Should You Give up on Market Research? What the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle Teaches Us.

Imagine a focus group, convened to discover how an audience will react to one of your new products – a waterproof flashlight, let's say. "Do you have a need for a waterproof flashlight?" you ask the group.

The idea behind this sort of market research seems simple enough: armed with some measurement of an audience's attitudes and needs, we should have a better chance of structuring a successful communications strategy. Most of this work focuses on interpreting and using such data. But rarely do we stop to ask if the data itself is accurate.

Those who do wonder about the validity of data usually do so from the perspective of statistics. If we didn't get enough data points in the sample, then it might not be valid for the entire audience. The sample may not be segmented properly, there may be an error in the results, or perhaps the questions themselves weren't formulated properly.

These are all worthy concerns. Yet even if these potential statistical anomalies are dealt with, there is still a hidden source of error that may contribute to invalid data.

Enter German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who taught us that in the realm of subnuclear physics, one can know either the momentum of a particle or its position in space ­– but never both at the same time. This is true because any attempt to measure these features alters the particle in some way. In other words, we change the object by observing it. "What we observe is not nature itself," Heisenberg said, 'but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

We can apply the same "observer effect" to our understanding of the questioning that is part of market research. Let's return to our focus group. "Do you have a need for a waterproof flashlight?" you ask. This seems harmless enough. Yet the question – just the simple act of asking the question – introduces new thoughts into the minds of the target audience. They may never have even considered that a flashlight could be waterproof. Now they are thinking about it. And whether their answer is "yes" or "no," there is no doubt that the question affected it.

What if we had posed the question more generally: "What needs do you have?" But people live their lives in an active way; they don't contemplate their existence and thematize their mental states. Asking them to do so causes them to disengage from their active "use" of their needs and to think about them objectively. Once again, the question has altered perceptions.

Contextual research poses similar problems. If the subject knows she is under observation, her actions will be affected. What if she doesn't know she's under observation? This might be the best approach, but I still think we have a fundamental problem. What we observe will be shaped, not by the objective acts of the subject, but by what we are looking for and how we interpret their actions. In this sense, it is perhaps impossible to know what "market needs" anyone really has. Perhaps it's just as impossible as ever really knowing anyone. Human beings are just not objective beings (like trees or rocks).

Does this make market research impossible? Should we just give up on it? I wouldn't go that far, just as Heisenberg didn't shut down his physics lab. But be aware of how your observations may alter the objects of your studies. Don't be a slave to research data (or to researchers). Be prepared to downplay, or even eliminate, research that doesn't seem to make some sort of intuitive sense. Sometimes, there is no substitute for good old human judgment.