Member Spotlight: Consumer Research Around Cannabis

In this month’s member spotlight, we learn more about Consumer Research Around Cannabis from Vice President, Jeffrey Stein. The mission of Consumer Research Around Cannabis is to deliver market research that merges cannabis & marijuana usage data, perceptions, and attitudes regarding marijuana, with hundreds of local consumer-level demographics, lifestyle information, shopping trends, media habits, and numerous plan-to-purchase targets.

Consumer Research Around Cannabis

Member Since:
November 2018

Industry Sector/Business Type:
Data Services

Tell us a bit about you, your background, and why you launched your company?

I spent many years in the broadcast industry in sales & management. Driving revenue in this sector has not only been about quantitative ratings, but about the qualitative position of your audience – in demonstrating that a properties audience matched the consumer characteristics of the proposed client. When a client leans more on the qualitative aspect of a media property, they always enjoy more success – revenue – ROI. This was an area that always fascinated me and where we had the most success.

Consumer Research Around Cannabis is the sister company of The Media Audit – a company which surveys local markets in order to help broadcasters and publications better position its audience against consumer characteristics like income, demographics, education, plan to purchase and hundreds of other consumer targets. With this expertise already in place, it made sense to add cannabis consumer questions to the consumer surveys. This is how Consumer Research Around Cannabis was born.

What unique value does your company offer to the cannabis industry?

The cannabis industry is no different than any other consumer industry. Products are developed and put on the market. There is no consumer products company which does not lean on consumer research to help them make better decisions on products, packaging and marketing – the cannabis industry is no different. What is obviously unique is that cannabis is relegated various laws on a state by state basis.

Through our proprietary software, we can take cannabis consumer targets (legal opinions, purchasing, category choices, and behavioral choices) and cross tab that against traditional consumer data to help answer questions facing cannabis companies today and into the future. And we do it on a market by market and state by state basis.

What kind of challenges do you face in the industry and what solutions would you like to see?

In order to continue to be relevant, we have to adjust our questions and offerings as the cannabis industry grows. One example is merging our data with other databases to further refine our research. We also have to be cognizant of new cannabis products and the ever growing cannabis research, especially on the medical side. And of course, evolving state regulations.

Why did you join NCIA? What’s the best or most important part about being a member?

As a small, growing company, we have a limited budget so we have to choose the organizations we join carefully. NCIA seems to be the place where all cannabis companies come together to further the industry and, to see how other cannabis companies are evolving.