Innovative culture must address unarticulated and undiscovered needs - Mike A.
Empathy means being able to sympathize or relate to others through
better understanding their state of mind. Empathic research helps businesses identify
what customers really want rather than developing products that companies
choose to offer – it observes how consumers use products in their own settings,
rather than in controlled environment.
Although focused-group research yields good results, its
participants usually tend to give researcher what the researcher wants to know
or hear rather than the “truth”, whereas, empathic research is valuable in
getting to unarticulated and undiscovered needs.
Empathic research is called qualitative to contrast it with
the quantitative approach, which refers to measurements. As such, empathic observational research
should still be conducted in a systematic format, utilizing photos, videos or direct
observation of consumer’s compensatory behavior. Developing a close relationship with
consumers and making them a part of the product development process should be a
priority. Suri believes there are four
classes of methods for understanding what really matters:
- Learning from data, whether secondary sources of
our own analyses
- Looking at people in context
- Asking people to participate
- Trying things ourselves
As effective as it is, empathic observation research should
not be the only research method conducted by an organization.
Customer’s participation in development process doesn’t have
to be a all-or-none approach. A small
cross section of consumers, if given a prototype or a demo of the product can
provide as valuable a feedback to the designers as quantitative data from
researchers. This is not to suggest that
empathic observation and research should replace other research methods by the
organization. However, empathic research
findings are usually reflective of specific users and limited use
scenarios. Adam Silver, a strategist at
Frog Design thinks ethnography is, on its own, unable to provide the kind of
information needed to validate product and service ideas across wide audiences.[3] In
other words, by itself, empathic research lacks breadth. 
Empathy means being able to sympathize or relate to others through
better understanding their state of mind.[1] Empathic research helps businesses identify
what customers really want rather than developing products that companies
choose to offer – it observes how consumers use products in their own settings,
rather than in controlled environment.[2] 
Perhaps I can best answer this question by providing an example. There are two examples of product cannibalization that relate to this post. In 2008 Apple sold more than 22 million iPods.[1] However the company cannibalized iPod by rolling out the iPhone. [2] This iPhone strategy provided higher profit margins than their 2008 iPod product margin. In addition, cannibalization of iPod into iPhone and launching a smartphone strategy made Apple the world’s largest smartphone vendor in 4th quarter 2011.[3]
