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Marketing and specifically brand related research has recently (over the past two decades) became more | culture centric | as evidenced by articles in publications like The Journal of Consumer Research. Semiotic research investigates how consumers construct their reality by means of discourse [Oswald, Laura R. Creating Value: The Theory and Practice of Marketing Semiotics Research. OUP Oxford.]

In my experience as an advertising researcher it is foolish to do any research without a solid understanding of the semiotic context.

Conjoint analysis is a statistical technique used in market research to determine how people value different attributes (feature,function, benefits) that make up an individual product or service.

The objective of conjoint analysis is to determine what combination of a limited number of attributes is most influential on respondent choice or decision making. A controlled set of potential products or services is shown to respondents and by analyzing how they make preferences between these products, the implicit valuation of the individual elements making up the product or service can be determined. These implicit valuations (utilities or part-worths) can be used to create market models that estimate market share, revenue and even profitability of new designs.

Syntagm Research has been managing SawTooth Conjoint Value Analysis solutions for advertising over several decades.

I am also a trained, experienced and practicing Semiotician. If you don't understand semiotics skip the next bit.

You may think that a virtual assistant is an unnecessary luxury but in reality it is a necessity. It is also a profitable investment that will make you money in the long run.

Those are the money-making and business-growth activities that only you can do. Once you have identified those 3-5 daily must-do-tasks; give everything else away.