Non-traditional market research

Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on traditional market research in which respondents are asked direct questions about what they like/dislike and why they bought what they bought. Yet, 90% of new product launches fail and studies show that despite increasing marketing spend, nearly every product category is getting more and more commoditized. What’s wrong? For one, traditional market research generally cannot give us real market insights. A few quick examples: Reliance on traditional market research would have prevented the minivan, bottled water and Starbucks from coming to market. Customers generally cannot tell you about the future and often can’t or won’t tell you about how they really feel about most things. Trying to get that from traditional market research is a fool’s errand. However, we have had significant success with non-traditional research methods like visual analogies, role modeling and other projective techniques. With these non-traditional techniques, respondents give us greater insights into their true feelings, attitudes and perceptions than the typical question and answer methods. We have used these insights to inform many significant brand decisions, from how to position a new brand to how best to differentiate sister brands from each other. Over 80% of human communication is non-verbal. Traditional market research is nearly all verbal.

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