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Traditional Market Research Methods And The Lead User Market

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Traditional market research methods and the Lead User market research process share a target outcome of identifying new market or product development opportunity. The Lead User research process differs from a traditional market research method at each step of the process, yet there are some fundamental similarities between the two. When a company chooses a target market or product line to perform market research on, traditional methods will often use an outside market research firm. The first focus of this firm is collecting information from current customers and sales representatives. The typical data collection methods include focus groups, customer surveys, and also site visitations by company scientists and product developers to see the product in-use at customer locations. In contrast, the Lead User research method starts with the formation of an in-company project team comprised of both market and technical personnel1. The project team first focuses on performing market research on their own within the area of interest and attempts to develop some project goals related to what the ultimate outcome of the project should be, such as an improvement on a current product or the development of an entirely new product1. The team then gathers information related to their target market through informal interviews. Both the traditional and Lead User process use interviews to gather date; however, the Lead User approach aims to interview more than just customers and sales

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