Empathy Treks are designed to go beyond surveys and statistics by immersing researchers in the real experiences of consumers. These qualitative research sessions center on understanding how people think, feel, and behave – and why. But for this immersive approach to truly reflect the customer landscape, it must include voices from across the user spectrum: heavy, medium, and light users.

Here’s why:

Each User Type Reveals Different Consumer Motivations

Heavy users can tell you what keeps them coming back. Light users often highlight barriers or unmet needs that prevent engagement. Medium users may sit on the fence, revealing what could nudge them one way or another. By bringing together these unique points of view, your research uncovers a more well-rounded picture of consumer behavior.

Avoiding Skewed Results

Focusing only on brand enthusiasts can mislead strategy. These users may already be highly invested and tolerant of product quirks. On the other hand, light users often represent a larger portion of potential growth. Including them helps identify opportunities that might otherwise be missed during consumer insights work.

Innovation Starts at the Edges

Light users and non-traditional customers frequently hold the key to breakthrough ideas. They interact differently with your products and may use them in unexpected ways. These off-the-beaten-path insights could inspire changes that better meet broader consumer needs – especially useful in product innovation and new market entry.

Market Research with Long-Term Value

Research that includes all user types ensures strategies aren’t built for a narrow segment. It also helps validate findings across multiple groups, giving brands the confidence to act on qualitative research insights with lasting impact.

• Heavy users: Offer insights into loyalty drivers and unmet expectations among your core base
• Medium users: Reveal where experience or messaging can be optimized
• Light users: Help you understand entry barriers and untapped potential

By intentionally blending user segmentation into Empathy Trek recruitment, you create a research environment that reflects real market variability – not just ideal usage scenarios. This approach makes your consumer understanding more relevant, action-ready, and aligned with broader business goals.

Before you can recruit the right participants for an Empathy Trek, it’s important to understand what we mean by "heavy," "medium," and "light" users – and how these segments function in market research. These definitions aren’t just labels; they’re fundamental components of smart segmentation and user research planning.

What Are Heavy, Medium, and Light Users?

These terms refer to the frequency and intensity with which someone uses your product, service, or brand. While definitions can vary slightly depending on the category or business, here’s a general breakdown:

• Heavy users: Engage with your product or service frequently – often daily or multiple times per week. They tend to be brand loyal and may offer deep knowledge or custom routines centered around your offering.
• Medium users: Use your brand semi-regularly – perhaps weekly or a few times per month. They show interest but may not be as committed or habitual in their usage.
• Light users: Interact with your brand occasionally – maybe once a month or even less. They may be trying it out, using it only when needed, or facing barriers that prevent more regular engagement.

Usage levels can be defined by purchasing frequency, app log-ins, site visits, or behavior-based indicators such as shelf scans or service requests. The goal is to identify how consumer behavior varies across these groups.

Why These Differences Matter in Research

Each group offers a unique lens into consumer needs:

Heavy users can speak in detail about feature preferences, frustrations, and brand fit. Their insights help refine loyalty strategies and surface areas for product enhancement.

Medium users can highlight whether marketing efforts are inconsistent or whether product features fall short of expectations, helping improve conversion and satisfaction rates.

Light users offer critical feedback on why they aren’t more engaged. This often speaks to unmet needs, experience gaps, or unclear brand positioning—key clues for growth.

Flexible, not Fixed

It’s important to note that these segments are not rigid. A heavy user today could become light if product value erodes, or a light user might become an advocate following a positive experience. That’s why including all levels of user behavior during an Empathy Trek helps brands capture the full arc of customer journey and sentiment.

Incorporating user diversity through accurate segmentation empowers businesses to:

• See how brand experience varies across consumer types
• Identify opportunities for product improvement, marketing clarity, or new services
• Design solutions that resonate beyond just your most loyal customers

When qualitative research accounts for user types, it translates into richer, more nuanced narratives – the kind that drive smarter decisions and relevant innovation.

Consumer behavior shifts dramatically depending on how often someone interacts with a product or service. Heavy, medium, and light users experience your brand in distinct ways – and this diversity can uncover a broader range of consumer insights when explored through qualitative approaches like SIVO’s Empathy Trek.

Heavy Users: Familiarity Breeds Complexity

Heavy users are your most regular customers. They have deep familiarity with your brand, often using your product daily or weekly. This frequency reveals detailed preferences, creative use cases, and layered expectations. These individuals tend to notice even small changes and can articulate what makes or breaks their loyalty. However, their expert-level knowledge can also create blind spots, as they may not clearly recall their initial experience or the barriers newcomers face.

