How I Did Customer Research at Thanksgiving Dinner — and How You Can Too at Your Next Holiday
What do you need to conduct customer research?
- A product. It doesn’t have to — actually it shouldn’t — be a complete product.
- A customer. At least someone who you believe could become one. Ideally, 5–10 of them.
- A room. A place where you can bring the product and the customer together (duh).
My wife and I found all of these last Thanksgiving.
The product was our healthy home-made chocolate. The potential customers were our family-friends who had joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. The room? It was the Thanksgiving dinner table.
Does this sound like a healthy environment to conduct customer research?
Hmmm… No.
Because people are there to eat and drink and have fun. Not for a product that they haven’t heard about before. Not to be a part of the research that they didn’t sign up for.
Does it sound like a perfect place to start getting feedback on a product that is far from being market-ready, from a crowded group of people with different ages, genders, backgrounds and tastes?
Hmmm… Yes.
But how can you make sure that you’re getting the right (or “unbiased”) answers from a crowd who are simply there to eat and drink? A crowd who is there to make jokes out loud, who is there to have fun?
How can you make sure to get the right reactions that could help you improve your — not even—half-baked product?
You cannot.
You just make sure that you’re doing your best to receive honest and unbiased answers. This is what customer research is all about. It’s never perfect. You just do your best to create the right environment.
But maybe…
But maybe you can find a formula to “gamify” the customer research in a Thanksgiving dinner setup. A sort of gamification that would make the participants feel like they are in a game, not a study.
And what was our formula to do that during Thanksgiving dinner?
- Make sure that the product will be something that a crowd like that would voluntarily enjoy testing on a Thanksgiving night (so that they would genuinely volunteer to be a part of it).
- Make sure that they’ll continue having fun while answering the questions (so that they wouldn’t easily get bored and finish the questionnaire just to make you happy).
- Make sure that you’ve built a set of questions that are easy and quick to answer (so that they wouldn’t get lost and discouraged while trying to find “the most creative and inspiring answers” to cheer the crowd).
- Make sure that you promise to give them something in return for their favor (so that they would be extra motivated to get involved).
- And finally but not necessarily — make sure that they feel like they are part of something bigger than them (so that they can become the first group of cheerleaders for your product when it’s time to take it to the next level).
Tell me more: The product, the questions and the answers
The product is a healthy home-made chocolate that my wife and I started testing just three nights before Thanksgiving.
We always loved trying different healthy chocolate brands. We always dreamed about having a brand of our own that we care about not for the money, but for the fun. And we always believed that if you love what you’re doing, then you don’t see it as an effort or responsibility but a joy and delight.
My wife is the inspiration, the fire-starter, the “let’s do it!”.
I’m the preparation, the planner, the “let’s think about it first!”.
And this is part of a different Medium article: 12 Reasons to Find a Partner That Can Disagree with You
So we started testing our chocolates (“let’s do it!”) right after we realized we can use the Thanksgiving crowd to test and validate our ideas (“let’s think about it first!”).
Different flavors, different textures, different ingredients. What’s missing in that chocolate? What’s good about that chocolate? How would you make it sweeter? How would you make it less dry? Why would you keep eating that bar? Why would you prefer buying that bar?
Let me tell you a secret: If you are a potential customer for your product and if your product has the potential to solve a problem or meet a craving you already have, then you’re on the right track to build a product with purpose and a path to success. You are the shortcut. You don’t have to empathize with your potential customers all the time, trying to guess what they want and gamble regularly to meet their needs.
Let me tell you another secret: It’s deadly dangerous if you rely just on yourself to understand your customers’ motivations in choosing your product. You are wrong. You will be wrong. You were already wrong.
That’s why we are doing customer research, right?
Here is the setting for our customer research focus group:
- 16 participants with various ages, professions and tastes around a Thanksgiving dinner table.
- 16 almost full bellies that are ready for some dessert.
- 16 souls that are having fun (and looking to have more fun).
- 4 different kinds of home-made chocolate waiting to be tested (relaxing, high-fiber, post-workout, energizing).
