For most markets, general consumers are the primary focus, because, well, they’re the ones who drive business. On occasion, however, there are extreme consumers, such as people who can’t get enough of Porsche products, or folks who avidly hate video games, or someone who exclusively uses something such as a rice cooker to make meals. As “out there” as these consumers may be, they shouldn’t be ignored, according to an article from Forbes.

The website recent spoke with Jill Avery, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and former brand manager at Gillette, Samuel Adams and AT&T about this certain market. “Traditional market research is all about studying the average consumer, which gets rid of the noise in an effort to study the majority of consumers, but also gets rid of people who are potentially leading the category,” she explains.

With consumers who lie “in the tails” of the bell curve, product designers can actually discover new ideas for their company. “Only by looking at consumers who fall within those tails of the normal distribution can you understand the extremes,” Avery continued. “And they often influence the middle, spilling over into what the average consumer believes.”

Avery, working alongside professor of marketing Michael Norton, went further into detail with her recent HBS teaching note, Learning from Extreme Consumers. It was put together as part of the Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development (FIELD) course for first year MBA students. By taking it into account, they become immersed with global research projects to produce a new product or experience within an emerging market country.

Taking part in said project can have students experiencing what it’s like to step outside of their pre-set comfort zone and learn new ideas. “There is an enormous gap between chatting with your friends and chatting with people on the streets of Vietnam,” said Norton. “This exercise creates a bridge for talking to people who are very unlike you.”

Do you think this is a novel approach to reach extreme consumers

Source: Forbes