When I hear “Market Research” there is a part of me that cannot help but associate these words with data, data— and nothing but data. As the word research already implies, market research has always seemed like a big research project to me: how many people with blonde hair buy this product, how many people in their early 20’s show interest in this product, or how many percentage of males or females demand this product? Categorization after categorization, market research has exhausted itself through analyzing past data (and here, let me emphasize the word, “PAST”) When in fact, reaching its goal, which is to understand what it is that consumers want in the FUTURE, is far simpler than we’ve all been making it out to be. I believe that one of the biggest breakthroughs in the field of market research was made by Professor Clay Christensen when he asserted that true market research is about discovering and pinpointing “The Job to Be Done”.

What Christensen really understood was that we as consumers don’t function like robots: we have X amount of income resulting in our purchase of Y amount of Z goods. We have dark skin, light hair or big eyes that make us want to purchase these products. As Christensen explained, these mentioned features have often times been misunderstood to be the causation of the consumer’s decision when in reality, it is a mere correlation (not to disregard the importance of identifying correlation).

In my opinion, Christensen’s market approach of identifying the job that consumers want products to fulfill is a more human approach to understanding consumer behaviors. Instead of judging a book by its cover, it is in fact taking an interest in the book and reading a chapter. Upon reading the book, researchers will understand that all humans pretty much have a common goal when going about their daily life which is: to make life easy or to make life entertaining. In other words, how does this product make my life easier, and going one step further, how do I expect this one product to fulfill one of my needs, and digging deeper, how am I going to keep myself entertained on the train to work every day? Oh hey, I have an idea… let’s use a Fishbone Diagram!

SOURCE:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6496.html