Application of MRFSV Tool to Study Effectiveness of Marketing Research Findings in Product Design

DS 69: Proceedings of E&PDE 2011, the 13th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, London, UK, 08.-09.09.2011

Year: 2011
Editor: Kovacevic, Ahmed, Ion, William, McMahon, Chris, Buck, Lyndon and Hogarth, Peter
Author: Kalita, Pratul Chandra; Das, Amarendra Kumar
Series: E&PDE
Section: Design Education and Business 2
Page(s): 47-52

Abstract

Marketing Research is always a debatable topic. Serious questions are raised about the relevance of marketing research in successful introduction of products and services in the society. It has been observed several times that, marketing research studies may also lead to wrong decisions. In a few cases marketing research predicted success that turned out to be a failure and in other cases, MR predicted failure that turned out to be success in the society. The reason for the contradiction may be attributed to improper research design and unsuitable use of research methods. In the context of product design, the failure may also occur due to ineffective communication of marketing research findings to the designers. As far as the idea generation process for new product development is concerned, the power of abstract is very fundamental. When ideas are scarce, a fresh viewpoint makes all the difference. In order to validate the idea that Marketing Research needs to consider actual user behaviour, and integrate the same with marketing research for ideation of design solution, a case study of “dishwashing” has been considered. Consumer behavior data was collected by using structured questionnaires, personal interview and ethnography. Primary data was analysed using various quantitative and qualitative tools with extensive use of various descriptive and inferential statistical tools (SPSS). The marketing research findings were documented. A new method termed “Marketing Research Finding Sensitive Visualisation (MRFSV)” was adopted to communicate the marketing research findings to the design students of Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. The ideas generated from this process were evaluated with the help of focus group feedback. The response of the focus group was further analysed using quantitative techniques. The study reveals that, unstructured communication of consumer behavior to the designers may move away the designers from the design objective. Designers tend to enclose their preconceived thought about the consumer behavior in their ideas for design solutions. There is a significance variance in weightages given by the designers to various marketing research findings in order to meet the deign objective. The MRFSV method helps the designers in defining design problem. This method helps in establishing a direct relationship of defined design problem to designer’s design solution. The synthesis of all the MRFSVs generates wonderful ideas and design alternatives, which ultimately leads to a complete design solution in the line of design objective. The paper discusses this effort in detail.

Keywords: MRFSV, Design Method, Design Management, Marketing Research, Idea Generation

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