MarketTools Blog

Many market research RFPs and proposals lack well-defined objectives – and sometimes the objectives are completely missing.  Two observations are relevant to this topic:

• In Wonderland, Alice asks the Cheshire Cat, “Please, can you tell me how to get out of here?"
   
  The cat replied, “Well, that depends on where you want to go.”
   
  Alice answered, “Anywhere, as long as it's away from here.”
   
  “Well then, any road will take you there,” was the cat’s wise reply.

For years, people have told me I should write a book.  I ask them what should I write about and they say, “You’re always telling stories, why don’t you write a book of all of your stories?”  Then I ask, “Well who would read that, let alone buy it?”  And they say, “Well, I would.”  I guess that this is a rudimentary form of marketing research similar to “Do you like my new dress?”  You can ask a question and get an answer, but at the end of the day, this is misleading research which will lead to a bad business decision.

Now - back to the point about me writing a book.  I’m not sure that I have a book in me, but I sure do have a lot of chapters that I could write.  And the first chapter is What Are We Trying To Do?

When I was on the client side, the Marketing teams would come to me and say, “We need an Attitude and Usage Study.  What will it cost?”  I had two ways of responding to this.  The first way was obnoxious – “Do you want fries with that”.  The second way was more thoughtful – “What are you trying to learn?”