Getting Up Close & Personal With the Consumer

The following are excerpts from a presentation I gave at the AMA/IFT meeting in Newark, New Jersey on March 16.

Since my retirement eight years ago, I have been working with a large number of consumer products companies.  It is my observation that a vast majority of Market Research resources are focussed on the resolution of specific questions and not understanding.  Questions generally explored are:  "Which product is preferred?," "How often would you purchase this brand?," "How would you rate this product?" etc.  Basically the objective of the research is the estimate of market share or sales potential.  It seems that we have directed our attention to Evaluative Research and neglected the Exploratory and Experimental Research.  It is almost like we in market Research decided to abandon R&D, Quality control, New Products Research and Sensory Testing.

I think we need to ask ourselves, "Who are our clients?"  "Are we utilizing our expertise to the maximum for our company?"  "Should we be only looking to our marketing department clients or should we also be providing assistance to those who search for new opportunities, develop new products, maintain the quality of our brands, and those who strive to improve our existing brands?"

Also, far too many market researchers spend their time designing research, writing reports and reading reports, and little or no time understanding the consumer.  We need to invest some of our time getting to know our customers and consumers.  Reading a report about our consumers is nowhere near enough to gain an understanding.  It's not just about numbers, it is about people.  Try describing a friend using the same statistics that are utilized to describe your customers in reports such as age, family size, socio-economic status, occupation, etc.  Would you consider that a good description of your friend?  I doubt it.  Think about how you would describe your friend in relation to your brand.  those are the perspectives needed to really understand your consumers.

Getting up close and personal with the consumer is all about the lost art of consumer Research, the learning and understanding steps in market research.  That is the Exploratory and Experimental Phases of Research.

In the presentation, I went on to cover what I mean by up close and personal research, what it is, what it is not, some useful techniques, and some of my experiences in the area.  Unfortunately the space available in the Views does not permit the outline of techniques or the case studies.  I will save them for a later publication.

What it is not:

1.  Sitting behind a one-way mirror and listening to a group of homemakers talk.
2.  Sending out interviews to be conducted in 20 malls around the country.
3.  Listening to phone interviews.
4.  Talking to consumers over the phone.
5.  Sending out 1,000 questionnaires to a mall panel of consumers.

1.  Sitting eye-to-eye and conducting one-on-ones.
2.  Intercepting shoppers in the store and debriefing them.
3.  Sitting in the consumer's living room, laundry room, family room, kitchen and discussing their tasks.
4.  Visiting the homemaker in her home and watching her do a specific task and asking questions.
5.  Sitting with a respondent while she is being interviewed, listening and asking additional follow-up questions for clarification.
6.  Watching a respondent doing a task at a CLT and conducting a follow-up interview.
7.  Visiting our customers, store managers, buyers, stock clerks, warehouse workers, etc.
8.  Watching respondents, hearing their words, seeing their reactions -- it is all about a first-hand experience.

Where do we conduct these up-close-and-personal tests?

1.  In the consumer's home.
2.  In the consumer's workplace -- office, store, warehouse, wherever the product is used.
3.  In the supermarket, electronics store, convenience markets, club stores, discount stores, home improvement centers, etc., wherever the products are purchased.
4.  At a CLT where the products are tested.
5.  Wherever the event of interest takes place.  It's about experiences in context.  It's about living the experience.
 

Maybe, just maybe if we get to know the consumer a little better we will be able to improve on our 90% new product failure rate.