Four Ways Traditional Market Research Can Kill Innovation

Four Ways Traditional Market Research Can Kill Innovation

The article is written by Scott Anthony. The article is tell us “how the traditional market research can kill innovation.” The market research plays crucial part in the process of Innovation. The writer says that it’s not that market researcher are that bad, they are good and thoughtful as well. The tools of market research are used properly then they are very useful.

Then the writer discussed 4 flaws of traditional market research, viz..

1. Talking to the wrong customers: Clayton Christensen root of innovator’s dilemma is a myopic focus on the most demanding customers. Yet some of the companies are wasting their time to trying to understanding needs & wants of the demanding customers. Innovation opportunities almost come from understanding company’s worst & customer it  doesn’t serve
2. Asking the wrong questions: Asking the wrong questions are always creates difficulty in the mind of the customer. It does not give proper explanation what company is trying to say. Sometimes the customer doesn’t know what the problem is.
3. Having the wrong people interpret the data: Market research report play important role to make decision by senior leader. So having the wrong people interpret the data creates difficulties in making the right decisions.
4. Making the wrong decisions based on market research data: The decision is based on the what raw data is collected, the what is interpretation is?, if the something goes wrong then eventually it will effects on the decis
5. How to Use Market Research in a Recession

This article is written by John Quelch. In recession time the people are reduce their consumption & switched the brand as well. Similarly companies also reduced their spending on market research. In US it is found that the spending is reduced on market research for four consecutive quarters.

The writer then discussed seven steps to minimize the impact of reduced spending:

1. Stay Focused: During recession, marketers should focus on its existing and loyal customers instead of spending on new research.
2. Enlist trusted partners: Marketers should maintain god relationship with its core suppliers as it can provide them with more insight with fewer expenses.
3. Value experience and judgment: CMO should tap knowledge & experience of those managers who have once lived in recession. This will help in setting strategy.
4. Seize opportunities overseas: CMO should shift the research expenses from developed markets to developing markets as they are more fluid and cost of research are less in emerging markets.
5. Go online with a dash of skepticism: CMO should shift its research strategy from offline to online mode as they are cheap and fast.
6. Don’t cut across the board:
7. Keep eye on the new consumers: A successful CMO should devote some of its market research tool on analyzing and researching future changes in consumer behavior, how consumer is behaving about the product ‘whether they are reverting back after recession or adopting the same tool of recession.

MARKET RESEARCH, USE NUMBERS WITH CAUTION

This article is written by written by Scott Anthony. In this article, Author emphasizes the need and of important different research techniques in different market conditions i.e. Quantitative way of market research and Qualitative way of market research.

Authors emphasize the need of Quantitative way of market research when the company want to research on quantitative term i.e. determine the market share of product and searching for the way of stealing share from existing competitors.