The First Five Years (of retirement)

My first five years of retirement have been enjoyable and rewarding from two points of view, as it relates to my hobby. During this time, I have witnessed two primary changes in the field of consumer research. First, the growth of what I have been calling "Assessment in Context" and secondly, the corporate interest in the devotion of both time and money in upstream consumer research.

With respect to the first point, "Assessment in Context," I have seen a dramatic growth in research conducted under real world conditions instead of simulation. More and more research is conducted utilizing real shoppers, with real needs, in real stores, making real purchase decisions, among a complete assortment of options and using real money. There seems to be a growing awareness among market researchers that the environment under which a study is conducted can and does play a major role in the results.

I have conducted controlled studies showing that all of these factors have an effect on the resulting data. For example, I have data that shows that new packages, container and copy, yield dramatically different results when evaluated on simulated store shelves vs. shelves in real stores. Controlled studies involving pricing has shown the greatest difference between real and simulated store shelf testing. As a matter of fact we have seen that price acceptability can be dramatically affected by the location within the store and the brands adjacent to the test brand.

The second area of change has been in the area of "up-Stream" consumer research. From my perspective, I have seen a growing interest among consumer goods companies in involving the consumer much earlier in their new product development program. In the past, it appeared that companies only brought the consumer and the Market/Research departments into the product development program well after the product, positioning and concept were well defined. This is changing and fast. During the past few years, I have been working with three large consumer products companies to set up systems whereby earlier involvement of the consumer in the decision making was the prime objective. In some cases the system involved the splitting of the Market Research into two groups while others set up separate consumer research groups for the upstream research. In either of these two systems, one group handles the exploratory and experimental research while the other group is devoted to the evaluative research. Unfortunately it has been my experience that one group cannot handle all three types of research. There may be companies where it has been successful but I have not seen it. I believe the protocols required for effective research in the three areas are so diverse, that it is almost impossible for one group to be flexible or disciplined enough to move effectively from one type of research into the other.