evolveNPD

A recent study from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimated that consumer product companies spend as little as 20% of their market research budgets on strategic initiatives*.  Why?  Most marketing researchers are still operating on the age-old mission of being an “aid to decision making”.  This opens the door to lots of tactical projects, where research answers specific questions rather than informing overall strategy.   Many research organizations have moved to a broader role of representing “the voice of the customer.”  But is this enough to drive innovation and growth in today’s consumer product companies?

If you ask Jami Guthrie, Vice-President of Global Consumer & Market Intelligence for Wrigley, the answer is clearly “no.”  He made the point that a strong consumer intelligence (CI) function needs to have the broader mission of driving organizational growth.  How do we go about focusing research on driving growth?  Jamie recommends you start by placing all of your CI initiatives into one of three buckets:

1. Hindsight: Evaluation of past product or marketing performance including Nielsen/IRI data analysis, market mix modeling, price analytics, and product/brand tracking studies.
2. Insight: Connecting to the hearts and minds of consumers through segmentation studies, positioning and communications research, concept and product evaluation, and new product development.
3. Foresight: Understanding future potential revenue streams by measurement of macro/external trends, assessment of potential company capabilities, and identification of growth platforms.

By balancing your spending in all three areas, you will be able to uncover the major growth challenges and opportunities facing your organization.   However, Jamie pointed out that creating growth is about more than information.   You also need to have the right staffing and structure.  Here are his recommendations for building a CI function that impacts decisions.

• Structure researchers against supporting people rather than fulfilling tasks across businesses.  This allows staff to holistically understand the business needs.
• Focus staff responsibilities on setting the learning agenda, defining problems and potential solutions, synthesizing research findings with other sources, and driving to a solution
• Outsource more specialized and production-oriented work.  Routine tasks should be standardized so your internal person can focus on synthesis and recommendations.

What are your thoughts on what is needed today for Consumer Intelligence departments to drive growth and innovation?

* BCG 2009 CI Benchmarking results can be found at http://www.bcg.com/expertise_impact/Capabilities/Marketing_Sales/Consumer_Insight/PublicationDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-35170

Tags: brand strategy, consumer insights, consumer products, cpg, jami guthrie, market intelligence, marketing research, wrigley

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Evolve Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.