Market research is essential to the success of a business plan, whether it is for a new company or a company which is investing into a new product. This article discusses how market research creates success. Market research “involves dividing the customer base into target demographics”. In other words, market research is about finding the different preferences and tastes of certain groups of people, classified by different factors, such as age, gender and income level. However, according to Harvard Business school professor Clayton Christensen, “each year 30,000 new consumer products are launched – and 95% of them fail”.

This is because people do not buy a product just because of their age, gender or any other one specific factor. Rather, people tend to “take life as it comes”. I agree with the article in saying that companies should clearly figure out what “job” the consumer “hires” the product to do.  If this can be clearly segmented, then the course of action that the company needs to take to improve sales would be clear. And hence, market research is the key to success, since it gives the company an idea of what it needs to do to raise sales.