Jim Heskett 
Is it my imagination, or is marketing research and interest in customer views on anything of importance on the wane? The thought was triggered by Steve Jobs' initial response to reports that customers were having trouble with the antennae on Apple's iPhone 4, its latest "superproduct." It was reported that he commented that iPhone 4 users would have to learn not to hold the phone by its lower left-hand corner, precisely the way many of us seem to grasp it naturally. Remember, this is a company that has been described by a number of its chroniclers, rightly or wrongly, as being somewhat averse to the use of marketing research as opposed to following the dreams and preferences of its product developers. Apple is perhaps the latest incarnation of SONY, which is said to have avoided such research in favor of its designers' opinions in coming up with products such as the Walkman. Apparently, the thinking is: Who needs customers' opinions or reactions when you can come with ideas and products like these?
It prompted me to go back to a very popular book of five years ago, Blue Ocean Strategy, to check my recollection of what the authors had to say about the role of the customer in fashioning a strategy that would enable an enterprise to escape from red, blood-strewn, competitive waters and fashion a course into the open, blue waters of market dominance, mainly through the design of new businesses and products before the competition might get to them. They wrote, "To set a company on a strong, profitable growth trajectory … it won't work to benchmark competitors … Nor is conducting extensive customer research the path to blue oceans [italics mine]. Our research found that customers can scarcely imagine how to create uncontested market space. Their insight also tends toward the familiar 'offer me more for less.' And what customers typically want 'more' of are those product and service features that the industry currently offers."
That brings me to a new book, Different, by Youngme Moon, a member of the marketing faculty at the Harvard Business School. She reacts to the proliferation of products and advertising that are so much alike that they create a blur in consumers' minds. Her call is for methods that will lead to counter-intuitive product development and marketing efforts—products, for example, that provide breakthroughs by offering less for much less or even more for much less, but products that meet needs that most of us can't even imagine. She describes how, by testing various product attributes through marketing research and shoring up the weakest, all competitors' products take on the same characteristics. As she puts it, "Meanwhile, the very instruments that these managers are relying on to establish and reinforce differentiation—competitive metrics, positioning maps, and customer surveys—have devolved into their obverse. They contribute to the herding behavior as opposed to protect against it [italics mine]. It's as if the entire community has been betrayed by the tools of their trade."
I have no particular brief for traditional marketing research. But is there a pattern here? Is it possible that "asking the customer" about anything of strategic importance is on the wane? If so, what are the implications for customers as well as those selling to them? What is customer opinion good for? What do you think?
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James Heskett is a Baker Foundation Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School.
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