Pour that Market Researcher a Drink

I have a dim view of conventional market research too...especially for innovative, disruptive products and services.

Tom Peters: You have a very dim view of market research. A number of times you say that you don't figure out how to create a new luxury item by going out there and talking to consumers.

Michael Silverstein, Author of Trading Up: The New American Luxury: The biggest problem with conventional research is that it works with the general population. It doesn't work with segments. If you go out to middle America and you say, "Imagine this," middle America actually has trouble imagining this.

What they don't have any trouble with is seeing something tangible and saying, "That's fantastic." But if, ten years ago, you had described a $38 bottle of vodka in a premium class and said, "Would you buy it?" the general population would have said no. In fact, 92 percent of them would have said no. If the marketers had listened to the market research, we wouldn't now have Belvedere, Ketel One, and Grey Goose.

There are segments for whom vodka is very important. And they will pay $38 a bottle, and they'll buy a better class of product, and will create a new $500 million segment. Conventional market research against the general population would never have identified that segment.

(From Tom Peter's interview)