WHY WE NEED PRIMARY RESEARCHYup.
A common belief seems to persist that Big Data is the cure to all business ailments. Whenever someone admits that they don’t know why something happens, someone else will assuredly suggest that Big Data holds the answer. And, in fairness, data can tell organizations a lot, such as what their customers are buying and whether
they are satisfied with their purchases. What Big Data fails to give us is context. It doesn’t tell us that the shopper chose a particular brand of toilet paper to placate a screaming toddler who “needs” the one with the puppies on it. It doesn’t tell us that although the shopper bought a chest freezer, he plans to retrofit it with his own temperature controls because what he really wants is a refrigerator that
doesn’t have the built-in shelves and space constraints of the upright models he can find in stores. Indeed, Big Data fails to provide cru-
cial information about why customers make decisions and how they interact with products after they are purchased. It is notoriously bad at telling us how customers emotionally relate to products, how they use them in ways that companies never envisioned, and for how long they have been living with a product’s little annoyances, just waiting for a better solution to come around.