Medium Users: Balanced and Flexible

Medium users engage with your product occasionally, such as weekly or monthly. Their behavior tends to reflect balance – they may compare multiple brands, switch based on needs, or use your offering in specific contexts. This group is especially open to influence, making them valuable for identifying unmet needs that could lead to increased product adoption. Their feedback can point to friction points that prevent them from becoming heavy users.

Light Users: The Outside-In Perspective

Often overlooked in user research, light users include people who engage infrequently or have only tried your product once or twice. Still, including them in your qualitative research brings strategic value. Light users often voice first impressions, point out unclear messaging, or express confusion about the product’s purpose. Their perspectives help teams understand adoption barriers, usability issues, or misconceptions not visible to heavier users.

Why User Diversity Uncovers Richer Insights

Each usage level reveals a different part of the user journey. If you only talk to heavy users, you may miss what keeps others from engaging more. Including all user types ensures your insights reflect your true market – not just your superfans. Whether you're exploring brand loyalty, looking for opportunities for innovation, or trying to understand consumer behavior, diversity across user levels adds context and contrast that makes your findings more actionable.

Understanding how user levels impact consumer insights equips you to design more relevant messaging, improve product accessibility, and discover whitespace opportunities. It’s a key reason why at SIVO, we recommend a thoughtfully segmented approach for Empathy Treks.

Building a well-rounded understanding of your audience starts by listening to all kinds of users – even the casual ones. When you include heavy, medium, and light users in your qualitative research, you enhance the depth, breadth, and accuracy of the insights you uncover. This is especially true in empathy-driven approaches like SIVO’s Empathy Trek, where the goal is to walk in your customers’ shoes and uncover the experiences that shape behavior.

1. Uncover a Broader Range of Consumer Needs

Consumer insights come from contrast. While heavy users may surface ways to optimize or expand your current offering, light users help you understand what’s confusing, intimidating, or not compelling about your product. By capturing different perspectives, you expose unmet needs across the usage spectrum – from advanced features for power users to simple solutions that could improve onboarding and adoption.

2. Reduce Risk in Product Innovation

When planning new features or services, it’s common to rely on feedback from your biggest users. But innovations that only serve this small segment may struggle to scale. By including all user types, you build a more inclusive foundation for innovation. Light and medium users often voice the hurdles stopping them from using your product more – these hurdles are key opportunities for product teams and marketers to solve.

3. Improve Market Segmentation Strategies

Including a range of user types supports sharper, more realistic market segmentation. You gain insight into how different segments perceive value, evaluate alternatives, or decide when to engage. The result? More informed personas, messaging strategies, and go-to-market plans that connect with users at every stage of the journey.

4. Enhance Cross-Functional Decision-Making

An Empathy Trek with diverse users creates shared understanding across departments. Designers hear what frustrates new users. Marketers discover what messaging resonates. Product managers observe decision-drivers and unmet expectations. These live insights spark collaboration and align teams around truly human-centered decisions.

In short, the benefits of including all user types in research go far beyond empathy – they translate to smarter strategy, faster growth, and better innovation.

To capture rich and representative consumer insights, it’s not enough to plan your research questions – you also need the right mix of participants. But how do you ensure that your Empathy Trek includes a balanced spread of heavy, medium, and light users? Here are some practical strategies that can help you recruit effectively for user diversity in qualitative research.

Define User Levels Clearly

Start by setting clear criteria for what constitutes a heavy, medium, or light user in your category. This may be based on purchase frequency, engagement data, or recency of use. For example:

• Heavy users: Use/purchase weekly or more
• Medium users: Use/purchase monthly
• Light users: Used/purchased once in the past 6 months or less

Clear definitions ensure consistency when screening participants.

Use Multiple Recruitment Channels

Heavy users are often easy to reach via brand databases or loyalty programs. Light users, meanwhile, may require broader outreach. Consider using a mix of:

• Email or SMS lists (for existing customers)
• Third-party research panels
• Social media ads targeting interest-based segments
• Referral or snowball sampling methods

These diverse strategies help you find participants across the user spectrum and avoid over-representing superfans.

Screen for Attitude and Context

In addition to usage frequency, screen for mindset and context. Why did someone stop using the product? What attracted new users? These questions help ensure rich, varied data that supports discovery of unmet needs in different user segments.

Balance Sample Size Thoughtfully

While you don’t need equal numbers of each type, aim for enough variety to generate contrasting perspectives. For many projects, a 40/30/30 split between heavy, medium, and light users, respectively, can offer strong balance. The right mix depends on your goal – e.g., exploring product attrition vs. uncovering power-user hacks.

Executing this type of segmented user research takes careful planning, but the payoff is significant: richer learnings, better strategies, and a more inclusive view of your customers through initiatives like the Empathy Trek.