I recently came across a new ad for Domino’s Pizza where they show a clip of focus groups they conducted with consumers about their products. I’m lovin ‘it! The message was clear: they listened to their customers. Their management and product teams were brave enough to pay attention to what customers think. I will be eternally grateful to Domino’s Pizza for the message sent about the value of market research.

This may not sound like a novel idea, but many, many companies go about their business thinking they don’t need to conduct market research to improve their products and grow. They think they know enough about their industry and product category that there is nothing new to learn. Then there are the companies that are barely aware of the importance of research, but see it as an expense and not an investment. They prefer to throw spaghetti at the walls and see what sticks.

I don’t know how many focus groups Domino’s did or if they also used other research methods to test their improved pizzas, but the point here is that they were willing to listen to their customers.

Now, regarding the methodology for new product development, I always advise clients to combine qualitative (eg focus groups) and quantitative (eg survey) research methods.

Qualitative research is by definition exploratory and is used, when we don’t know what to expect, to define the problem or develop an approach to it. It is also used to delve into topics of interest and explore nuances related to the problem at hand.

Quantitative research is conclusive in its purpose as it tries to quantify the problem and understand how prevalent it is by looking for projectable results to a larger population.

Here are some guidelines for using both types of research in new product development.

Use qualitative research to:

• Develop an initial understanding of how customers perceive the product category
• Look for a variety of ideas and sentiments about your products.
• Understand the different perceptions about your products between groups and categories of people
• Discover the motivations and underlying factors that influence the decision to buy your products and those of your competitors.
• Provide the necessary information to design a quantitative test of products.
• Explain the findings of a quantitative test of products.
• Explore different creative solutions to position and advertise the product

Use quantitative research to:

• Recommend a final course of action on which version of the product should be released
• Find out if there is consensus on product appeal, benefits, and purchase intent of current or potential customers
• Project results to a larger population of customers you target
• Identify evidence on cause and effect relationships between different factors relevant to the product and purchasing behavior.
• Test specific hypotheses about your products
• Identify and size market segments.
• Describe the characteristics of the relevant customer segments.

Combining both approaches when developing new products will give you a solid foundation for making the right decisions for your business based on consumer insights.