e.g., weekday lunches, post-gym, nighttime rituals)
• Brand loyalty or switching patterns

For example, in our fictional coffee drink example, you might uncover that cold brew is mainly consumed on weekday mornings by commuter millennials. That’s a powerful data point when thinking about product timing and market placement.

Triggers: Discover the Motivation Behind the Action

Triggers are the reasons consumers take action – essentially, what helps push someone from considering to doing. Examples include:

• Emotional needs (e.g., stress relief, indulgence)
• Situational moments (e.g., after a workout, traveling)
• Influences (e.g., advertising, social proof, recommendations)

Identifying triggers helps you fine-tune marketing and innovation. You learn which needs aren’t being met and where in the journey consumers are ready to act.

Barriers: Uncover What's Holding Consumers Back

Perhaps the most overlooked metric in DIY market research, barriers give you clues into lost opportunity. Barriers may include:

• Price resistance
• Lack of availability or distribution
• Confusion about product use
• Negative perceptions or brand distrust

With Toluna, you can probe these areas using open & closed-end questions, and even utilize scoring or ranking to identify which barriers are most pressing. Armed with this information, you can prioritize which challenges require immediate strategic intervention – from messaging shifts to product development.

Why These Metrics Matter for Actionable Insights

When habits, triggers, and barriers are analyzed together, they unlock far more than standalone statistics. They tell a story – where the consumer is today, what drives them, and why they may not be engaging. For business teams or early-stage researchers, these insights serve as the foundation for product innovation, marketing messaging, and customer experience improvements.

And while online tools like Toluna make it faster than ever to collect this data, interpreting these three areas well still requires human judgement. That’s where experienced insights professionals can truly improve the signal-to-noise ratio in your findings.

DIY Research Tools Are Powerful – But Not Always Plug-and-Play

Platforms like Toluna have revolutionized how quickly we can launch and run research projects like U&A studies. However, even the best technology doesn’t replace the strategic thinking required to ensure a usage and attitude study is asking the right questions and interpreting responses meaningfully.

That’s where SIVO’s On Demand Talent comes in. These are seasoned consumer insights professionals who can step in to guide, sharpen, or even execute your study – without the commitment of adding to your full-time team.

Signs You May Need Expert Help

Here are some common situations where bringing in On Demand Talent can elevate your U&A project:

• You’re unsure how to define your category structure or attribute framework
• Your team lacks experience designing robust U&A questionnaires
• You’ve run a study – but your internal team isn’t sure how to interpret the results confidently
• You’re running multiple DIY market research studies and need someone to ensure quality, consistency, and strategic alignment

What On Demand Talent Can Offer

SIVO’s On Demand Talent delivers flexible support tailored to your needs – whether it’s guiding early-stage research planning, optimizing your Toluna survey design, or synthesizing findings into business-ready recommendations. Unlike traditional consultants or freelance platforms, our experts are:

• Pre-vetted professionals with deep experience in U&A research
• Ready to step in quickly – often within days
• Fluent across industries and toolsets, including Toluna
• Focused on building your team’s capabilities, not just delivering slides and leaving

For example, one fictional company planning a DIY U&A study with a lean team brought in a SIVO expert to co-develop their attribute framework. The expert ensured the survey aligned with broader business objectives, avoided data blind spots, and ultimately surfaced insights the team could turn into a new product innovation pipeline.

Elevate DIY with Human Strategy

DIY doesn’t have to mean do-it-alone. When you combine fast, efficient tech like Toluna with the wisdom of SIVO’s On Demand Talent, your research becomes more than just efficient – it becomes effective. And in today’s fast-moving market conditions, that edge can make all the difference.