Yoshinori Fujikawa
( yfujikawa@ics.hit-u.ac.jp) is
an associate professor of international business strategy
and associate dean of external affairs at Hitotsubashi
University’s Graduate School
of International Corporate
Strategy in Tokyo.
THE COMPANY has a lot more customer
research to do. Customers’ views about the
TF’s NextStage stores are anything but consistent. Even within the mind of a given individual, feelings can vary from intensely positive to intensely negative. Customers may not
be aware of the contradictions. It’s in this kind
of situation that traditional research methods,
which assume that customers can verbalize
their feelings, do a poor job of helping marketers form a coherent picture of customer
attitudes. The company needs to dig into consumers’ conscious and unconscious minds.
A large pharmaceutical company recently
did such digging to understand how consumers felt about two of its pain relievers – one
based on acetaminophen, the other on ibuprofen. Traditional research had showed that
the two analgesics were poorly differentiated – that consumers saw them as interchangeable. Accordingly, strategists were
Traditional research doesn’t help
marketers form a coherent picture
of customer attitudes.
baffled about how to make each product
stand out on its own.
In one-on-one research that probed into the
deep metaphors used by consumers, heavy
users of the two medications were asked to
select images that represented their thoughts
and feelings about the products. Many chose
pictures of mothers. It turned out that people’s
choices about pain relievers were strongly
influenced by what their mothers had given
them. By probing more deeply, the company
discovered that acetaminophen moms were
different from ibuprofen moms. Some of the
consumers recalled from childhood that when
they awoke with runny noses, headaches,
and sore throats, their mothers brought them
soothing drinks, told them to stay home, and
gave them acetaminophen. Others recalled
being told to get up, get dressed, and go to
36 Harvard Business Review | July–August2008 | hbr.org
school, despite their illnesses. Those kids
tended to get ibuprofen.
The company now had the beginnings of
a coherent picture: Customers seemed predisposed to believe that acetaminophen is for
when you’re staying home and taking care of
yourself, and ibuprofen is for when you want
to go to work or school despite being sick.
Hence, consumers’ feelings about the products were potential sources of differentiation.
The company used that insight to reinforce
this distinction in its marketing, creating very
different positioning for the products.
It could be argued that, statistically speaking, the company relied on a very small sample
to gather this information. Indeed, it’s simply
not practical to do lengthy interviews with
large numbers of people. That’s why many
companies use research of this type to help
them formulate a hypothesis that can then be
validated (or shot down) through traditional
quantitative research. A similar process could
help Tibal Fisher create a coherent vision of
what aging boomers really want – and what
they don’t. The company could then commission large-scale surveys and other forms of
research to confirm its hypotheses.
Research methods of this type, which stem
from psychology and cognitive science, have
another important function: They provide insights into how to create an emotional bond
with consumers that can’t be easily imitated
by competitors. Such a distinction is critical to
businesses in today’s marketplace, with product commoditization jeopardizing profits.
Some businesses can do all this without
deeply researching customers’ feelings. Generally, those companies are led by executives
with an innate talent for sensing how the customer feels and thinks. Those leaders, in a
sense, function as “professional consumers,”
instinctively channeling customer feelings
into the company’s marketing and branding.
But even a superbly tuned-in marketer can
falter in his ability to read consumers’ desires
and dislikes. In the long term, firms need to
build an organizational capability and create
a systematic approach to discovering what’s
going on in customers’ minds.
