“Rubbermaid Proves the Value of Listening to Customers”
Posted by Joe Cannon
Customer ratings and reviews are not only useful to other customers — marketers can use this information to improve products. Of course some customers are more vocal — and some products solicit more comments — than others. Would people care about sink mats? Like the author of “Rubbermaid Proves the Value of Listening to Customers,” (The 1to1 Blog) I was surprised to see that customers writing reviews. In my previous life I worked in sales and marketing with Eastman Kodak. I also saw the power of customer comments when one of my fellow sales reps tape recorded interviews with fine art photographers about what they liked and didn’t like about black-and-white photo papers. When the R&D folks who engineered and manufactured the paper heard these interviews it had a huge impact — and better products soon followed. The potential for this form of low-cost market research to influence new-product development, product quality, and various other elements of the marketing mix is tremendous.
This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 8:15 am and is filed under Market research, New-product development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.