Posts Tagged ‘market_research’
Customers are a moving target
Customer research is more than just describing the WHO they are. It’s also about describing the WHAT they want.
Think about your product or service. It’s not just about WHAT you want to produce. It’s also about WHAT the customer wants to buy. Customer research is about understanding customer wants and need. Needs are the must-haves. Wants are the nice-to-haves.
As markets and products become more mature (or no longer new), features and functions may change from a want to a need. For example, when thumb drives (also known as memory sticks or flash drives) first became available a small one had 56 kb or 128 kb of memory and 1 mb memory sticks were expensive. Now, as the market for thumb drives has matured, 1 gig memory sticks are common. That is a clear example of features and functions changing as the market matures. What was a nice-to-have has become a minimum requirement.
One of the goals of customer analysis and competitive analysis is to track the shift. As the market changes so must your business and your product or service.
All this is to say it’s okay to start smaller and simpler. Continuous improvement and customer feedback will help make the newer and better version more enticing to your customer.
