Tom H. C. Anderson - More Than Market Research

How Relevant is Seth Godin’s Passion & Pop Gulf for Market Research?

Marketing Guru Seth Godin just posted a chart on his blog showing two bell curves. A smaller curve representing acceptance by the focused/excited/tastemaking community, and a larger curve representing the market of pop. “These are the folks who go to Olive Garden for a nice Italian meal instead of the authentic place down the street”.

He points out that these are important because we need to pay attention to the area/gap in the middle. This is where companies get themselves in trouble according to Seth.

I was wondering how this applied to market research. Though I think we usually focus more on the “pop” curve than the “passion” curve, and tend to view it as one gigantic curve. Obviously we do sometimes break out various segments like early adaptors, or those heavily involved in the category. But our focus is usually on selling as many items as possible for the highest price possible.

Perhaps Seth is right? Perhaps viewing our population this way would be more accurate and create more interesting products? What do you think?

Until recently I think we would all have had to focus our work on the pop curve. Though now, with the targeting of category leaders to influence the market via CGM/SNS becoming more popular, perhaps we’ll have more opportunities to conduct research projects among just the “Passionate”. Once you get the passionate on your side as evangelists, going after the pop-market (perhaps with a second product) may be a new popular online marketing strategy.

-Tom