Steve Montgomery

Observing Consumers Beats Listening to Them

February 19, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
Nate Bolt, co-founder and chief executive of user research firm Bolt Peters, argues that while tech entrepreneurs are encouraged to listen to potential customers, observing is a much better tool to see whether a new product will succeed in the market. What are the merits of observation versus listening in testing new products?      [more...]

One of the issues with listening is what you hear depends on the wording of question and the tone, delivery, etc, of the researcher. The same could be true for observing--the environment, the mere fact someone knows that they are being observed, etc, can influence behavior.

That being said, I admit to being a fan of real world observation. We did this first in a small store format in 1990 and while we were likely not the best at interpreting all the behaviors we saw, we did learn a lot and made significant changes in the layout and merchandising of the store.