Market Research Sprints – How to create a successful new product or service fast

Market Research Sprints

The efficacy of market research in innovation is hotly debated. Many of the questions that are raised tend to focus on:

• How is market research better than gut instinct?
• What sort of time is needed for the research component – recruitment, fieldwork, analysis?
• How much time will it take to create prototypes and stimulus?
• What sorts of biases will exist in the data and what should I be concerned about?
• What about benchmarking and how important is that?

Lean Marketing, Sprints and Market Research

What is Lean Marketing?

First, we need to understand the concept of Lean Marketing which is agile marketing and there is plenty out there to read on the subject.  Lean Marketing includes notions such as unique value propositions (UVPs) and minimum viable products (MVPs) and is a great way to innovate if speed to market is important to your business.

Defining Sprints in Market Research

Second, we need to understand Sprints.  Sprints were developed through the IT world as a way of managing database management and development using unique teams known as scrum teams.  These scrum teams work together to execute a well-defined goal that has been broken down into achievable or manageable chunks.  The team could be working on features of an app or developing case studies for pressure testing. For marketing and research purposes, sprints can be used to develop products and processes using scrum teams.

Agile Market Research is Fast Research

Third, we need to consider where Agile Market Research fits in.  This means the market research is fast turnaround, and the concept of ‘good enough’ analysis and deliverables are sufficient for the marketer to make fast decisions on the way.  The aim of Agile Market Research is speed, flexibility, and enough insight around what the customer is trying to achieve or how the solution fits the problem, to continue development, whilst at the same time keeping the customer front and centre in design thinking.

How does a Market Research Sprint Work?

The Power of One

In innovation, you often only need ONE successful idea to launch to market. New product launches have high investment needs and often high failure rates.  They are often also a huge investment of time and effort.

The key to success according to Lean Marketing and Sprints is to focus on a single goal.  What is the customer trying to achieve and what aspect of that are we innovating around?  For example, rather than helping every customer with a struggle of creating a Lemon Chicken Risotto, we might just focus on busy cooks who find zesting lemons time consuming and a real pain point.  We could try to help them with creating chicken stock as well or how they can keep it on the boil easily or a bunch of different pain points, but the idea is to focus on solving ONE problem well.

In terms of the consolidation of market research, sprints and lean marketing, the team would concentrate on improving the pain point of lemon zesting for busy cooks.  The product would focus on either food or equipment and the marketing would focus on one channel.  The entire project should be completed within 1 week if possible, which means limiting choices is essential to achieve the goals in a timely manner.

One Plus One Plus One…

Who is on the team is also crucial? Whilst individuals working alone generate better ideas than brainstorming aloud with a group; working alone is not easy.  Both options have biases – from confirmation bias to groupthink.  The idea in a sprint is to work alone but in parallel to generate competing ideas without groupthink.  Additional each member element of the team – product team, marketing team and market research team so have their own individual flexibility to bring power to the overall output.

One Day at a Time…

The model depicts a simple 5-day Agile Market Research Innovation Sprint Plan.  Each day has a specific goal and potential owner. Goals and expectations for each day should be assigned prior to the start of the sprint.  The course of the week will be somewhat dependent on results coming through the research, but the expectation is that research is conducted PRIOR to the sprint so that agreement on targets and mapping in Day 1 can flow through easily to Day 1 ideation.

This map is not set-in stone.  It is possible to combine the efforts of Day 1 and Day 2 and allow more time for test and iteration research on Day 3-5.  Day 6-10 could include Lean Marketing directions to get the product to market quickly choosing one flavour, one format, one target and one marketing channel.

The Details:

Assuming the planning has been achieved and some initial research has been conducted the 5-day plan could be quite simple:

• Day 1: Choose a Target to focus on and Create a Jobs to be Done Map
  • Focus on Busy Cooks
  • Break the lemon zesting problem down into a map of steps in the process
• Day 2: Ideate and Sketch competing solutions
  • Ideate solutions around each step, understand need, problem, why this is solution, any watchouts etc
  • Sketch the ideas into prototypes – show how the Lemon Zesting idea works functional, format, packaging, usage etc,
• Day 3: Decide on the best solutions, prioritise
  • Build realistic prototypes or concept
  • Consider key questions the market research needs to answer for fast decision making or optimisation
• Day 4: Conduct Online or in person qualitative research with a handful of target audience
  • Blind test ideas
  • Optimise further (from name through to flavours, formats, usage requirements etc,)
  • Refine prototypes for quant research
  • Clarify key questions for quant concept testing
• Day 5: Quantitatively Test appeal, relevance, and purchase intent with target consumers
  • Consider a small sample (e.g., n=50 to 100) to get a ‘good enough’ go / no go results
  • Any watch outs
  • Final revisions and send for next stage Lean Marketing Sprint

The Benefit of an Agile Market Research Innovation Sprint?

This is about outcomes rather than the process.  With an Agile Market Research and Innovation Sprint Design in five days you will

• Move from targeting and idea generation and prototyping to decision making quickly.
• Reduce team hours, energy, and investment dollars.
• Keeping consumers at the heart of innovation development and decision making.
• Harness physical proximity across geographies to focus resources on a short timeframe to produce and refine some powerful ideas.
• Decrease distractions and the fragmentation of a usual working day – the organisation of sprint day may be atypical (for example overnight).
• Work efficiently or differently: each day may require different amounts of time depending on how fast solutions and decisions come.
• Create sufficient business case for launch with research

Flexibility is critical.  Change it up whenever you need to.  The plan will likely change its course during the sprint – driving a more adaptable process and outcome driven innovation.  This is not about winning at sprints, its about winning in market.

Why Benchmarks Do Not Fit in Sprints

Calibrated product benchmarks can be useful but also misguided.  The idea of a sprint is a fast decision that uses Agile Market Research to make better instinctual decisions.  Getting bogged down in market comparisons can be tricky.   For instance, while an in-market product is familiar to consumers, a concept is not, especially when that concept is more blue sky.  A lack of tangibility for comparison or consumer experience does not mean the idea will fail.  Rather at this point we are trying to get a Minimum Viable Product – developed with sufficient features to satisfy early adopters and utilise speed to market.  Once launched the idea can be refined with user feedback if desired or later benchmarked if that is an important gate driver in your business.

Want to know more?

Get in touch with our team of market research and innovation experts here at Ruby Cha Cha.  We are happy to answer your questions and help you make the right agile market research decisions.