Is Data Enough to Make a Marketing Decision?

Of course not. Market research can generate large numbers, that may provide some sort of insight for what the conclusion may be. For example, data can show a consumer or industry trend, and even a consumer insight. But this is definitely not enough information for a company to base a marketing decision on. Other important factors need to be addressed as well, such as reliability, fit, leadership, resources, and financials, before any marketing decision takes place.

How reliable is the data to guide a decision?

There needs to be an explanation of the data. Even if some conclusion can be derived from numbers, researchers need to be able to ask the right questions in order to find an understanding on why those conclusions occurred.

According to an article on CMS Wire, Ketan Karkhanis, SVP and General Manager of analytics cloud at Salesforce mentioned that there are certain questions that need to be asked when dealing with data in consumer interaction, decision making, and business processes. What happened? Why did it happen? What is likely to happen? What should I do about it?

Let’s take the famous Coca-Cola mistake

The company lost millions because a decision was made solely on data. Coca-Cola introduced a new product called “New Coke” that had a sweeter taste than the original. Coca-Cola conducted a product test on 200,000 consumers, and the conclusion that was derived from the data was that consumers preferred the taste of the “New Coke” over the original. Based on the data, Coca-Cola introduced “New Coke” to the market. Eventually the company realized that this was not doing well in the market and the product was removed.

There was a weakness in making a conclusion based only on what the data showed. The right questions were not asked during the decision-making process when the company was making inferences about data. They did not realize that consumers had formed an emotional connection to the original taste of the product and they did not take this factor into consideration when making decisions. Looking only at the data was what led them to make this marketing mistake.

Is the data a right fit for my company, its leadership, resources or financial state?

If data is showing a rising consumer trend, but at the same time that trend is unrelated to your product line, the company needs to make certain decisions about the importance of the data. For example, data has shown an existing trend in CBD consumer products. In skincare, supplements, and many other forms.

A consumer-product oriented company, that may not be in the skincare industry for example, may look at the data and evaluate whether the data is a right fit for them. They may conduct certain focus groups on their existing customers and get favorable results. But this is not enough. They need to ask the right questions in terms of whether CBD products is something they believe in, if they have the resources to develop or sell CBD products, if they are financially stable to take on a new project, and whether this would be beneficial to their overall business.

Data alone is not enough. Many factors need to be taken into consideration in order to make a marketing decision.