Is Marketing Research Necessary?
James Birks who founded and managed Kiln construction for forty years has been said to have asked his grandson Dave (who wrote a marketing research book) what marketing research was all about!
This alludes to the fact the James Birks has indeed never carried out any marketing research and yet managed to manufacture products for porcelain and ceramics internationally for names such as Wedgwood, Royal Doulton & Spode.
Could this really be possible?
Successful organisations see market research as an ongoing function of marketing research, they continuously speak to their customers, suppliers and colleagues in the business as well as those who know the macro environment surrounding the business. James Birks was renowned in doing just that.
Marketing research is there to fill in some gaps, solidify hunches and give a starting point to a problem or understanding the perceived image of a product, they are what is happening today.
What marketing research does not do is guarantee success of a decision and does not allow for innovation much. It is hard for people to realise they would buy something if they have never seen it or even identified the need for it.
Dyson vacuum is an example of this whereby all research showed that people are uncomfortable buying a bag-less, see-through vacuum as they didn't want people to see all the dirt collected from their homes and retailers indicated they couldn't demonstrate such a product on the shop floor. Not only was Dyson a hit but it was sold at double the price of available vacuums with no problem!
Ethics, asking the right questions and evaluating return on investment are all factors to consider and will be discussed in future rants.
Marketing research - handle with care!
James Birks who founded and managed Kiln construction for forty years has been said to have asked his grandson Dave (who wrote a marketing research book) what marketing research was all about!
This alludes to the fact the James Birks has indeed never carried out any marketing research and yet managed to manufacture products for porcelain and ceramics internationally for names such as Wedgwood, Royal Doulton & Spode.
Could this really be possible?
Successful organisations see market research as an ongoing function of marketing research, they continuously speak to their customers, suppliers and colleagues in the business as well as those who know the macro environment surrounding the business. James Birks was renowned in doing just that.
Marketing research is there to fill in some gaps, solidify hunches and give a starting point to a problem or understanding the perceived image of a product, they are what is happening today.
What marketing research does not do is guarantee success of a decision and does not allow for innovation much. It is hard for people to realise they would buy something if they have never seen it or even identified the need for it.
Dyson vacuum is an example of this whereby all research showed that people are uncomfortable buying a bag-less, see-through vacuum as they didn't want people to see all the dirt collected from their homes and retailers indicated they couldn't demonstrate such a product on the shop floor. Not only was Dyson a hit but it was sold at double the price of available vacuums with no problem!
Ethics, asking the right questions and evaluating return on investment are all factors to consider and will be discussed in future rants.
Marketing research - handle with care!
we can only predict consumers behavior, we can try bring insights from the life of consumers, which will assumed the expected behavior.
ReplyDeleteand if u will think about it, its better like that, otherwise we had a boring world!
i had in my work a lot of campaigns that we were almost sure, based on marketing research that the result of the campaign will be X, and we got totally opposite Y....