Richard's excellent adliterate blog has brilliant pictures and thought-provoking posts, but he doesn't half write some nonsense about research! Like his post which said, a lot of 'research' does not tell us what is going on and/or does not provide ideas.
It got me thinking, what makes research research, what makes it valuable?
For some reason I thought of the Pie Man. It is only a simple analogy, but ask yourself, can research help this guy sell more pies tomorrow than he did today?
I think the answer is YES. The reason is that, although research OBVIOUSLY cannot predict the future, it can and does tell you what is going on and give you ideas about what to do with that information. If you do it properly.
In our terms, doing it properly means having the right conversations with the right people. And it is the ideas that have the most value. As Stephen King said, you can’t make sense of facts until you’ve had an idea.
Consider that the pies here are the product - any product - and that the Pie Man and everything about him and his pies is the brand. Let's assume that all the pies that PM and his competitors sell are the same and that their price is fixed.
So we need some relevant information about what Pie Man does currently, how many he sold today, where he went on his rounds, for how long etc - basic, measurable stuff. We'd need the same kind of information about the other guys selling pies. We'd also look into how PM comes across, what he communicates, how he is presenting (positioning) the product. So we'd observe, listen and we'd talk to PM's customers and potential customers.
In the course of getting this information, of finding out what is going on, you would get ideas about how the brand is seen/comes across and what would help to improve this - how to increase sales. It's not rocket science, especially in this example, but it works.
What makes it research, rather than introspection or data mining or chatting to your mate down the pub? The way that the information has been gathered - the process. What makes it valuable? The ideas and the opportunities it makes possible. In this case, knowing how to sell more pies.
Kevin
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