How can market research be strategic when it plays more of a support role?

Question:  You ended your column last Friday with the claim that “from a mere support to marketing decisions, … the role of market research has taken on strategic significance.”

You said the three cases you cited relating to feminine wash, telco remittance and rice porridge “prove that market research is strategic.” In our company, our market research people are more humble.  They are happy to play the support role.  Our president says that it is the use and therefore the user of market research who is strategic.  It is not market research and therefore not the market researcher who is strategic.

We hope you won’t mind our saying that that we believe this is the one time you’re mistaken.

Just because you are an “institution” in the market research industry does not mean you can make that industry an institution and give it a strategic stature.  But we’d like to hear your explanation.

Answer: I welcome your view that’s challenging mine.  But let’s talk specifics.  Consider the rice porridge case cited in last Friday’s column.  The market research in that case found that the correct competitor to target was not another rice porridge brand but the mother’s rice porridge preparation.

How did the company use this market research finding?

Market research gave the data to the product development people.  The product development people then worked on those data to redevelop the pretested porridge until it equaled the mother-prepared porridge.  Then, market research again product tested the redeveloped porridge.
Where’s the strategy?  Where’s the use of market research?  In this particular example, the strategy and the use of market research can be seen in how the product development people used the research finding to redevelop the pretested rice porridge according to the market research results.  So does it follow then from your president’s argument that the use of the market research for the product redeveloping was strategic while the product testing research was not?

Suppose we transform market research into its “verb” form just like product redevelopment was transformed into its action form as “product redeveloping?”  So market research is now termed as market researching.  Does transforming the “noun,” market research, into its “verb” make it strategic or at least sound strategic?

Let’s extend the argument.  Just suppose the market research conducted was wrong as it was wrong in the original product testing design where the first rice porridge was tested against another rice porridge brand?  If that was wrong, then market research ceases to be a support.  If you follow this line of thinking, what happens is that the use of the research also becomes wrong—like when market research results are used as basis for crafting an advertising campaign when the product retesting still shows that the redeveloped porridge still fall short of the mother’s rice porridge standard.  This wrong use cannot definitely be labeled as anywhere near being strategic.

Tricky sophistry

This sounds like some kind of tricky sophistry and, more or less, it is.  Your president’s distinction between market research as only a support and its use as strategic falls under this flawed logic.  So let’s shift the direction of our analysis.  Let’s restart and ask: “what is strategic, anyway?”

In marketing, a subject (like market research) or an activity (like using market research) is strategic if it provides true and authentic added value to the target consumer to constitute a competitive advantage for the brand.  In last Friday’s column, I said correct market research is a competitive advantage.  How?  When the correct market research lets you know something about your consumer and your market that is unknown to your competitors, that’s a competitive advantage.

Consider the feminine wash case cited in last Friday’s column.  The pH Care market research found that among the total population of menstruating women, 82 percent were non-users.

Strategic role

This was unknown or unappreciated by competition, especially the implication that the much larger target market was not the category users of 18 percent but the 82 percent who constitute the non-users.  It cannot be denied that that market research was responsible for the brand’s unprecedented first year entry market share of 52 percent.  If there’s any competitive advantage to talk about, this was it.  That makes market research strategic.

So when you’re asked again if market research is strategic, think about responding according to your answer to this question: “Does the correct market research give a competitive advantage?”  This is the same question you must answer when considering if the use of market research is strategic: “Does your use of market research give you a competitive advantage?”  If the answer is ‘no,’ then it is likely that you are not using market research the right way.

Keep your questions coming.  Send them to me at [email protected].