What is Product Needs Research?
Product Needs Research answers the question "How well
does your product or service match your customer's needs
and wants?"
The Benefits of Knowing Product Needs
Knowledge about product needs lead to the
development of new products and product extensions that bring new customers
and repeat business from existing customers. Product Needs
Research yields the
necessary information to:
-
improve market
acceptance of product
-
better plan their
business, marketing and sales activities
-
uncover unmet product
needs
-
improve product line
decisions
-
product life-cycle
decisions
-
uncover positioning
opportunities
-
improve market
decisions
-
increase customer
base
-
increase revenues
-
adjust to competitive
threats
Research Methodology
To define a product line strategy, Steiner
Marketing uses product need information from these sources:
-
user requests and
concerns
-
unmet potential users
needs
-
unmet distributor needs
-
suggestions from
company employees, especially sales force,
-
customer service
employees, and engineering
-
attributes that work
for competitors
-
general trends
(sociological, economical, regulatory, technology,...)
Steiner Marketing's Product Needs Research is
a 5-step process:
-
We gather information from all sources cited above.
-
We distill the special attributes
and list them without ranking.
-
The attributes are tested and ranked
for importance with current and potential customers.
-
The
result is a list of persuasive attributes for each target
market. These persuasive attributes are then clustered to
formulate an ideal product line strategy.
-
Optional: Sometimes feasibility issues arise and your
company cannot implement persuasive attributes for marketing,
financial or technical reasons. This situation may require
that only feasible attributes are implemented. This approach
is risky since a competitor is capable to
implement the fundamental persuasive attributes and increases
market share at your company's expense.
Generally, the development of products and
services with persuasive attributes leads to new or deeper
markets, new customers and an increase in revenues.
Get Your Questions Answered
If you have any questions about product needs, give us a call or
send us an email.
We will be happy to answer your questions.
Other Market Research from Steiner
Marketing
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