Marketing research for new products and services has got very slapdash over the last decade.  Too many studies are quantitative and ask people what they want by way of products and services.  Customers often don’t know  and the result is high levels of product failure.

What organizations should be doing is trying to understand what customers want to achieve, and how they themselves measure that achievement.  How many music lovers , for example, would have claimed  in research to have wanted an iPod shuffle facility: but what they do want is to hear music that enhances their mood.  Shuffle has an odd serendipity effect that does just that. 

When given the opportunity to invest in Trunki BBC  Dragons’ Den entrepreneurs turned it down flat - “no call for it” they said.  But the invention (10 years in development) has become one of the best selling luggage products of the summer of 2007; it keeps children entertained and solves their problem of standing amidst a sea of legs in boring airports queues. 

Marketing research should winkle out people’s problems and emotional triggers.  As an extreme example Jack Daniels has used MRI scans to gauge the emotional response of whiskey drinkers to various environmental contexts eg pub, at home.  Insight thus gleaned can be given to your staff, or better still, customer communities, to think about creatively.  Quick quantitative surveys really don’t cut the mustard.