Hearing the Voice of the Market

By Vincent P. Barabba and Gerald Zaltman (Boston:Harvard Business School Press, 1991)

In November of 1863, in rural Pennsylvania, Edward Ev-erett, one of the foremost orators of his day, spoke for morethan two hours as part of the dedication of a National Sol-diers' Cemetery. He spoke about the battle that had recentlytaken place in Gettysburg and other inspiring topics. Later,Abraham Lincoln also spoke at the dedication. Lincoln spokefor only about three minutes. Despite his forecast that "theworld will little note, nor long remember" what he said, hiswords live with most Americans today. Everett's words,charitably, have passed into oblivion.

The reason Lincoln's words live on is that they were few,but they were clear, to the point, and packed with importantmeaning. It is a shame that Vincent Barabba and Gerald Zalt-man's new book. Hearing the Voice of the Market, did not havea Lincoln as an editor. Unfortunately, their book is too wordy,overly concerned with propagating old and coining new ter-minology, and not thick enough with important ideas. Thisis a shame, because some of the ideas in this book are im-portant.

The "voice of the market" is defined as what customerswant and are willing to pay for. The book. Hearing the Voiceof the Market, is about the dual challenges facing corpora-tions—collecting data about the marketplace and then usingit intelligently. The authors posit that "competitive edges areto be found more in knowing how and when to use infor-mation than in simply having it," because most firms areperforming suboptimally on the decision-processing side.

Their solution requires more active involvement by man-agers in the early stages of the design of research to makesure it covers the key areas, is actionable, and is free of bias.They talk of the "new marketing myopia." If Levitt's originalmarketing myopia was too narrow a definition of what busi-ness a company is in, the new marketing myopia is too nar-row a definition of who in a company does marketing.Everyone in a company, the authors argue, should be partof the marketing process (designers, as they decide whichnew ideas to pursue, manufacturing personnel, as they workto make products consistent with the company's image, etc.).As such, all groups should be considered internal clients ofthe marketing research department. In fact, Barabba andZaltman do not like the term "marketing research" becauseit implies too narrow a focus on marketing employees and theirissues. They prefer the term "market research," a processthey see as being performed by a company's inquiry center.

As they continue with their solution to the new marketingmyopia, the authors present a series of steps to improvequestionnaire development by getting feedback from man-agers on expected results and actions given various outcomescenarios. They also talk about how various functional roleswithin the organization have different frames of reference and Craig Spltzer

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how failure to understand them can jeopardize successful datacollection, analysis, and the eventual use of the derived in-formation. Chapters include discussions on how to define theright problem, how to express it correctly, how to optimizethe cost-efficient collection of data, how to keep an organi-zation's work at lower levels consistent with objectives fromhigher levels, how to ensure that work at lower levels is com-plementary with other efforts at those levels, and how topromote change within an organization.

Though such topics are useful to explore, the book is twiceas long as it needs to be. First, the authors seem to have aneed to name things. They name almost every idea theypresent, and do it with cute phrases or with common wordsusing special, nonstandard meanings. They cannot just saythat theories of the marketplace lead you to identify potentialcourses of action from which an optimum alternative is se-lected. They say, "To be determined and accepted, themeaning of data has to be integrated with judgment. Oncethat is done, it becomes necessary to identify the alternativeactions that the meaning suggests and to select the most ap-propriate one . . . Identifying alternatives is a knowledge ac-tivity . . . Wisdom concerns the selection of the action likelyto work best." Having presented unnecessary, nonstandarddefinitions of knowledge and wisdom, they proceed to usethem, in their way, throughout the book. Other examples ofterms they use in nonstandard form include "intelligence,""information," and "inquiry center" (it is not a place or afunction, but a state of mind). Other jargon terms they in-troduce include "data-rich (and -poor) thinking", "pseudo-clairvoyance," "unequal-opportunity methodologies," "com-petent curiosity," "thinker toys," "thinking-to-lead (-fol-low)," "the snail-darter assumption," and "post-survey-re-gret." One reason the term "marketing myopia" stuck is thatit was the only coinage in Levitt's article. The coinage stoodout because it was surrounded by solid examples and in-sightful thinking. More thinking and less defining of newterms would have imiproved this book.

Along the same line, this book is laden with digressionsand quotations. A few of them can crystalize thoughts. Toomany slow the reader and make reading the book a task. Theauthors couldn't just say that people see the world as theythink it is. Instead they took a paragraph to say it, supple-mented with a paragraph quoted from Francis Bacon to showthat hundreds of years ago he also felt that way.

Finally, though the book is about hearing the voice of themarket, it is unclear whether the authors have defined whotheir book's market is. In places, the book seems to be forbeginning marketing research students. Why else would theauthors bother to say, "[marketing research] techniques . . .include . . . calculating the mean. The mean is simply theaverage of the collected data, equal to the sum of the valuesof the variable of interest, divided by the number of obser-vations of that variable." They go on similarly to describevariances and correlations. In other places, the book seemslike a marketing research encyclopedia for advanced users{one of the authors has published an article with that title).

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The authors list the three dimensions of the inquiry center,the seven deadly obstacles to the effective use of research,the six steps to enhance the utility of a marketing researchproject, the three components of frames of reference, the fiveparamount dimensions of personal trust, the two principlesfor market research synergy, and so on. In still other places,the book seems like a sociology text for managers who areconcerned with effecting organization change (where the au-thors review their "six key questions to answer before de-ciding whether to try to introduce change in an organiza-tion").

All in all, there are good ideas here, but they are buriedin jargon, quotes, diagrams, and tables. Hearing the Voice ofthe Market should be attempted only by readers who are will-ing to work hard to get to those ideas. •

Craig Spitzer, PhDDirector, Marketing and Business AnalysisMattel Toys, Inc.El Segundo, California

Capturing Consumers

By Peter Francese and Rebecca Piirto (Ithaca, NY:American Demographics Press, 1990)

The book promises an inside look at "how to target thehottest markets of the '90s." That smacks of overpromise,needless to say. However, Francese and Piirto have compileda reference tool that any midlevel marketing manager wouldfind ample occasion to use.

Not surprisingly, the book focuses heavily on the impor-tance of demographic data. That emphasis is entirely consis-tent with the book's parent publication {American Demograph-ics), though the book is not a mere rehash of material alreadypresented in the magazine.

There may not be much in this text that breaks new con-ceptual ground, but it certainly covers old ground clearly andcrisply. Furthermore, there is meat in its discussions. Ex-amples of applications abound, coupled with some rather user-friendly step-by-step suggestions to help readers answer keymarketing questions.

The authors are particularly strong in providing "nuts andbolts" fundamentals in a detailed yet readable way. Chapters4 through 7 provide a quick reference to the types and sourcesof data most marketers use, but few fully understand (de-mographic, psychographic, purchase, and media use data).

For most readers, however, the greater value wiU come fromthe authors' suggestions for data integration (Chapter 8) andthe analysis of data to yield a coherent yet flexible marketingplan (Chapters 9-12). The materials in these sections providea basic blueprint for doing the homework necessary for de-veloping a sound strategic plan.

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