This morning, I came across an article on CNNMoney.com titled “America’s Most Admired Companies” and found a section regarding Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. (I seem to like to write about Apple!). Upon being asked about choosing a strategy to market to consumers, this is what Steve Jobs said:

“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when launching Apple’s retail stores]. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great product.”

This brought me back to Professor Elaine’s class on market research and consumer behaviour. I was quite puzzled as to how Apple Inc. has managed to become so successful in its industry apparently without spending resources on market research. Market research enables the company to gain insight on different segmentations of the market and the general consumer behaviour within these varied segments. This will then allow the company to focus their market strategy in order to differentiate itself. I came to a conclusion that since Apple Inc. is already very differentiated to other technology companies (ie. Apple software is entirely different than that of PCs), perhaps that is why they do not do market research. Yet, I am still very confused about how Apple Inc. has been able to generate such great success without this important marketing aspect… is Steve Jobs hyperbolizing the situation?