Summary: This article in our series on market research and opportunities, looks at post research and prioritising to find the best opportunities.
You will now have a list of all jobs, and outcomes from consumer interviews.
Some businesses like to collect rankings later for a separate set of people, say a statistically valid representation of between 150 – 600 people and asking them rate the importance of all the jobs, outcomes and constraints using a scale of 10 as most important to 1 least and the same for satisfaction 10 totally, 1 not at all.
There is no reason why you can’t do it when collecting data as in our example as long as you get a complete list of jobs and outcomes early on.
This gives you two scores – the importance score and the satisfaction score.
The importance score is the percentage of people that scored importance of the job or outcome at 8 or more. So it is 90% the score is 9.
The satisfaction score is the percentage of people that rated satisfied as 8 or higher. If it is 41% the score is 4.1
You take these scores to see what opportunity is hidden as so
Importance score + (Importance – Satisfaction score) = Opportunity Score.
So on our example 9 + (9-4.1) = 13.9
Please note if the result of (Importance – Satisfaction score) is less than 0 than use 0. So if it is (6 – 8.9) 0 would be out in the formula not -2.9!
It also important to realise that consumers may say that they are satisfied compared to current solutions, and even compared to ideal solutions, but what about ideals that you have in mind? An example – consumers might say they are satisfied with the prices airlines charge, the service they are given and the travel time. You see no good opportunity scores there, and even the opportunity scores compared to their ideal solution are low. But what frame of reference is the consumer using? They are likely using the same planes with a different level of service and features to imagine their ideal solution, because they unwittingly restrict their thinking to current solutions – but just made better. What if your company thinks it can develop a supersonic plane that utilises oxygen as fuel – making it lighter, safer, bigger, quicker and cheaper? Consumers may not even know of the existence of such technology. This is called the companies ideal proposed solution. When thinking of their ideal solutions, current consumers are probably thinking in terms of how current planes be made better – their dream airliner – and commenting on how current solutions perform. So, you can score current solutions against your ideal proposed solution and see how they match up. Where there appeared to be no exciting Opportunity Scores from your consumer data may this may be a mere mirage, because when judged next to the solution you have in mind and how much better it performs consumers jobs, huge Opportunity Scores are revealed! This is why market research can be deceptive. Better libraries as a solution would not have presented a big Opportunity Score until compared with the ideal proposed solution from within Google. On every job and outcome is blew away the competing solutions, both Search Engines and Libraries.
There is a saying you make your own luck, there is now a new one – “You make your own Opportunity Scores.”
Any such ideal proposed solution will be one that moves us closer to the Ultimate Solution. Now that you know the specific jobs and outcomes people want to achieve it doesn’t take long for you to think of the ways that they can be met in the best way possible. Ultimate Solutions are often hundreds of years away, or physical impossibilities. The Ultimate Solution is where all outcomes are minimised or maximised to zero. In other words all detriments are removed, and perfection is achieved along the parameters that matter to consumers. So in terms of transport if you find the jobs people want to achieve are shortest travel time, lowest cost, complete safety and shortest waiting time – the Ultimate Solution would give you 0 travel time, 0 cost, 100% safety, 0 waiting time. Ultimate Solutions are therefore nearly always exaggerated examples that will either never happen or are so far in the future they are incomprehensible to us – so for example, the Ultimate Solution to complete the job of transport would be some sort of teleporting system. You could not expect consumers to use that ideal as a frame of reference. So there are always ways that jobs and outcomes that can be judged compared to the Ultimate Solution. If you have an ideal solution in mind, you should ask – how much closer does it take people to the Ultimate Solution from where they are now? Only then you can score current solutions against your ideal proposed solution and see how they match up.
You have to be objective here when analysing your ideal proposed solution. Thinking it will meet jobs and outcomes better when it doesn’t in reality will be fatal. There’s nothing to stop you going back to the market and asking them about how your ideal matches up for people. What matters is that versus the detriments, the value the company’s ideal proposed solution meets really provides something better.
Once you see it, there it is, clear as day and right in front of you – value that perhaps even consumers could not comprehend – but that is tailored made to do the jobs and outcomes they want better than anything else in the world.
You’ll be able to construct 7 types of Opportunity Score –
- Jobs/Outcomes of current solutions
- Detriments
- Jobs/Outcomes vs. consumers ideal solutions
- Jobs/Outcomes vs. ideal proposed solutions from within the company
- Jobs/Outcomes of current Consumer Value Line
- Jobs/Outcomes vs. consumers ideal Value Line
- Jobs/Outcomes vs. ideal Consumer Value Line from within the company
You can also look at how close solutions come to the Ultimate Solution and the Ultimate Value Line.
Enjoyed this article?
Subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter or just simply recommend it.
Further Discussion
Leave a Response
Make sure you enter the * required information where indicated. Responses are moderated so please no link dropping, no keywords or domains as names; do not spam, and do not advertise!