The Moment of Clarity

How can you gain some clarity concerning the evolution of customer expectations and needs?  According to the authors, the $18 billion spent on marketing studies to understand customers better don’t help much. Indeed, market studies are too frequently designed around assumptions that are erroneous or already obsolete. Quite often, studies reflect the projections of the people who designed them, and leave little room to discover something new. This is how sporting equipment suppliers, historically focused on running and football, failed to take account of emerging practices like yoga or fitness, which now represent more than half of the sporting equipment market.

The authors recognize that Big Data represents a fantastic opportunity to gain a more refined understanding of customer behavior, but it is nonetheless often insufficient to capture the real customer experience. That’s why they recommend also making direct observations using techniques taken from the social sciences. These observations, when rigorously organized and analyzed, are a great source of information on how customers actually use a given product.

This book explains how to replicate social science methodologies to understand customer habits and identify opportunities. The various examples are covered in depth and serve as convincing illustrations. You will want to put the recommendations into practice right away.