Forget big data, go for small data and real customers - 3 tips for better market research leading to innovation

In the film The Big Short, Mark Bair has his team go out and meet real home owners and that's when they realise the housing bubble is a real problem. It allowed them to earn millions by being right when everyone else - who looked at the numbers and the big data - was very wrong. The film is based on a true story of course. Instead of analysing data, Mark and his team went to Florida and met real people involved in the housing market reality, see a clip here:

You're not a real marketer and you're not going to be great at innovation unless you meet real customers. And you should want to meet them regularly. All the big data in the world, number crunching, pages of charts and verifiable insights from econometric modelling, will not beat the learning you get from meeting real customers and having real conversations. Or even just watching how they buy products in your category (your product or a competitor). Now that non-essential retailers are opening again, it is a perfect time to stand two or three metres away from your customers and watch them shop. 

So get out there, and walk the channel. This week I checked in on a car dealer as they re-opened in Ascot and I am pleased to say they were busy as hell. Working for Nokia in Beirut I used to love going to the beautiful ABC shopping mall in Achrafieh to watch people buying mobile phones. I bought the marketing team lunch once or twice as a bribe to get us into retail at street level to see what was really happening. Also at Nokia, I accompanied a real customer buying a real mobile phone as they browsed from shop to shop and weighed up the brands and the offers. I wasn't allowed to say who I worked for or offer any advice. It was brilliantly educational.

Small data should always be straight from the customer's mouth, and your job is to listen, not speak. Ideally, it should be collected as verbatim comments with no judgements or analysis until later. A Range Rover Sport PHEV customer once told me; "I only bought a plug in hybrid because I thought the government was about to change the law on taxing diesels, I really don't care about the environment". It was insightful and honest. He would NOT have said the same thing in a market research questionnaire or a focus group. That's the key point. To get honest, get with real customers not folks who you've paid to be in your research project. People who you've paid, or bribed with coffee and donuts, will lie to you. For more on that, read my article on the The Mom Test here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/mom-test-how-do-market-research-like-speedy-startup-fitzgerald/

There are other ways to meet real customers besides your retailers. Some categories have clubs and enthusiast meetings like in the auto industry. Some have online forums run by particularly expert prosumers. These people are especially worth listening to, in many cases they know your product better than anyone in your business. Some brands even have collectors and investors - these folks should be your first port of call for some deep insight.

Here are three things you should do with real customers:

(1) Get with them

Just spend time being with them. When they're buying or using your product. For example, for Ineos trying to build a better SUV than Land Rover they should watch how people use that product every day. Marketers and Product Designers should be sitting in with the Land Rover customer to learn what annoys them about the too small petrol tank or the too-high loading tailgate.

(2) Get weird with them

Meet the people who have an extreme relationship with your brand. Avid enthusiasts and collectors know loads about your product. Try to also meet the rejectors and the haters if you dare. I guarantee you will learn loads. JLR in MEA listened to Toyota LandCruiser buyers and were told that a spare tyre for the Toyota was dead easy to buy just about anywhere whereas Defender tyres were hard to find. So they made the put the new Defender on the same tyres as the LandCruiser. Problem solved, easily - by listening.

If you're looking for innovation, try meeting people in the category who are not using your product at all. To think about future mobility solutions, for JLR InMotion Ventures, I spent a day travelling around the London Tube with the chap who holds a world record for stopping every single station in less than 24 hours. Despite being germaphobic and not a fan of being underground, by the end I could see how fast and efficient it was and I was convinced that we need ZipCar and other car sharing stations at Zone 6 tube stations even more than we need them at Zone 1 rail stations (which is where they mostly are).

The people with extreme and unusual relationships with your category are the ones who invent new things by themselves. People on a kale and seaweed diet or making their own shampoo are the ones predicting the future of FMCG categories right now.

(3) Get a work-around with them

People have problems and challenges in life. The smartest people produce work-arounds. They solve problems by themselves. In the history of the Land Rover Defender thousands of people have modified and changed and tweaked the vehicle to do what they want it to do in a DIY way. These basic daily innovators should be teaching JLR how to innovate and make fantastic accessories and after-sales parts that do exactly what customers want. Learning from them will teach you things that no amount of market research data could give you. Many great innovations started as simple solutions for a single problem until people realised it could solve lots of problems (Facebook and eBay are examples as they started so small in their intent as to be almost microscopic business ideas - but still good ones).

So if you're a marketer, a product manager or any kind of innovator, remember that you're out of the loop as soon as you stop talking to real customers. So do it, not just once in a while, but every chance you get. Of course, it also helps if you are using your own product daily too. If you haven't yet finished inventing your product then get your MVP and get out on the road to places where category consumers are and start showing people what you've got as soon as possible. Nothing beats real customer feedback. Listen to every word. Write down verbatims. Small data beats big data everytime.