Are your customers revealing their true preferences?

"The warm-up is a practice long familiar to "live" TV audiences, sports stadium crowds and the athletes themselves – it's all about getting people ready for the experience. And, when trying to glean accurate market insights and product preferences, warming up customers is now strongly recommended for researchers, brands and others. According to a recent study, putting consumers in the right frame of mind to consider what they really want is particularly important for product developers and those who help them uncover customer preferences, not least because a mistake can be extremely costly when new products flop or fall wide of the mark. To figure out what they really want and to make the right call, consumers need knowledge and time to think deeply or "self-reflect" on their choices before making a decision. A recent study finds that asking consumers to state preferences cold, without the benefit of sufficient self-reflection, is a risky business, particularly when the method used is qualitative and unstructured – and this includes some old research favourites: focus groups and interview discussions. Self-reflection is crucial for discovering the true voice of the consumer, and it may lead to reduced development costs and, ultimately, more successful products, the researchers claim." Songting Dong, BusinessThink, 17 August 2016 Read more