Posts Tagged ‘market research’

If you’re not doing a Voice Of The Customer (VOC) project, you should. Just be careful how you use what you learn.

Don Draper said it back in 1964, "A new idea is something they don’t know yet. So of course it’s not going to come up as an option." — Mad Men, Season 4, Episode 4

Using VOC to benchmark how well you are meeting expectations is a fine practice — for operations. However, using VOC as input for designing new products or services is the beginning of the end.

Why? In VOC, customer wants and needs are defined in terms of satisfaction with current alternatives. When customers tell you what’s good, what’s bad, or even what’s missing from your product or service, their answers are bounded by their alternatives. You can ask “blue sky” or “magic wand” questions all day long, but if it doesn’t exist, customers can’t want it.

It’s natural to want to listen to what customers ask for and give it to them. It seems predictable. And because of its origins in QFD, it’s defensible. Just don’t expect it to produce anything innovative.

Instead, recognize VOC as a potentially commoditizing force. By the time your new product or service is launched, it will look even more like your competitor’s. After all, they are listening to the voice of the customer too.

We were all so excited when the Russian market opened up.  Then after a few containers of Levis and Marlboros set sail, it seems like the party was over.

The Chinese people will soon be buying a lot of stuff.  I’m just worried it won’t be American stuff.  Much of what they need they can make themselves, for less. Some would say, if we are becoming a service economy, we don’t need to make anything anymore.

I would argue, if we want play in a global economy anchored by China, we need to make something — specifically, the one thing we know how to make better than anyone in the world — brands. But not American brands. We need to make Chinese brands. Things Chinese people want to buy because they represent being Chinese.

That means understanding the needs and motivations of people unlike ourselves — which doesn’t come naturally to most Americans.  But it does to American marketers.