Identifying Hidden Needs

Innovative Flops

Why do so many products fall short of company expectations? Often it’s because manufacturers create new offerings based on traditional research methods that do not reveal what consumers really want. Because they don’t understand these “hidden needs,” companies fail to produce products that satisfy an unfulfilled market niche.

Conventional market research relies heavily on focus groups and surveys. These methods probe customers’ impressions of products and services they already use. This usually generates ideas for incremental innovations rather than identifying even the possibility of, let alone the potential for, completely new offerings. Many marketing practitioners are reluctant to try enhanced research methods because they’re either skeptical of the process or have concerns about the costs or the difficulty.

Hidden needs are “issues and problems that customers face but have not yet realized.” Social sciences form the foundation for “hidden needs analysis” (HNA) techniques. By combining HNA methods with traditional market research, companies can gain comprehensive, reliable insights. These insights pose challenges, problems and cultural issues...