- 2 chocolate lovers to make sure they are getting healthy/unbiased answers and their potential customers are having fun.
Here are the simple rules for the participants:
- You can pick only one of the chocolates you wish to try (so that we can understand which flavor is high-demand).
- You have 2 minutes to try the chocolate, answer the questions and put them in the answers bowl (so that it won’t turn out to be a chaotic game without rules in which you won’t get a proper answer).
- After everyone is finished answering, you randomly pick a card, read the answers out loud and try to figure out who that person is (so that they are part of a game that they have fun and also compete in the most basic way possible).
- You also guess if the Trivia question is true or false (so that you learn something new—and possibly unnecessary—but still have fun!).
Here are the questions I prepared while my wife was mastering the flavors of our soon-to-be market-fit home-made chocolate:
Which chocolate did you choose? (Hope you remember what you picked!)
……………………………………………………
- Define the taste with one word. (One word, no more!)
……………………………………………………
- What’s one thing you love about this chocolate?
……………………………………………………
- What’s one thing you would change about this chocolate? (You can change anything!)
……………………………………………………
- True or false? (Who’s going to answer right? You or the person who picks this card?)
“Cacao” also means “my beautiful wife” in Spanish slang. T / F
- My name is ….….….…. or ….….….…. or ….….….….
And here’s what we’ve learned from this Thanksgiving customer research
Remember they had to choose the chocolate first, relying solely on the function without having any idea about its taste.
High-fiber? Relaxing? Energizing? Post-workout?
For those who are curious: The most picked one was the “relaxing” chocolate.
The reason?
Everyone thought that the “relaxing” flavor had some sort of CBD or THC!
Wait… Did I tell you that this Thanksgiving dinner took place in Seattle where consumption of marijuana is legal?
Fun fact: None of the participants was a marijuana user. They all loved the idea of “having fun eating chocolate with relaxing effects” and this is why they chose a bar of chocolate with pistachio and goji berry.
And this is part of a different Medium article: 5 “Real” Reasons for Why People Choose “This” Product Instead of “That” Product
What else did we learn?
We learned how they defined their chocolate, what they loved and what they would change about it using just one word each.
Why one word?
If you give people a framework to stay inside the boundaries of while answering the questions, you get specific and to-the-point answers that you can utilize easily.
Nutty, needs moisture, chewy, make a little sweeter, balanced, zesty…
These keywords helped us understand how our potential customers felt about the chocolate they tested. And they will help us do better marketing when the time is right. In the end, don’t we want to see the words on a package or a Google Ad that match the experience you expect to receive from that product in real life?
We also made them find the person who filled out the card.
But why did we do that?
- For the participant: Trying to guess the person who thought the post-workout chocolate was “too salty” and who thinks “cacao means ‘my beautiful wife’ in Spanish slang” is fun.
- For us: Since we know who that family friend is (e.g: age, gender, taste, background), now we have a place to start to determine what that target group might be thinking about our product.
And why the trivia?
Because who doesn’t love a good trivia? Remember we had to give something in return? They had so much fun trying to guess who the person is and if that trivia question is true or false.
And they felt like they were a part of something bigger than them: Helping their family friends start a chocolate business!
A chance for you to participate in a chocolate customer research
If you’ve come this far, you’re either interested in chocolate making or doing customer research for your product.
I apologize if you are here for the secrets of chocolate making. This was a Medium article about product and marketing.
But since you’re all the way here, let me ask you a few questions that you can answer in the comments section. You would make me and my wife super happy if we can get your 2 minutes (I promise you’ll have fun with the Trivia part).
- Which healthy chocolate would you be interested in if you had the chance?
High-fiber / Relaxing / Post-workout / Energizing
- What is one thing you would look for in a bar of healthy chocolate?
Texture / Ingredients / Sweetness / Function / Other
- True or false?
1- Napoleon Bonaparte loved chocolate so much that he brought his favorite bar to every battlefront.
2- The average serving of milk chocolate has about the same amount of caffeine as a cup of decaf coffee.
3- Chocolate contains substances that stimulate the brain in the same way cannabis does.
