Uncertain Answers

If you ask the rhetorical question, “Why do you do research?” the answer you are most likely to get is, “To find an answer.” And there lies the heart of the problem: thinking that a definite answer is either possible or desirable. I think that it has been tremendously important that business has become, over the past decade or so, increasingly ‘consumer-centric.’ I think knowledge about consumers’ everyday lives is absolutely critical to the success of any product, any company.

But somewhere along the way, the issue has become muddled. Understanding consumers has far too often been reduced to identifying ‘needs’, and market research has become a kind of

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