The New Market Research
Published July 1998
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEBLACKWELL: Fierce competition. There are too many companies chasing too few consumers, and the survivors are getting better and better at providing what consumers want. In the past, many companies faced competition from great, average, and bad companies. But the bad and the average are being eliminated rapidly, and we are left with only top-notch companies that are more likely to strive to have what the consumer wants. That puts pressure on all the surviving corporations, whatever their size, to conduct precise and speedy market research so they can offer products that match consumers' desires sooner than the competition.
Product cycles have shortened in part because new products and product improvements have come from countrywide chains. A good idea in one part of the country quickly rolls out across the landscape. Local companies no longer have the luxury of waiting years before their competitors come up with better ideas. Now new products that have been tested elsewhere--including in other countries--quickly become competitive with local products. Honda, for example, has cut conception-to-production time from years to a matter of months. Technological advances in product design and development also have greatly sped up the pace of new-product offerings.
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."
