{"id":9683,"date":"2012-05-07T13:00:10","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T20:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=9683"},"modified":"2012-05-10T09:18:05","modified_gmt":"2012-05-10T16:18:05","slug":"finding-customers-a-deceptively-simple-lesson-from-sony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=9683","title":{"rendered":"Finding Customers: A Deceptively Simple Lesson from Sony"},"content":{"rendered":"
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via Flickr by Jeremy Brooks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What\u2019s the definition of a healthy company? One of the most important metrics to consider is how much revenue is coming from new products. Category leaders often have significantly higher new product revenue compared to their less successful peers. New products are the lifeblood of healthy companies, and it follows then, that finding new customers is a fundamental requirement, one that often falls to product management.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So, how exactly do you find new customers?<\/p>\n

In the most basic terms, finding new customers is a two-step, iterative process. First, you have to decide on market segments to investigate, ones in which you think your product or idea will offer benefits, and then second, you need to test your hypothesis in each segment to see if you\u2019re right. You try one, and then move to the next, on and on until you\u2019ve aggregated a \u201ctotal available market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big companies spend a lot of money on segmentation and other research tools. Since the 1970s, large databases have collected information on individuals from a wide range of sources, public and private (e.g., financial and medical data). There is a detailed record on virtually every person in the United States, and in most other developed countries. These large databases allow you to access profiling information broken down into distinct attributes. The most common attributes are related to demographic and geographic descriptors, and after that, usage and transactions. These are definitive: you are of a specific age, you live in a specific zip code, you have a specific income level, and you either drive a given brand of automobile, belong to a certain country club, live in a specific neighborhood, collect jazz music, or you don\u2019t. There are also subjective variables based on attitudes or needs, which, historically, were discovered through questionnaires. (One of the promises of Facebook is that it will bring both kinds of data to you, accessing a universe of 900 million prospects, with the click of a mouse.) And then there\u2019s tools for testing your hypothesis as well. Familiar names like concept testing, prototype testing, test markets, and focus groups \u2014 and more esoteric names like multi-attribute models, conjoint analysis or choice modeling \u2014 are but just a smattering of the options available.<\/p>\n

Modern research techniques can be compelling and even\u00a0intoxicating, but in my experience, it\u2019s easy to fall prey to the complexity of research and not see the forest for the trees.<\/p>\n

When I talk about finding customers, I often use Sony as an example. Sony\u2019s founder, Akio Morita and his team built twelve separate, major, disruptive businesses between the years 1950 and 1982. Yes, twelve.<\/p>\n

Remember that few of the research tools mentioned above were available in Akio Morita\u2019s time. Yet he was wildly successful. Was it luck? Not when you\u2019re talking about such a high number of breakthroughs. He had found a repeatable and predictable process, the holy grail of new product development.<\/p>\n

Akio Morita\u2019s approach was to select a target group and simply observe them going about their daily lives. It was his belief that if you understand the actions of your target and what makes them do what they do, you have what you need to find the perfect product \u201cfit.\u201d (It also doesn\u2019t hurt to have Akio Morita\u2019s creativity.) It may seem obvious, but I can\u2019t tell you how many marketing people I\u2019ve met that have never \u201cwalked in their customers\u2019 shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Field observation is \u201ccontextual,\u201d meaning that the environment provides important clues in determining root motivation. One weakness of focus groups and questionnaires is that they lack such context. Another is that customers may not realize why they take certain actions \u2013 the mind has a way of running on automatic pilot, and so customers have a hard time verbalizing true motivation.<\/p>\n

The Sony team was on to something. It found a deceptively simple way to pick up essential clues missed by other techniques. Today, the process of observing customers in the wild has a scientific name, ethnography, and it is a term that is being used increasingly by marketers of all sizes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s the definition of a healthy company? One of the most important metrics to consider is how much revenue is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[852],"tags":[1076,1074,1075],"class_list":["post-9683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pmbok-process","tag-apple","tag-customers","tag-sony"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9683"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9693,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9683\/revisions\/9693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}