Secrets of marketing research

I've read that some large companies are using Twitter as a source of customer feedback. They search Twitter or other social media for mention of the company or product name...and respond when appropriate.

That gave me the idea embedded in this blog title, writing about the secrets of marketing research.  I thought about writing several blogs on the subject that would be helpful to businesses.

The more I thought about it the more absurd the idea became.

Marketing Research is a state of mind, a worldview, requiring extensive learning and experience... no different and certainly no less complex than being an electronic engineer, a neuro-surgeon or a gas turbine designer.

Marketing Research is a technical discipline based on several tent-pole concepts: 

1) The designer(s) of any marketing research project is filled with biases.  Most biases will be embodied in the final product but every effort must be made to think about and identify the most serious biases that will distort the value of the final product. (You can't be a pacifist and interview combat soldiers.)

 2) Research subjects: Any group of humans, who are strangers to one another, will have a wide variety of attitudes, opinions and experiences that can not be probed reliably.  The best research outcome is one that is repeatable, stable over time and easy to interpret. Most surveys tools need to be tested and tested again to learn what they mean to respondents. (Think how long it takes many juries to reach a verdict.)

3) The individual mind is generally inadequate in making reliable predictions about its own planned behavior, its own future actions or future reactions to events.  Actual measures of past behavior are significantly more reliable than statements about future behavior. (Insofar as people can remember, which they often can't.)

Back to Twitter comments being used by large companies.

It is difficult to know why someone comes into your store or doesn't, why someone reads your whole Web page or doesn't, but when they tell you freely and spontaneously, you need to listen.

It is always worthwhile in business to get as much feedback on any subject as you can.  Notify customers, former customers and potential customers of your Twitter, Facebook, 800 phone number and email contacts.  Welcome comments especially complaints, which are the best source of product improvements. It is sometimes worth paying your customers to give you complaints, but make sure they can give you unsolicited advice.