When people think of doing market research on a new idea, many think it works like this:

The problem with this mentality is that humans are notoriously awful at forecasting their own behavior.  It’s easy to say “Sure, I would buy that!” in when clicking a button while taking a survey or when sitting in a focus group.  When it comes down to the actual experience of standing in an aisle in a store and comparing one product to a dozen others, though, the decision gets to be considerably more difficult.  There have been plenty of market research failures over the years, and marketers’ failure to put themselves in the shoes of their customers are often a key reason why.

So how do you get around this issue?  Here are a few possible solutions:

  • Replicate the purchasing decision as closely as possible. Rather than putting your product (or service) in front of people and asking for feedback in a vacuum, ask participants to compare your offering with those of your competitors.  Or better yet, don’t even tell them which is yours at first and see which they pick out and why.
  • Approach the problem from a variety of perspectives. Interest in a product or service has a wide variety of dimensions.  While the overall reaction you get may be positive, you may be able to identify areas for improvement if you break interest down into key components, such as the look and feel, usability, ease of use, price, etc.
  • Get abstract. We at Corona will sometimes make use of questions like “If [this product or service] were an animal, what would it be and why?”  While questions like this seem a little silly, it can be extremely informative to know if your offering is more of a cheetah or a walrus.  And the explanations of why participants chose their animal can be even more informative.  (Fair warning, though: some participants hate this question and will just refuse to answer.  That’s OK.)
  • Consider advanced techniques. There are statistical techniques that have been developed over the years that can help to evaluate the relative weight that survey respondents place on various attributes of a product or service, such as a conjoint or MaxDiff analysis.  The details of how these work are outside the scope of our humble little blog, but each of these ask participants to make a decision that requires comparing sets of choices to one another rather than just saying “Yes, I’m interested in A.”

Market research, as valuable as it is, will never be a silver bullet that will absolutely guarantee the success of a product or service launch.  However, by considering the experience of making a decision when designing your approach, you’ll have a very strong chance of making the best decisions possible to make your launch a success.