Part 2
I once issued a similar caution regarding new market insighting, which I had referred to as market understanding research. Here’s that warning: There are much more than a dozen ways to search and uncover new market opportunities to grow and even explode your business.
For a successful search, avoid two common traps. The first is the trap of allowing yourself to be held back by the traditional, the conventional practice or even by “best practice.” It’s the fear of the unfamiliar, the new that’s trapping you. It’s okay to be afraid, but don’t let it stop you from innovating, experimenting and taking the path least traveled.
The other trap is just as fatal. That’s the mindset that likes complex and “sophisticated” search and market understanding approaches at the expense of simple but richer ones.
‘New’ products
In my strategic market segmentation book, I tried to address this question: “If you want to grow your business, what is the true and ultimate source for that growth?” Most would say “new products” or “current products.”
The book challenged this answer by demonstrating that even if you have the most interesting product, if there’s no market segment in need of it, it will not sell and there will be no business growth. So it is in searching and identifying new market segments where the goal of business growing or even exploding the business can be realized.
It was relatively easy to obtain growth statistics to prove that when a new “unserved” market segment was uncovered, a three-digit growth was attainable. That kind of growth is what “exploding” is all about, or what pertains to new market insighting. The two-digit rate of more than 30 percent is what comes from identifying an “underserved” market segment. That’s the purpose and function of consumer insighting.
Later, the awareness and full recognition of the power of new market insighting reached its tipping point when Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne published in 2002 their best seller Blue Ocean Strategy book. They used a new term for new market segments. They referred to them as “uncontested new market spaces.” This term caught the fancy of many marketers and corporate strategists and it was probably the most significant and pivotal contribution to the reinvention of the rich concept of new market segments and the market segmentation strategy.
So it is in the direction and mission of the opportunity search where the difference between consumer insighting and new market insighting lies. In the preceding paragraph, we described consumer insighting as mainly concerned with the opportunities in going after the underserved market segments. On the other hand, we threw new market insighting into the mix to refer to the search for opportunities in the unserved market spaces.
Extending the preceding premises logically leads to justifying a consumer insighting seminar (later to become a new book) to cover the following topics:
(1) How to insight for your brand positioning’s big idea, big emotion or big story;
(2) How to insight for the big idea, big emotion or big story of your brand positioning’s execution, that is, its advertising;
(3) How to insight for market responsive pricing and price segmentation
(4) How to insight into the influences on consumer in-store shopping and purchasing behavior, and shopping behavioral segmentation.
The seminar will also cover: (1) how to insight new market segments for your existing product and brand, and (2) how to insight new market spaces for your new, redeveloped, and/or next generation product.
If you carefully take another look at all the preceding, you will certainly notice that what we are saying is that the discipline of market research has extended to two new branches: consumer insighting research, and new market insighting research. To be sure, there are overlaps but each has its own territory and unique contribution to helping marketers do a better job at growing and even exploding sales and market share.
Giving way
And that’s how it is with every discipline. The traditional gives way to the new, which is a nontraditional version of the old.
But here’s something all of us must recognize. As the influential futurist, Edie Weiner, has documented, every time something new and nontraditional comes, the old does not disappear and is not completely replaced by the new.
Instead, when the dust settles, it’s a hybrid of the new and the old that prevails.
At times, what you have is a hybrid of the new and all of the old ones. That’s so clearly demonstrated in our industry by the history of advertising media. When radio came, it predicted that the days of print were numbered. It did not happen.
Tri-media
While it suffered for a while, print survived and soon advertisers started placing their ads in both. Later, TV came, and similarly, TV announced that the days of radio and print were numbered. Similar to what happened with radio, the prediction did not come true.
Instead, we saw the eventual wide adoption of the tri-media practice. Ads were placed in print media, radio and TV. At the close of the last millennium, online media came along. In its own advertisements, online media told their audience that TV et al. should count their living days. But today, we are witness to the use of all four media.
This is our long way of saying that market research as the “old” in relation to consumer insighting as the “new,” and new market insighting as the “newer” has clearly NOT been merely rebranded by the new and the newer. It’s okay to be skeptical of anything “new.” But keep that period of skepticism as short as possible. Proceed to the next stage of understanding what real, practical and actionable utilities there may be in the offered “new” and “newer.”
Try and see if their promises of better ways of growing and exploding your business can benefit your own company. In writing us your question, this is where you are now and we’re glad. Please go on to the next stages and you won’t regret it.
* * *
Keep your questions coming, send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or post them at www.marketingrx.org. God bless!
