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Do Penguins Eat Peaches?

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Do Penguins Eat Peaches?

And other unexpected ways to discover what your customers want

Practical Inspiration Publishing,

15 min read
8 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Market research should be part of every entrepreneur’s toolkit — to understand your customers and assess your ideas.

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Editorial Rating

8

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Recommendation

If you’re an entrepreneur with a small business, creating a robust market research strategy may seem beyond your capabilities. But according to product leader and consultant Katie Tucker, it’s necessary: Market research can help you deliver products and services in a more targeted manner and prevent you from wasting time on the wrong ideas. Tucker’s five “golden rules” can help you drive successful innovation and trigger business growth by teaching you to ask the right questions. She also offers guidance in a better approach to surveys, interviews and desk research, and engaging in “sensemaking.” 

Summary

Small business owners who skip market research risk investing heavily in ideas that will fail.

Small business owners often think they can skip market research, assuming that they know and understand their customer base because they’ve modeled their brand on themselves. But you can’t assume your customers are identical to you or that you already have all the answers. Each person is an individual, existing in a unique context. When you make decisions without an awareness of your biases and assumptions, you risk falling prey to the “sunk cost fallacy”: the belief that it’s better to keep investing time and resources in the wrong idea than it is to pivot and start over. It can feel emotionally triggering to realize you’ve overly invested in a failed idea. But it’s preferable to wasting your energy on products and services that don’t align with your customer base.

Market research plays an indispensable role in helping you stay nimble and showing customers that you care enough to listen to them. It allows you to discover your audience, improve your marketing strategy, boost profits, ...

About the Author

Katie Tucker is a product leader, writer, and speaker. She founded the boutique consultancy Product Jungle in 2020.

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