Public demand and market research

I've just read an article on this month's Wired magazine, titled "Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business", and just in case you haven't read, I recommend. You can get it fore free at http://www.wired.com/free/ The article begins with a true story about King Gillette, his idea on disposable blades and his company, Gillette, "created public demand for disposable blades." This sentence immediately recalls what I've been thought on last Tuesday's entrepreneurship class, "Never try to create public demand". I can't stop thinking the seemingly conflict and the underlying essence that cause the tedious debate in marketing academia. I've got some points to share. So, let's begin with the public demand.

 

The debate, seems to me, is pretty much nothing more than playing around the word "create". Public demand can sometimes be implicit and blurry. Clearly from history, breakthrough new ventures are made possible largely because they met the human desire of convenience, comfort safety and ultimately, the desire to achieve. They revolutionized the market by injecting innovative products or larruping services. They didn't "create" public demands, but they definitely raised them. Entrepreneurs are mostly nothing more than problem solvers, but sometimes, they are also problem makers. Bring a problem to the world that nobody has ever foreseen, and then solve it in their unique way. Gillette is a perfect example. Before Gillette, no one has ever thought about problems about straight razor, just spending their time cleaning them after use day by day. Disposable blade was surely a revolutionary product. But wait a minute, what exactly the customers of Gillette are paying, is the money on the refill blades, rather than the razor, which is almost free! What do they get in exchange? Time saving and efficiency. Good deal, why not? Almost every business I can think of now, is pretty much the same, including Google. It's so impressed for me, that the word "Google" can be found nearly every marketing and venture model article publicized after year 2000. Google didn't create a demand, think about it. People didn't like research more because of Google. It just made research simpler and more reachable for grass roots.

 

So can the public demand be "found"? The answer is yes, definitely. The academia calls it "market research". Guess how much Sony spent on the market research for the Walkmans? Huge it must be huh? It truly was $0.00. Surprise? Well... not too much, how could you research a product that doesn't exist! That generally is the toughest question for any entrepreneurs who come up with revolutionary innovations. The answer to this dilemma, we reached on class is to research human behavior, needs and wants. After class, I went to the professor because I was so excited, but more curious on How. So I asked, Professor, could you recommend me a book on this? He said, why do you need a book? Just simply watch people. Bingo! A classic Harvard Business answer! I can't imagine how silly I was. The first reference I though is a book! I soon realize that I've been poisoned by the 20 years of classroom experiences and failed to pay attention on the people itself, a point which is so obvious.