Opening Day 2025: Your Active Leaders
The Cagneys
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Something to Sing About (1937)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
A Lion Is In the Streets (1953)
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
Shake Hands With the Devil (1959)
Thursday November 10, 2011
Market Research: Product Planning Based on the Opinions of Schoolgirls
What's wrong with Market Research? Plenty according to IT consultant, author and developer Isseki Nagae (in translation from the Japanese):
Large advertising companies have long invested huge sums of money in conducting studies based on research, customer surveys and interviews. I myself have participated in such studies. At the big advertising agencies they round up users and market to them as reps from the manufacturing companies watch, sometimes through one-way mirrors. I’ve heard of some companies that go so far as to base their product planning on the opinions of schoolgirls. Will this type of planning seriously result in a hit product? I don't think so, and ... neither did Steve Jobs. I’ve actually been to many of these marketing focus groups, and I can tell you that no great ideas come of them.
He then quotes Steve Jobs on the matter:
It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.
And:
It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
See also:
- Pomona's reaction to “The Magnificent Ambersons.”
- Market research's initial reaction to “All in the Family” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
- Audience test scores and “The Office.”