We Have Always Done It That Way

So the story goes: Sony held a focus group to determine if they should make their new boom box yellow or black. They invited in their target demographic (teenagers) to ask their opinion. The focus group was unanimously in favor of yellow– as it was “hip”, “edgy”,”cool”. As a thank you gift for participating, all were offered a new boom box. There was a table covered with yellow and black boom boxes. Everyone took a black one. So, Sony made their new boom box black.

While I’ve not been able to find out if this is urban legend or truth, it has stuck with me for years and illustrates a good point: customers don’t always know and/or articulate what they really want or need. Yet, how often do associations base decisions solely or primarily on survey or focus group results? We ask members to choose topics for the next conference from a long list of possible topics, we ask if they would value some vague concept of a program we are considering, we ask if they would buy a certain product a year from now, and we ask what would increase the value of membership. But sometimes our questions are loaded and members tell us what they think we want to hear or they just don’t tell us anything at all. Sometimes our questions are are just too vague for meaningful responses. Sometimes members just don’t know what they want. Sometimes they don’t know how to communicate their needs to us.

It is important to recognize the inherent flaws in the research methodologies we often use to gather the data on which we base decisions. We need to figure out ways to gather more authentic data from members — through better questions in our research, but also through:

1. observations of their actions,
2. listening to their conversations, and
3. engaging in meaningful conversations with them.

Tags: Membership, Strategy, We've Always Done It That Way // 2 Comments »