Market Research that Uncovered State Farm was Missing a Key Customer Segment

Beware the market research company that does all types of market research.     Most companies don't actually do all types of Market Research at all, least not well.    And t

Credibility is an issue for all businesses, but it's especially critical for a small business (or relatively unknown company - especially in what most consumers believe to be a mature product marke

I'd thought that toilets were pretty much a commodity product and that most were purchased primarily on price.    But on a recent trip to Tokyo, Japan I experienced something that completely cha

A number of factors have combined to cause radio advertising sales to decline for the last several years in the United States.    But

In order to advertise effectively, a company must know how many of their customers, or potential customers fall within a standard population of 1000 people (or some measure of likelihood of bumping

Portions of this blog entry are taken out of a recent WSJ article by David Brooks article called “Demography is King”.    His art

Once a person knows something, it's hard to remember what it was like to not have that knowledge (or know-how).     In the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, they describe the way that m

There is a fast growing movement to improve the reputations of many types of companies to have customers perceive them as doing more than just selling products and making a profit.    A growing

There are a lot of new product development research projects that I do, where one of the most important questions is “do we think that this new product will cannibalize existing sales of

Wrigley’s gum – what can anyone find to argue about it?

A “business dashboard” is really not much more than a list of business metrics, generally with a simple indication, such as color coding, that indicates whether the particular met

Everyone wants more time and you don’t have to be wealthy to be willing to pay a premium to save some time.

In case you didn’t already know it, Startbuck’s Coffee has hit a rough patch lately.

"The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World” by Tim Harford.