http://www.researchrockstar.com/using-customer-feedback-to-inform-product-design-decisions/ Research Rockstar for Market Research, that Rocks. Online Training for Market Research. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:24:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 http://www.researchrockstar.com/using-customer-feedback-to-inform-product-design-decisions/comment-page-1/#comment-57 Kathryn Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:50:45 +0000 http://www.researchrockstar.com/?p=754#comment-57 I had an interesting conversation with someone who asked, "We did a study like this last year, and the results seemed a little obvious. The features we expected to be tops, were tops. Getting my team to fund this kind of research again will be hard now." Look, it can happen. Sometimes research just confirms what you already suspected. Also, if you are developing a product that only has, say, 2 or 3 possible/realistic variations--this kind of approach (MaxDiff or conjoint) can be overkill. There are simpler (and less expensive) options in those cases. BUT sometimes confirming your own suspicions can be valuable, sometimes you do get surprised, and sometimes being able to look for variations by subgroup ("Aha, feature combo A is much more attractive to this segment; feature combo B really appeals mostly to that segment) can be very useful. I had an interesting conversation with someone who asked, “We did a study like this last year, and the results seemed a little obvious. The features we expected to be tops, were tops. Getting my team to fund this kind of research again will be hard now.” Look, it can happen. Sometimes research just confirms what you already suspected. Also, if you are developing a product that only has, say, 2 or 3 possible/realistic variations–this kind of approach (MaxDiff or conjoint) can be overkill. There are simpler (and less expensive) options in those cases. BUT sometimes confirming your own suspicions can be valuable, sometimes you do get surprised, and sometimes being able to look for variations by subgroup (“Aha, feature combo A is much more attractive to this segment; feature combo B really appeals mostly to that segment) can be very useful.

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