When customers decide between brands – or whether to buy at all – their decision rarely comes down to just one factor. Instead, they weigh a range of considerations like price, product quality, convenience, and trust. Together, these form a shopper’s perception of value. And in today’s consumer landscape, those perceptions are rapidly evolving.

Understanding how consumers define value is critical to making the right strategic decisions. Brands that accurately gauge shopper value perceptions can improve messaging, adjust pricing strategies, optimize product offerings, and build deeper loyalty through insights-driven experiences.

Why value perception is more than just price sensitivity

The temptation is to interpret value solely as a matter of price. But digging deeper reveals that shoppers often make deliberate trade-offs. For example, a consumer might choose a more expensive brand because it’s perceived to last longer, or opt for a store brand if convenience is more important in the moment.

Numerator data brings these trade-offs to light by capturing receipt-level data across a wide shopper panel, showing not just what people buy, but when, where, and sometimes even why.

How shopper insights around value help drive smarter decisions

Brands use shopper value perception data to:

• Identify what drives switching behavior between brands or retailers
• Understand how perceptions shift with changes in economic conditions
• Tailor product innovation to align with evolving definitions of value
• Segment customer groups based on their unique value preferences (e.g., budget-conscious vs. premium shoppers)

When interpreted properly, market research tools like Numerator help businesses connect the dots between consumer behavior and brand strategy. But access to data only matters if the signals are understood in the right context – and acted on with clarity.

Bridging the gap between data and direction

With so many DIY research platforms entering the market, teams often gather more data than they know what to do with. This is where expert support can amplify your impact. On Demand Talent can work alongside your team – or independently – to bring clarity to confusing shopper trends and tell the story behind the data. By combining analytical skill with human insight, you can uncover what truly drives your customers and create strategies that resonate with real-world behavior.

At first glance, Numerator appears to be a powerful DIY research platform. It offers near real-time, receipt-level data from a large panel of verified shoppers, giving brands a window into purchase behavior across categories and retailers. But for many teams, the excitement of having “all the data” can quickly lead to unexpected challenges during analysis.

Challenge #1: Interpreting shopper behavior without context

One of the top missteps when working with Numerator data is analyzing it in isolation. For example, a sudden decline in category purchases might spark concern – but without understanding external factors like seasonality, promotional activity, or household budget shifts, it’s easy to draw the wrong conclusion.

Many teams dive into receipt-level dashboards looking for a singular cause, only to find that value perceptions are influenced by multiple factors. It takes experience to piece together these influences accurately and avoid surface-level interpretations.

Challenge #2: Misunderstanding what metrics actually mean

Receipt-level data comes with its own terminology and quirks. For example, variables like “trip type,” “repeat rate,” and “share of wallet” are commonly misread by teams new to the platform. Small misinterpretations can snowball into flawed conclusions, leading to decisions that miss the mark.

Challenge #3: Data overload and time constraints

While DIY platforms offer autonomy, they also demand time and analytical skill. Teams working with limited bandwidth may struggle to extract the insights they need quickly, especially when under pressure to deliver weekly updates or workshop-ready presentations.

This is especially true when the platform’s built-in tools don’t fully align with your research questions – requiring manual workarounds, Excel exports, and hours trying to ‘make the data tell a story.’

Challenge #4: Keeping research aligned with business objectives

Perhaps most critically, many teams fall into the trap of chasing interesting data points that don’t ladder back to business priorities. Numerator offers breadth, but uncovering value perceptions – like how shoppers weigh price vs quality trade-offs – requires a targeted lens and a clear understanding of the business question at hand.

How On Demand Talent can help solve these issues

Having flexible access to experienced insights professionals through SIVO’s On Demand Talent solution can help you fully leverage tools like Numerator. These experts know exactly how platforms work, how to avoid common mistakes, and how to extract actionable shopper insights quickly.

Instead of wrestling with dashboards or risking flawed analysis, On Demand Talent partners can:

• Translate complex data into clear business narratives
• Customize analysis paths aligned to your goals
• Coach internal teams to build long-term analytic capability
• Plug short-term gaps in your research staff without the need for full-time hiring

In short: these aren’t freelancers learning on the fly – they’re seasoned experts who hit the ground running. Whether you need quick-turn analysis or sustained support, they help ensure your research tools are delivering real, business-impacting insights.

