GIM Value Visuals

Innovative approach: Value research using visual images

The current “Values and Politics“ study is based on a new methodical approach developed by GIM: GIM Value Visuals provides access to values at a visual level. The core of GIM Value Visuals is a comprehensive pool of visuals validated in the German-speaking area in which each value – success, harmony, solidarity, status etc. – is represented both in its core meaning and in differentiated facets by means of clear-cut visual images.  

The study has thus broken new ground in value research, because so far, value research has met with many difficulties – not only in market research. It is mostly done verbally, although the problems of verbal survey techniques are manifold.

• On the one hand, it requires a high degree of reflection from the respondents. The respondents must particularly comprehend abstract topics such as freedom, solidarity and prestige, which they hardly ever think about in everyday life, at a cognitive level and reflect on them in connection with their own actions.
• On the other hand, it is also often hard for clients to integrate the results of value research into their own work process. They might often have problems making the intellectual transfer from an abstract value to a concrete consumer good or a brand.
• Last but not least, this also applies to marketing agencies who have difficulty translating the complex verbal results into concrete visual worlds. 
  

GIM, who has been doing value research for companies for more than a decade, has used these deficits as an opportunity to look for alternative methodical approaches. The result is a pool of visuals which has been validated at the qualitative and quantitative levels and which translates the central values of the German society into visual language.

This makes it easier for dialogue partners to talk about normative orientations such as “luxury“ and “aesthetics“. In addition, individual facets of these values can be investigated in greater detail. For marketing and the respective agencies, GIM Value Visuals make these core values more vivid, more tangible and easier to implement in strategic brand management.