“Market Research is Dying”

ChoiceIT.com - powerful feedback from in-depth, independent choices

Most market research is out-of-date. Opinions are canvassed a year or more prior to product introduction into a world where market shelf-life is now measured in months rather than years. Furthermore, pace of change is fuelled by global competition and then driven by the speed of consumer fads and fashions. So what chance does traditional market research have in these times, and more importantly - of what use is it? It will probably continue to survive, but fail to represent the very truths that it seeks, and from which we as consumers, deserve to benefit.

Why for example, is it that most cars in any given year seem to have the same shape and features, and yet many of us yearn to have a motor that somehow stands out from the rest? And are car manufacturers aware that after paying out £500 damage for a 5mph shunt, some of us might actually prefer impact-resistant bumpers?

We need “real-time” feedback, where traditional sampling techniques are replaced with responses from precisely the people that manufacturers are targeting. Next, we need to somehow date-stamp those responses. Why? Because we are human, and react to our surroundings, changing our views over time, in response to the external and commercial influences that continually bombard us.

ChoiceBiz’s approach to this dilemma, was to identify the needs of all the relevant parties - shoppers, manufacturers, retailers and researchers. Next, to somehow combine those needs in a mutually supportive way, into a single web-site. The site needs to accommodate an ever-expanding range of retail product categories and services, and to have potential for international scope. After 5 years development, www.choiceit.com went live earlier this year, using this approach and which has already earned placement within WebUser’s “best new sites” category.

It works in the following way. As shoppers apply constraints and preferences against as many features as required, thumbnail photos of unqualified products visually fall away revealing a personalised shortlist from which they can view full details before linking to retailers.These linked retailers are further qualified by location and price, and benefit by receiving visits to their sites from hot prospects having already shortlisted their products.

At the same time, these shopper preferences accumulate into a powerful on-line database from which market researchers can view graphs and download statistics. These provide valuable answers to questions like:

“For the last 3 months for men (aged 35-42) in Guildford:

• Which options were preferred?
• What features were important/irrelevant?
• How they rated your product against the competition
• Contrast all of this, with the period before the last sales launch.”

Suprisingly, this level of detail has been achieved without compromising the anonymity and privacy of the shoppers. Feedback like this gives both researchers and manufacturers a better idea of what we consumers really want in a product. This in turn should lead to the generation of better shaped products. www.choiceit.com makes this possible, while offering us as shoppers, an easy and enjoyable way from which to choose those products.