The other day I was trying to convince my wife that it would be a good idea for me to go out on the town with my cousins while she took care of our 4 month old.
Sometimes you can get an idea across in a couple of minutes, maybe only in a sentence. Other times it seems like you just can’t get the point across.
Next time you have a new idea to share, try Continue reading
People really like quantitative research. You sound really smart when you can say “33% of iPod owners use their iPods less than once a month”, or “17% of white males between 25 and 45 who earn more than 60k a year own a game console”. Numbers are hard to argue with, and specificity implies knowledge.
Quantitative research can be a lot of hard work. There are the basic things you need to do for any quantitative research like:
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Title: The Tipping Point
Author: Malcom Gladwell
Topics: Awareness paths, Product adoption
You should read if: you are planning to drive adoption of a new product or service.
Description: In the Tipping Point, Mr. Gladwell describes three kinds of people, Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen, and their roles in spreading ideas. There are similarities to the concepts of Inside the Tornado, though in Tipping Point they are grounded in pop culture examples as opposed to high tech products. A useful read for the product manager who is thinking about viral marketing campaigns as a component of a product launch awareness effort.
Consumer research is an important part of product line planning. Knowing what your target customer wants, and often more importantly, what they “need”, provides a robust framework for defining a product or service value proposition. Consumer research is not only valuable in product planning, and can help enhance attributes of your current products by better understanding who your customer is, and fine tuning the product positioning and placement.
There are generally two categories of consumer research: qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative research usually involves in depth conversations with a small number of people, maybe 10 or 20. Quantitative research usually employs a research tool like a questionnaire or survey to get a statistically relevant read of a sample population, often more than 100 people and sometimes as high as 2000.