One of the most valuable ways to use Numerator data is to uncover how shoppers make decisions when faced with trade-offs between price, quality, and convenience. These three factors often compete in shoppers' minds – and understanding which has the most weight in decision-making can reveal key insights into value perceptions.

Receipt-level data from Numerator gives a ground-level view of real shopping trips. But interpreting those receipts in terms of perceived value requires asking the right questions:

Are shoppers trading down to save money?

If you see a shift from national brands to private-label products, it may point to greater price sensitivity. However, this isn’t always about cost alone. Sometimes shoppers perceive private labels as comparable in quality, making the “cheaper” option acceptable – or even preferable.

Are they choosing convenience over price?

For example, a shopper who repeatedly buys higher-priced items from a local convenience store may be valuing time savings or accessibility over cost. These patterns are visible in Numerator’s trip-level granularity – if you know where to look.

Do shifts signal a change in perceived quality?

Upgrading to premium brands or specialty retailers can reflect a rising emphasis on quality or brand trust. Identifying when and where these switches happen gives clues to evolving priorities among target consumers.

To bring this to life, imagine a fictional example: a skincare brand notices shoppers moving from their premium line to a competitor’s newer, mid-tier skincare solution. By digging into the receipt-level data, they may find that the change is driven by perceived product efficacy, not just price – a nuance easily missed without thoughtful analysis of trade-offs.

Keep in mind, Numerator data shows you what happened – not always why. That’s where structured analysis comes in, helping you go beyond the transactions to uncover underlying motivations behind price, quality, and convenience decisions.

While tools like Numerator provide powerful access to consumer behavior and receipt-level data, making sense of it all requires a blend of technical skill and strategic thinking. That’s where On Demand Talent can step in – giving businesses access to experienced consumer insights professionals who know how to get the most out of tools like Numerator without the need to hire full-time staff.

Many companies invest in DIY research platforms like Numerator expecting fast, cost-effective insights. But without the right expertise, teams often face challenges such as:

• Misreading correlations as causations
• Missing key segments within receipt-level data
• Inconsistent coding or product categorization
• Overlooking contextual factors behind shopper shifts

On Demand Talent helps your internal team bridge those gaps. Our experts are not freelancers – they are seasoned professionals who can align data analysis to your strategic goals, guide stakeholder teams, and even build your team’s internal capabilities along the way.

Having worked across a wide range of industries – from consumer goods to retail and healthcare – they can quickly plug into your business and tailor Numerator analysis to your unique questions. Whether you need short-term project support or ongoing strategic partnership, the flexibility of On Demand Talent means you don’t have to sacrifice quality to keep up with the speed of business.

For example, an insights lead at a mid-sized food company may be juggling multiple data streams. By bringing in an On Demand Talent expert to focus specifically on Numerator, they can add a layer of depth and clarity to receipt-level trends – uncovering, say, that their price-sensitive customers are still choosing premium products in specific categories tied to health claims. That kind of precision enables better marketing, product, and shopper experience decisions.

On Demand Talent doesn’t just deliver data analysis – we turn raw data into strategic, actionable insights your team can use.

Knowing when to call in expert support can be the difference between surface-level reporting and meaningful insight generation. Even with access to a robust market research tool like Numerator, teams often reach a point where internal bandwidth, skill gaps, or business complexity require outside expertise.

Here are common signs it’s time to bring in help:

• You’re collecting data but struggling to turn it into clear insights
• Your team lacks specialized knowledge of tools like Numerator
• You need faster or higher-quality strategic output for executive decisions
• There’s a need to train junior team members while keeping projects moving
• You’re under pressure to do more with less – time, budget, or headcount

And here’s where On Demand Talent stands out: we offer access to high-caliber professionals who can step into your team quickly and deliver results – without long hiring cycles or commitments. Unlike freelancers or consultancies that may only provide output or task execution, On Demand Talent integrates as a true strategic partner. Our professionals are skilled in both the technicalities of data platforms and the storytelling required to influence business outcomes.

Let’s say your leadership team is asking, “What’s driving recent declines in category share?” You may have months of Numerator data but need someone who knows how to slice it meaningfully – identifying whether it’s due to competitor promotions, shifting value perceptions, or channel migration. On Demand Talent professionals can diagnose these issues, craft insight-driven narratives, and even help socialize findings so they drive action.

Bringing in outside experts isn’t about replacing your team – it’s about enhancing it. With the right support, you can pivot faster, analyze deeper, and improve how you communicate shopper insights across your organization.