Marketer's Toolkit (03) - Market Research - Listen and Learn(Harvard Business School HBS Note).pdf

(297 KB) Pobierz
97359854 UNPDF
Market Research:
Listen and Learn
EXCERPTED FROM
Harvard Business School Press
Boston, Massachusetts
copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
ISBN-13: 978-1-4221-0275-6
2750BC
97359854.001.png
Copyright 2006 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
This chapter was originally published as chapter 3 of Marketer’s Toolkit ,
copyright 2006 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for
permission should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu , or mailed to Permissions,
Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.
copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
 
3
Market Research
Listen and Learn
Key Topics Covered in This Chapter
•
Formal and informal methods of market
research
•
The research process
•
Two methods for analyzing customer
preferences
copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
97359854.002.png
vices popular with customers? If they are, that’s good. But
don’t expect the good times to last forever. Customer pref-
erences change. Competitors lure buyers away with new offerings,
and customers perceive new needs that no one has yet addressed.
In business, long-term survival and growth result from the suc-
cessful exploitation of new market opportunities. You find those op-
portunities by listening and learning. Listening and learning are
essential organizational skills that, in the end, separate winners from
losers. They are what companies must do to understand customers
and competitors and to identify market opportunities. As you’ll dis-
cover in this chapter, listening and learning take many forms.
In the past, the marketing function usually owned this job and
pursued it through formal market research and analysis of customer
data. We now recognize that this was a mistake; listening and learn-
ing are everyone’s responsibility. Customers are always signaling their
needs, preferences, likes, and dislikes, and everyone must make an
effort to pick up on those signals. Formal marketing research is only
one of many ways to do this. Salespeople have daily contact with
customers; every contact is an opportunity to listen and learn. Prod-
uct developers talk to lead users , who routinely alter off-the-shelf
products to suit their unique needs. Service representatives get yet
another glimpse into the minds of customers and their changing de-
sires and requirements; more than anyone else, service reps can pin-
point customer dissatisfaction.
copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
I S YOUR BUSINESS doing well? Are its products and ser-
 
Market Research
3
Yes, there are many ways to understand customers and identify
market opportunities, and we’ll describe some in this chapter. The
challenge, of course, is to form a coherent picture from many pieces
of learning. Customer knowledge and market understanding are like
pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Viewed in isolation, they tell us nothing.
It’s only when you begin to assemble the pieces that a meaningful
picture emerges.
Formal Market Research
Market research refers to the formal collection, analysis, and reporting of
external data that a company finds relevant to its businesses. It is, in the
words of Vincent Barabba and Gerald Zaltman, “the process of listen-
ing to the voice of the market and conveying information about it to
appropriate management.” 1 The point of that information is to make
better decisions, as shown in the example of Tesco (see “Best Practice
in Customer Data: Tesco”). Market research may be as simple as a cus-
tomer comment card—or as complex as a nationwide sample survey
that requires a thoughtful section of survey questions, randomized
sampling techniques, and statistical analysis of the final data.
There are six main types of formal market research:
• Direct observation. Observe what customers are buying and
how they use their purchases. Pay particular attention to the
difficulties they experience in using popular products and ser-
vices. Those difficulties may represent market opportunities.
Salespeople are good partners in observational research. (Later
in this chapter we’ll explain a unique approach to observation
called empathetic design.)
• Experimentation. A packaged-goods company will often intro-
duce a new product at different prices or in different sized
packages in a selected number of stores. Customer response is
recorded. The price or package size is then changed, and the
customer response to this change is tabulated. The insights
gained through such experiments support decisions on rolling
out products to broader markets.
copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
 

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin