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April 15, 2019
Today on RBDR: In his 2019 report to shareholders, Amazon founder & CEO Jeff Bezos writes that market research would have had zero relevance to the company’s development of its foremost innovation, Echo, reminiscent of the similar attitude of Steve Jobs with Apple.
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I have no reason not to believe Bezo’s claim that he hasn’t needed conventional survey research to create, develop, or innovate including the Echo product. It doesn’t mean that research couldn’t have made it easier and cheaper to develop and market the product but Bezo’s is saying it simply wasn’t needed. So be it. Research is not always needed; in fact, sometimes it gets in the way or complicates the marketing.
Thanks, Nick. I believe he is less hostile to MR than Jobs was–and as I said at the end Amazon has a sizable, an growing, research and insights areas for its diversifying products.
The disparagement of market research by Jobs and Bezos is both right and wrong. It is correct in that traditional methods insufficiently contextualized “that which yet isn’t”; it is incorrect in not recognizing that the tools they do depend upon like database analytics are descended from the survey era they dismiss.
Thanks, Dennis!