Last April 12, Fudan University School of Management’s Professor Zou Deqiang gave a lecture to the IMBA classes about market research: Action Oriented and Method Neutral. In front of the IMBA freshmen, Professor Zou illuminated the students on how to go about gathering information about the existing iLab projects and ones the students may have in the future.
The lecture talked about one issue: how the most popular of data gathering, the survey, just isn’t effective any more. There are more questions that need to be answered, and a survey constricts our data and results based on the assumption that we already know our market. Before any data gathering, we must first forumlate the proper questions about what it is we need to find out, and to figure out which research methodology is best.
The Professor started off by citing tweets from the very students in the classroom; tweets asking for respondents to answer a survey for their corresponding iLab projects. The Professor then goes on to speculate that we may be getting market information, yes. But are they useable?
The lecture also illustrated the Milkshake Project by Clayton M. Christensen, one where the students was introduced to a concept of viewing your products as an employee. What do your potential employers (eg. Your customers) want to hire your product for? What job is required of your product? When you figure out exactly what job it is your buyers require from your product, then you can go on to planning your marketing strategy. Milkshakes, as it were, were employed to make morning drives interesting and to make dads out to be the good cop.
As researchers, business analysts and consultants, data mining begins with asking the right questions. Once you have figured out a problem, you can choose what kind of research you need. Exploratory research is for ambiguous problems, descriptive research is for somewhat-defined problems, and causal research is for clearly-defined problems.
“Your research has to be objective-oriented, and not driven by your own preference,” Professor Zou advised, “Choose a research design on the basis of the problem.” The Professor also introduced the practice of ethnography; that is, putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. Airlines have tried to make flight services better for customers, but the only way to find out exactly what is wrong is to have the flight experience for yourself. Only when you become the customer can you understand what influences them.
Lastly, the students were left with the advice to start with questions and not data. Do not push your preconceived notions and ideas, but pull from objective experiences and research. Students were shown the research efforts of P&G in trying to find viable solutions for what they call the $2 a day consumers in the rural areas. They sent a team to investigate exactly what living conditions were like, and to find out what needs the people had that were not being met. It is this kind of investigative and immersive research that makes for accurate and actionable results.
by Angela Sy, 2012 IMBA
April 18, 2013
