Business Math in Action

Making the Focus More Personal

The field of marketing tries to discover what people need, how badly they need it, and how much they are willing to pay for it. Large companies spend thousands of dollars each year on market surveys and focus groups to learn how people really feel about their products. If you’re a young entrepreneur, you may not have thousands to spend. Luckily, there are other options. The new trend in market research favors a more personal-and much cheaper-approach.

It’s no secret that people don’t always tell the truth on surveys and in groups. Sometimes they don’t even realize that they’re not being honest about the way they use or perceive a product. So inventive researchers decided to take a look at how people use products in real-life situations instead of formal research settings. The four methods below can easily be adopted by businesses with limited budgets.

Go into the field. Walk the aisles of the store where your product will be sold and watch people’s buying habits. If you’re creating a new snack food, go to a convenience store and observe people buying snacks. How long do they spend making a selection? What kinds of snacks are most popular? What type of packaging is chosen most often? Do people appear to be reading the calorie count? Checking the price? Is there a difference in the types of snacks chosen by men and women? Who buys more? You’ll need to spend enough time in the store to see a pattern emerge.

Film the action in the store. By setting up a video camera in a store, market researchers can see how dozens of customers react to products throughout the course of a day, a week, or a month. It’s the same as observing in person, only you can catch nuances you might miss or forget to write down, and you can replay the video to confirm your observations.

Watch how customers use your product in everyday life. With focus groups, people may hide negative reactions to a product, especially if they fear that asking a question will make them look stupid. In some cases, market researchers have gotten permission to set up video cameras in the homes of consumers to observe how they really use the product. For instance, people testing a new food processor would have a camera set up in the kitchen and turn it on when they’re preparing a meal. As they work, they can comment on what they like and dislike about the appliance.

Have consumers keep a snapshot diary. In this method, people are given disposable cameras and asked to take photos that relate either to the product or to a need the product will address. For instance, women might be asked to take photos of the way their hair looks throughout the day. On each photo, they would jot down comments about their hair: when they like it, when they don’t, how the humidity affects it, what products they routinely use, and what type of product they wish they had.