You have a business. How often you have gone out and observed your consumers? How often you have intuitively felt that “this is the way to d it”?

This is a legendary story I have heard from one of my professors. One pharma company made a caugh syrup, targetted at the children. They did lot of product testing and found that their syrup was 56% better than the other leading syrup in the market. Hence, instead of canvassing with the doctors, they decided to launch it as OTC drug and launched it in the market. They did one big ad blitz.

There were takers. No sales.

The marketing head thought of commissioning a research. Then, he thought better and decided to just go around the country and see why it is not taking off. He talked to only a few consumers who were mothers whose children needed a cough syrup. He had his answer.

The answer was pretty simple. When it came to children, the mothers simply did not buy and give any OTC cough syrep. They went to their doctors and gave to children what their doctors prescribed.

End of the story.

The marketing head figured out that the best way to get his syrup off the shelf was by doing a doctor recommendation program. He did that and the syrup went onto become a best seller later on.

This shows the power of personal observations and intuition and how it wins in the market place. It is not to demean market research. But no market research can give the amount of confidence and conviction as personal observation and the resultant intuitive decision making.