Market Research Training from Research Rockstar

The difference between good market research and great market research can be significant.

But sometimes the incremental time, cost and sweat of that extra effort simply doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, “good” is just perfect.

I was reminded of this last week at the Launch Camp conference in Cambridge. The event, for entrepreneurs seeking social media wisdom, had some interesting speakers; the one from whom I learned the most was Dharmesh Shah, Chief Technology Officer and Founder of HubSpot (on Twitter as @Dharmesh).

In three years, this company has gone from start-up to 2,000+ customers, most of whom pay a monthly fee. Dharmesh shared his start-up success insights at Launch Camp and advised the attending entrepreneurs to focus on practical marketing. Selling stuff. Tracking key metrics to understand what sells stuff. And in his case, this clearly works.

He observes that many entrepreneurs get bogged down by over-analyzing their decisions—ultimately missing their window of opportunity. Key areas for such analysis paralysis? Product optimization and pricing.

ACK! Product concept testing and pricing research are two key pillars of market research practices around the world! But of course, he is correct. Especially in the context of new or rapidly evolving product categories.

Product Concept Testing

Market research offers proven methods for testing new product concepts—methods that can prioritize features or optimize feature-price combinations. And that’s great.

But I have seen companies completely miss windows of opportunity because they kept adding on less-than-critical features before they would launch. Kept conducting more and more research to inform (or justify) their decisions. Their leaders traded early market feedback for an over-engineered product. Dharmesh chastised this approach and emphasized that while market research is useful, at some point you need actual market feedback in order to inform further improvements. The ultimate feedback: will people buy it? If they buy it, will they return it?

Of course, these days, there are ways to simulate actual product releases to do this—although that is not a realistic option for all categories.

Pricing Research

Look, if you are talking about mature consumer product categories (like toothpaste and laundry detergent), pricing research is a very defined, concrete sort of practice. But in many B2B markets, emerging markets, and new product categories, it simply isn’t perfect. Yes, do some research. Do some primary research, analyze competitive/substitute pricing, understand your target market’s overall budget, know your expected ROI. But at some point you have to take a leap with pricing. And as Dharmesh said, despite long-held tenets to the contrary, you CAN adjust your pricing down the road.

Imperfect Data is Better Than No Data

Yes, it is true—imperfect data is better than no data. And sometimes, directional data sooner is better than quantitative data later.  In any case, knowing when to stop conducting market research in order to price and release new products can be tricky. Luckily for busy professionals seeking to inform product and pricing decisions, there are many options along the continuums of research speed and exactitude.

BTW, Dharmesh has a book out—I ordered my copy and can’t wait to read it: Inbound Marketing.

[Would you rather take one market research class for $2000 or get unlimited access to 12 online for $600/year? Or how about 5 for FREE? I thought so!  Sign up for a Research Rockstar membership today: http://is.gd/87vvd]

[For more info on Launch Camp search #LaunchCamp on Twitter for great links to blogs, RTs and even videos from the event]

So you’re planning to develop a new product, and want to know which features will be most important to potential buyers. And maybe which features could be nice-to-have, but not critical. Or maybe you want to estimate how adding a specific attribute could change potential market adoption.

These are obviously important questions. So, how to get the answers?

In many product categories, the best choice is to conduct primary market research, to get direct feedback from people in your target market. In some cases, qualitative feedback is fine—depending on your budget, analysis needs, and so on. But more commonly, in order to make firm decisions about product design, quantitative research is the best choice. If you want reliable conclusions about the priority ranking, for example, of 10 potential product features, you will want hard data.

[Do exceptions exist? Yes. There are some product categories and contexts in which primary market research is unlikely to yield reliable results. If you are wondering if you might be in that kind of situation, call me and I’ll be happy to discuss it with you.]

If you are thinking about using market research to inform product design decisions, you may be sending out an RFP to some market research agencies. And when their proposals come back to you, you will likely start hearing about data analysis techniques such as conjoint analysis (or discrete choice, which is a type of conjoint) and MaxDiff. You may get different recommendations from different market research agencies about which will be best—and that can get confusing.

In fact, one question I have heard many times from people in these situations is, “what is the difference between MaxDiff and Conjoint?” I was speaking recently with Brett Jarvis, a real expert on this topic from Sawtooth Technologies Consulting group, and he offered to write an article on the topic. Don’t panic: it’s not an article for stats geeks. It’s very friendly and includes great examples. The full article is being released in the September Research Rockstar newsletter, which will be sent out Monday September 21. So if you are not currently a newsletter subscriber, please sign up for free at [SIGN UP] to make sure you get this important article.

In the mean time, here is an excerpt from Brett’s piece:

“The reasons some people might get confused between conjoint and MaxDiff are two-fold. The first reason is that they both involve trade-offs to some extent. The respondent is effectively told that they can’t have everything and is forced to make choices. However, in a MaxDiff study the respondent evaluates a single list of items, whereas in conjoint the respondent evaluates complete products made up of various features. This brings us to the second reason. Both techniques can tell you how customers value different features. However, if you are focusing on a single list of items only, conjoint is likely more complex than is needed, whereas if you want to understand customer preferences across features, conjoint is essential.”

After you read this article, you will feel a lot more comfortable reading proposals from market research agencies that recommend these techniques.

And remember, no matter what techniques you are considering, always keep your research participants in mind. Some research designs can lead to longer, more cognitively challenging questionnaire designs—will your target audience be ok with that? Or will they balk at any surveys that take over 10 minutes? Sometimes a research design can be ideal from an analysis point of view, but if your survey takers won’t comply, a simpler approach will be a better choice.

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