Understanding the homeowner behind a trade purchase

The business question

Howdens sells through the trade, but homeowners also shape the choice of kitchen and supplier. The business needed a clearer understanding of their journey: how a project began, who influenced decisions, when a fitter entered the process and what support people needed along the way.

Alongside this, the insight function needed to get more useful answers from research it already commissioned.

Following the decision journey

I designed and delivered a programme combining 25 face-to-face interviews with a survey of 1,433 homeowners who used the trade to fit their kitchens.

The work examined journey stages, project missions, sources of influence, barriers and the roles played by homeowners and tradespeople. It connected the research to practical questions about tools, information, category choices and gaps in the customer experience.

Getting more from existing evidence

I also reanalysed underlying brand-tracker data, rather than relying solely on the supplied presentation. This made it possible to interrogate findings against the commercial questions the team needed to answer.

For the monthly trade survey, I connected responses with internal purchasing and behavioural data. That exposed weaknesses in who was being heard and provided a basis for weighting the evidence against actual buying behaviour.

What the work delivered

The homeowner programme gave the commercial and marketing teams a fuller view of a customer journey that crossed the boundaries of the trade-led sales model. The trade-survey analysis prompted a reset of the programme, while the tracker work made existing research more useful for internal discussion and decisions.

If a business has regular research but struggles to turn it into insight, the starting point may be the question, the sample or the analysis. This engagement combined a new programme with improvements to evidence already in place.