Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

If you don't know what you're measuring or looking for, then you have no way to knowing the result of your actions (i.e., guessing). As a minimum, start with some guesses on what the needs/perception are, and study the result of your action on these. Then, refine and repeat.

But remember, that before computers became household items-- there was no idea about customer needs. They were colonizers. People make change because of pain-- sometimes they don't know they are in pain, so you create the need.

Here is a good article for you. https://www.strategy-business.com/media/file/03306.pdf

Guesswork?

Look, do you want an answer from a philosopher, a mathematician, or a marketer? And in any case, if your serious, why not invest about a 100 times more points in this to attract those other than the altruistic?!

I doubt that the marketer answer is possible as there are so many variants on an answer to make any professional say, “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.” With apologies to TS Eliot (Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock)

Still, your question persists so here goes: Other than knowing A and C in your question invites the answer of “Anything” If you don’t know the initial state of a system or know the eventual state of a system then you can’t possibly be able to come up with the algorithm which connects the two.

That’s not strictly true, but it does depend on having a body of data. If you have a pile of data collected under the same circumstances and other conditions being equal, then you can use neural maths to derive an association without actually needing to know what the formula was in the first place. In fact neural software won’t actually tell you the relationship. It will just match the figures to the answers and allow you to make an informed assumption about the future relationships. (See my page liking to NeuralWare on https://www.xspirt.com/associations/Default.aspx

On a base premise your question is a bit silly. If you don’t define A or C then how on earth do you know what B is to include?

OK, so you clarified things with your survey analogy. That’s only about an eighth of the story. Firstly you want to survey opinions and feelings about an undefined set of features for an undefined product, so although you have a laptop in mind, your question as written could prompt questions about food, holidays, investments, toys or pornography. Why plump for surveying PC attributes when you have another couple of million products to jump at?

Secondly, you seem to be using the survey for purposes which are aimes at closing sales rather than discovering needs. This approach is frowned upon by the Market Research Associations as it has nothing to do with collecting marketing information and everything to do with being woven into a sales argument which makes the recipient feel like a total Wazzock if they say “No” to your sales arguments, because courtesy of the loaded “Survey” they’ve just agreed to them all in a subtly different context. More Eliot comes to mind:

----- that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit


I’d suggest that you close the question, think it through, and get some help in defining what you want to achieve and then re-post it with about 250 points. You might even get Randall (WMMA) or Michael (mgoodman) out of bed for that!


Best wishes


Steve Alker
Xspirt