The real value of market research is often overlooked

Learning the hard way... 

Moving ahead with new product development on the basis of one or two outspoken customer’s comments before researching the larger market can be a huge mistake.  Even your biggest and best customers can be out of step with the marketplace, according to Respironics’ Children’s Medical Venture product manager Jennifer Ireland.

By Peter Longini, Managing Editor

If there’s one thing Jennifer Ireland has learned the hard way through her career as a marketing communications and product management professional, it’s that the 80:20 rule applies as strongly to product marketing as it does in any other area of life.  And that making product development decisions by listening only to the largest, loudest, or best-connected customer can lead you to skip basic research and end up on the short end of that equation.  “There have been several instances where we heard from the customers who screamed loudest or who had really good sales representatives to scream for them.  Or where someone just happened to be at the right place at the right time and made a comment to somebody higher up in the organization, so that we ended up developing products based on their comments without going back to verify that the rest of the market was on the same page,” Ireland said.  That was a mistake.

Oral movement

“At Children’s Medical Ventures, for example, we had a whole set of products that stop a nurse from accidentally infusing a baby with breast milk.  Then a customer came to us and said they were moving to oral-only syringes, which have different adapters on the end than typical syringes.  So we built a version with oral adapters,” she recalled.  But she soon discovered that the larger market wasn’t going that direction. “That customer turned out to be one of the very first hospitals moving toward oral syringes.  So while we went and changed all six sets and tried marketing them to the entire industry, the rest of the market just wasn’t there,” she noted.  “It’s been almost two years and we’re finally starting to see more people moving toward oral syringes.  But it’s still an educational issue.  And it’s still not even 20 percent of the market.” 

Data points

So what should you do?  “Two things: one, go out and talk to more customers.  Do a formal survey.  Even if it’s just ten questions going out to 50 customers,” she advises.  “At least you’ll have some data to base your decision on and that will help you get people’s buy-in.  But it also gives you a checkpoint to ask yourself: ‘does this really make sense?’  “The other thing is to make sure those customers come from different regions.  A lot of times regional issues come up.  So if an incident happens with one hospital in the Northeast, other hospitals in the same area would hear about it and start adopting new practices,” she said.  But the rest of the country may never have heard about it.“Also, make sure you’re getting input from some of the smaller, outlying hospitals as well as from the big hospitals with high technology who are more on the cutting edge.  It’s seems so basic, but surveys and research are things that people still shy away from and don’t take the time to do.”That doesn’t just apply to health care products; it’s true throughout the technology industry.  “I still think many companies are missing the boat on doing formal surveys or focus groups and getting 10 or 20 customers together in a room,” she said.  “We’re still depending on informal conversations where people aren’t necessarily asked the same questions and they’re not asked in any structured way.  But it doesn’t take much to do it right.  It’s not rocket science to put together ten questions and send them out to 50 or 100 of your customers.  

Quick and easy

“We keep a list of our top customers.  And those customers tend to respond to emails and surveys from us.  They’re our biggest and most loyal customers.  We send the survey out to these 100 customers and ask them to give us their feedback.  And we get a really good response rate.  They fill out a simple form.  It’s quick and easy.  But at least it gives us some data points so we’re not just guessing and we’re not developing products for 10 percent of the market.” But even if you take the pulse of the industry, find the trends favor your idea, and decide to move ahead with a leading-edge product, more essential work remains, Ireland cautions.  “If you do decide to be ahead of the curve and proceed with this product, you’ll have to have the tools in place to help educate the market.  Educate the sales people, educate the customers.  Put some dollars and resources into educating people as to why they’d want to adopt this new process or product.”  Because that’s what it takes to move from serving the 20 percent side of the equation to the 80 percent side of the market.

About the Author:

Peter Longini is the Managing Editor for Inside Product Strategy™. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it