We joined forces to create MAISON&PARTNERS, a senior research boutique which draws on global developments in social psychology. Since todays’ consumer reality has become very complex, with consumer behaviours ever harder to predict, our mission is to offer innovative research instruments, anchored in the most recent scholarly discoveries. MAISON&PARTNERS is a modern research agency which understands the role of in-depth, synthetic consumer insights in marketing processes. What makes us different from other agencies is that we work with Clients, not for Clients.

Even though Polish women continue to consider family as one of the most important values, there has been also a gradual departure from the traditional family model with the man playing the superior role. Polish women increasingly seek equality in their families, with men assuming more household chores, lifting the burden off women’s shoulders. In practice, however, few of them succeed in living by those rules in their own homes. Women continue to perform the majority of home and childcare chores, even in households where women work and earn more than men. Why is this happening? Sometimes it is because the man refuses to be a partner, and sometimes the woman believes she knows better how to take care of things.

A grey-haired old lady in a fur hat with a walking stick is more likely to be a fictional character rather than an actual image of a mature Polish woman. Modern-day senior citizens can take us all by surprise: 59% of them like when a lot is happening in their lives, 40% of them have a hobby and devote a lot of time to it, 33% assess their health as good, 63% have a computer and a bank account, over 30% use a computer, with a half of them using it for leisure. Many of those people expect targeted and dedicated products and are willing to pay for them. At the same time, they do not want ‘products for senior citizens’ since they do not feel comfortable with that label and will not use it for a long time to come.

Building a marketing strategy for a financial product is a serious challenge. Contrary to what many economists think, financial decisions depend less on the actual financial situation and more on various psychological factors. For instance, people who are happy with their lives are more effective when it comes to saving money. People focused on the future are more likely to get insurance, whereas highly narcissistic consumers are more tempted to choose aggressive investment instruments. For this reason, in order to make a successful launch of a financial product, it is important to understand the target users, their values and needs, and their outlook on the world.

Following the discovery of latent attitudes (unconscious traces of past experience) and developments in computer technologies, social research embraced response time. Based on response times, we can identify consumers’ latent, unconscious and automated attitudes and this helps us understand the real behavioural drivers. By using response time-based tools (e.g. RAM) we can understand the unconscious components of a brand image, select the right logotype for rebranding or select the most suitable celebrity for brand communication, thus creating more effective marketing strategies.