everything.study
15.821

Listening to the Customer

3-0-3 units · Graduate

Introduces proven methods for listening to customers and understanding their needs in order to generate new ideas to build the top line. Students integrate generative AI with experiential interviewing, ethnography, metaphor elicitation, and voice-of-the-customer methods.

Fall 2002

Topics

  • Introduction
  • Case: Boston Beer Boston Beer Company, Storytelling
  • Guest Lecture: Robert Klein, AMS
  • Interviews, Consumer Behavior
  • Guest Lecture Jim Ferry, B.I.G.
  • Focus Groups: Boston Fights Drugs, Test-marketing a President
  • Guest Lecture Christina Hepner Brodie
  • Observational Methods
  • ‘Scrubbing’ Exercise
  • Generating Concepts
  • The Customer’s Voice on Pricing
  • Presentations

Readings

  • McQuarrie E. F. Customer Visits: Building a Better Market Focus . Newbury Park, Sage, 1993. [Very well written; the topic is somewhat specialized, but many of the points apply to qualitative research in general.]
    Recommended
  • If you want need a good marketing research reference text you might invest in Churchill’s Marketing Research . [It has everything (almost). Also, Churchill is the required textbook for 15.822.]
    Recommended
  • Churchill, Gilbert A. Marketing Research , 6th Edition, Chicago: The Dryden Press, 1996. [Plus: Comprehensive and precise. Minus: Dry, expensive.]
    Recommended
  • Lehmann, Donald R. Market Research and Analysis . 3rd Edition, Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1989. [Plus: Well written, sensible. Minus: Virtually no coverage of qualitative methods.]
    Recommended

Prerequisites & course information

Prereq: 15.809 , 15.814 , or permission of instructor G (Spring; first half of term) 3-0-3 units

Sources