The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

15.1. Introduction

Exercisers throw a towel over the treadmill console. Office workers paste FedEx label holders on the front of a filing box. Day Timer® users clip printouts to the cover of their binders. Dry-erase calendar users keep a second calendar and wait until the last day of the month to erase the previous weeks' outdated information. Identifying and understanding everyday customer behaviors like these are the foundation of contextual research, a relatively new research technique introduced in this chapter. Contextual research uses information about what people do, rather than what they think, to drive new product development that is innovative and naturally resonates with other people in the same situation.

In what ways does your company come to understand customers' needs? Or do you already have a good handle on them? Surprisingly, even with the spectacular growth of market research over the past two decades, many companies resist conducting research on and with their customers. It is understandable why this is so. For one, it is hard to accept that "the market" may somehow hold more information than the company who owns a significant share of it. For another, through its normal operational activities such as sales and technical support, companies feel they are "hearing" the customer's voice. The challenge doesn't seem to be knowing more about the market, but keeping up with requests from customers. Finally, to many professionals, marketing research seems just to confirm ...