INC. : Does consumer opinion change more rapidly today?
BLACKWELL: For sure. Information now travels so quickly that consumers learn about new products and competitive improvements almost immediately. If Intel has a problem with a new chip, the information flies over the Internet in nanoseconds.
INC. : Does information that flies around so quickly force the company owner to make faster decisions?
BLACKWELL: It increases the penalty for making wrong decisions. In the past, you might have corrected a problem long before very many people knew about it. But that era is history. Today there's real pressure to have dead-on market research. You've got to get it right because the whole world will know instantly if you've got it wrong. And they may never forgive you for a major mistake. --J.M.
Hocus-Pocus Focus
David Feld, founder of Today's Man, a $204-million retailer based in Moorestown, N.J., guessed that many men equated buying clothes with going to the dentist, but he didn't know why. Feld paid for focus groups and phone surveys to uncover the truth. But he never met a focus group he trusted.
Finally, Feld's advertising agency recommended he talk to a company of professional hypnotists based in New York. Feld was skeptical, but he was desperate and curious enough to commission a study focused on why men feel uncomfortable in clothing stores. "The results really shook us up," Feld reports. The comments the men made under hypnosis had the ring of authenticity he had been searching for.
Hypnotized men revealed that they often hated the way their clothes fit but didn't know how to complain. "One guy told us that the last time he bought a suit, it didn't fit right--but he didn't say anything," Feld says. "He then told the hypnotist how insecure and dopey he felt when he wore that suit." Further, some of the groggy men admitted to a sense of powerlessness--they felt ganged up on by both their wives and pushy salespeople. "We had never gotten that answer before," Feld says.
Feld changed his business based on the responses. "We show the tapes of the hypnosis as part of our training," he says. "We now understand how important it is to become an advocate for men--to create more of a comfort zone in our stores and to get rid of that dentist's office feeling."
Two years after the study was conducted, Feld concedes, "I don't know that I totally believe in hypnosis to begin with. But I tell you, those people were out of it. They were in another world." A world, it seems, where people want their pants to fit. --M.H.
Resources
From Mind to Market: Reinventing the Retail Supply Chain, by Roger D. Blackwell (HarperBusiness, 800-242-7737, 1997, $25). Blackwell's treatise can be scattered at times, covering everything from market research to logistics. But chapters three through five offer a good introduction to the new thinking in market research.
Do-It-Yourself Marketing Research, by George Edward Breen and Albert B. Blankenship (McGraw-Hill, 1989), is out of print but worth a trip to your library. It is a classic for those just beginning their market-research efforts, but it's concerned mostly with surveys and focus groups. You'll find little on the latest techniques.
"The Science of Shopping," by Malcolm Gladwell (The New Yorker, November 4, 1996). If you've ever wondered why fast-food restaurants are on the left and gift shops are on the right as you walk toward the gate in a newly constructed airport, track down a copy of this article for the answer. Gladwell profiles Paco Underhill, a man who devotes his life to studying shoppers. Underhill is the man responsible for the "butt-brush" theory, which Gladwell sums up: "Touch--or brush or bump or jostle--a woman on the behind when she has stopped to look at an item, and she will bolt."
Rocking the Ages, by J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman (HarperBusiness, 800-242-7737, 1997, $15). Demographics aren't enough, according to Smith and Clurman. The authors claim that you must understand the values of the generation you're targeting if you want to have the right product for the right age group. Members of each generation--defined by the authors as matures, boomers, and X-ers--behave differently in different stages of their lives. The worst mistake a marketer can make is to assume one generation is just like the next.
In "Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design" (Harvard Business Review, November-December 1997), Harvard Business School's Dorothy Leonard, professor of business administration, and Jeffrey F. Rayport, associate professor of business administration, examine the latest techniques in product innovation and market research. Leonard's 1995 book, Wellsprings of Knowledge, has just been released in paperback (Harvard Business School Press, 800-262-7429, 1998, $16.95).
ON-LINE RESOURCES: There are lots of market-research resources on-line, but most of them aren't very good. You might try EASI Demographic Reports, from Easy Analytic Software, for numbers and facts. The Small Business Advisor provides a few reports on marketing and market research. And if you want to chat with others, check out this newsgroup: misc.business.marketing.moderated.
