The purpose of consumer research is to .......?

Hi,

Today's Cape Town photograph, absolutely beautiful. When riding the Argus Cycle Tour I always find the stretch from Simonstown to Ocean View the toughest. When cycling that long climb up to Smitwinkelsbaai I always remind myself to look left and on seeing a view as beautiful as this makes the one hundred and ten kilometer cycle worthwhile. 

Between Simonstown and Cape Point.

The purpose of consumer research is to fine-tune your marketing strategy. 

Over the last couple of days I have been thinking about marketing orientation, segmentation, target markets and marketing strategy. Irrespective of all the clutter and competing offers in the marketplace, the question we all need to ask ourselves is what are we doing to improve the value that our customers derive from doing business with our organisations?  I am currently reading Consumers by Arnoud, Price and Zinkham and discovered another perspective on strategy. They identify four strategy types: prospector, defender, analyser and reactor.

Defender: Firms with a narrow product market, a stable customer group, an established organisation structure, typically managed by older executives. If your company is defending I suggest you schedule a brainstorming exercise in-house and see how many ideas your team can come up with as regards attracting "New Users and finding New Usages for your product range (market development and product development). Once you have had your in-house brainstorming session, schedule another with customers and non-users and ask them to perform the same exercise. I am sure that you will be amazed by what the second group delivers. 

The defender focuses on protecting an established position by attempting to lower costs to increase value to customers. Where is your new growth going to come from and if you do not change anything where will you be in three years time? In my opinion  defending is doing more of the same, over and over and accepting that the organisation is trapped in the mature phase of the life-cycle. Become more entrepreneurial, appoint a "Maverick" to your management, someone younger, who thinks differently and comes from a different industry. Place this person in charge of your future growth and together with your CEO determine where you would like to be in five years time and allow the "Maverick" to get you there. In the next post we will look at the Prospector strategy, much more exciting!

Until next time, have a great Thursday!

Ciao.