Custom Norm Builds & Maintenance | Zappi Professional Service

Optimizing Your Decision Making with the Right Norms

In market research, numbers alone don’t tell the full story. To truly understand research results, businesses need context. That’s where normative benchmarks, or "norms," come in. They help determine whether test results are strong, weak, or average by comparing them against relevant industry standards. However, not all norms are created equal. For the most actionable insights, you need benchmarks that reflect your specific business, category, market, and competitive landscape.

That’s why we offer a comprehensive Norms Service, designed to ensure your data asset is always relevant and actionable.

What Norms Services Does Zappi Offer?

Our service is split into two key areas:

Custom Norm Build: If an existing norm doesn’t meet your needs—or doesn’t exist at all—we design and build a benchmark from the ground up, ensuring it aligns with your business and competitive landscape.
Norm Maintenance: Over time, market conditions and business objectives evolve. We help review, maintain and update your norms so they remain accurate, relevant, and valuable for your decision-making.

In both cases, we will assess your norm by solution, country and category. By leveraging these services, you can ensure your research is always backed by meaningful, up-to-date comparisons that drive better insights and strategic decisions.

Custom Norm Builds: Building Benchmarks That Matter

What it is: If you don’t have a relevant norm—or the ones available don’t align with how you measure success—our Custom Norm Build service builds a benchmark tailored for you. We design, source, and integrate data assets that ensure your comparisons are meaningful and aligned with your goals.

Why you need it: Generic black box norms may not be relevant for your specific needs. With a custom norm, you ensure that your benchmarks reflect the way you measure success. Whether you’re launching a new product, competing in a niche market, or needing specific insights, a tailored norm helps you make informed decisions with confidence.

What’s included:

Consultation: Aligning on structure, composition, and what matters most to you.
Content Sourcing: Gathering relevant data, whether publicly available or proprietary.
Norm Creation: Configuring, integrating, and testing within your platform. Each norm is built within a solution, country, and category. Depending on your need, the benchmark may be a tag-based norm.
Delivery: Providing a structured norm that is ready for you to use, complete with clear documentation.

Norm Maintenance: Keeping Your Benchmarks Relevant

What it is: Over time, market conditions, consumer behavior, and database composition evolve. Our Norm Maintenance service ensures your existing benchmarks stay robust, relevant, and aligned with how you measure success. We review your data asset, identify areas for improvement, and recommend necessary updates.

Why you need it: Even the best norms need upkeep. Changes in your category, audience segmentation, database makeup, and competitive landscape can make old benchmarks obsolete. Without regular updates, your data asset may lose its relevance, leading to misinterpretations and ineffective decision-making.

Depending on your needs, we can assist you with the following:

Consultation: Aligning on structure, composition, and what matters most to you.
Norm Review: Analyzing the health and composition of your data asset.
Recommendations: Identifying necessary adjustments to ensure your norms reflect current landscapes and remain a reliable foundation for insights. Recommendations may include refining audience sampling, updating competitor context, updating tagging and/or seeding additional testing.
Norm Optimization: Potentially includes seeding new concepts or creating new norms based on specific objectives depending on the outcomes of the review. Service can also include configuring and sourcing content as well as updating the norms and/or tags on your behalf.

Requesting Norms Services in Zappi Platform

If you are an existing Zappi user, you can request services straight from the platform. Click on the hand icon on the left hand menu to ‘Request professional services (including consultancy)’. A form will appear where you can add a description of your requirements. Your customer representative or a consultant will be in touch to discuss further.