I am honored to present this webinar sponsored by Grandview Product Management community on June 22nd, 2011.

There is a heated debate in a Product Management community about the Role of Market Research in creation of innovative products and I have mused on this subject earlier on this blog.

Product managers, who subscribe to a “thought leadership” (as oppose to “customer participation”) model, love to quote Henry Ford who supposedly said – “If I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a faster horse.”  The “customer driven innovation” camp proponents are swearing by Customer Feedback and Voice of Customer based methodologies. However there is no clear evidence that either site consistently out-innovate their opponents.

During this webinar we will explore and analyze traditional methods of product definition process, their limitations and their applications that often lead to incremental improvements as oppose to true innovation. We will talk about

• What separate a successful product from INNOVATIVE product
• What are differences between a Product Manager and a Star Product Manager , and
• How the knowledge of the market helps to close the gaps between the two.

Please click on this link to register

It is very hard to sell to people we don’t understand. We turn to market research for help to understand who our best potential customers are.  This quest usually starts with assumptions about common characteristics these people have to be predisposed to our products or services. It is common to assume that certain age and gender groups, or their residence, would make them more interested and capable to spend their money on our offering. Normally we come to these assumptions based on our personal experiences and intuition that we call “common sense”.

I wonder if that “common sense” is the same one that came with very accurate definition of what happen to us when we ASSUME?

I am sure that most people would prefer to KNOW instead of assuming and estimating, but there is no good way to know what does not exist yet. However there is a way of making better assumptions and estimates.

Steve Jobs is often and rightly credited as the genius behind Apple’s great success in assuming what consumers really want, but I wonder if there is a method behind his magic. Just how much sorcery is needed to figure out the requirements for iPod if you take a really close look on what customers, who purchased MP3 players, have experienced? Imagine watching these people figuring out tiny menus trying to find and play a music track they want to hear. Surely the age and gender may influence just how much of inconvenience one can tolerate, but the very fact that these people have made a decision to spend their money for something that is so imperfect, uniquely qualify them as a special market segment that supersede the traditional market segmentation criteria based on demographics.

The special applications tablets and digital e-readers were around for a few years and relatively large number of people and companies spent considerable time and money using these devices. Wouldn’t it make sense to learn from them what could make their investment even more compelling, and as the result attractive to even larger audience?

Consistency of the Apple success in introducing the products customers want suggests scalable methodology and transferable skill. I think the vision of current, successful products of your potential competitors as an early prototype of your future blockbuster is at the foundation of this methodology.  The skill of creative analysis of customer experience with these products provides a detail road map to the future success.

You are invited to register for the “Getting Your Customers to Do Your Marketing for You” webinar hosted by CEA.

Event Overview

DATE: Tuesday, January 25

TIME: 2-3 p.m. (ET)

Presenter: Gregory Yankelovich, CEO, Amplified Analytics

Register Now!

Please RSVP by Monday, January 24. Registration is limited.

Questions? E-mail the Webcast Team or call 703-907-7797.

Description:

Participants will learn the methods, techniques and best practices for use of online Word of Mouth (WOM) to stimulate demand for CE products; methodology and tools for market research of social media to measure product reputation and customer satisfaction without breaking the bank.

Who should attend:

Marketing Product Managers, Market Research and Market Intelligence professionals, PR and Marketing Communications professionals interested in product and brand equity management.

Presenter Bio:

Gregory Yankelovich has been involved with customer centric product management and marketing, CRM process best practices and their automation for the last 15 years. He currently serves as CEO of Amplified Analytics, the firm that specializes in use of opinion mining and natural language processing technologies for analysis of CE Customer reviews, word of mouth and other forms of customer feedback.

Please share this invitation with your colleagues and friends.

My hero, Peter Drucker, is often quoted to say (I paraphrase here) “What you cannot measure, cannot be managed” and this idea inspired many analytic initiatives by large companies as well as by budding startups, like this one. There are hundreds of companies that monitor, listen and analyze every aspect of web traffic, impact of media messages, both digital and analog, and just about anything else under the sun. There is surely no shortage of technology and tools, and current interest from businesses and consumers is quite high, but…there is still not enough conclusive evidence that measuring and managing to the specific parameter can produce measurable result. It often is still a challenge to interpret measurements into predictive models, that produce or support specific actions or decisions. Perhaps it is just my personal, limited experience and I look forward to be proven wrong  in your comments, but for now I would like to propose a few potential reasons for these disappointing experiences.

Is it possible that we often measure wrong things? Many people would argue that NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a meaningless thing to measure and the Social Media influence, measured by Klout and others, does not translate into any specific action. We often measure what is easy to measure, listen to what is easy to hear, without a difficult effort of understanding and interpreting into an action that can produce measurable improvement. Many people find it easy to identify metrics that measure the worth of their work:

salespeople have sales targets, production managers track whether inventory is delivered on time and under budget, but for most of us it is very difficult to associate and measure our direct contribution to the desired outcome.

Perhaps the most actionable metrics are derivative – a combination of a signal, statistics, interpretation and analysis. Measurement of atmospheric temperature and pressure, compared with historic observations and combined with predictive algorithms, do produce relatively reliable weather forecasts. Perhaps measuring multiple aspects of customer experience, compare them with competitive alternatives and combining it with  predictive algorithms, can produce more accurate sales forecast.

Is it possible that we have unreasonable expectations? We often expect direct causation while operating in an open system environment. Business environment is not a scientific experiment and unpredictability of market conditions cannot be isolated to prove validity of specific measurement methodologies.  We only can improve odds, but we often expect certainty. Uncertainty is the reason for any important measurement effort. Measurement improves confidence in a quality of the decision is supports, but it cannot guarantee an outcome, after all according to Warren Buffet “It is better to be approximately right than to precisely wrong.”