With the increas­ing adop­tion of UX prac­tices by more and more com­pa­nies, there is a grow­ing con­fu­sion over the dif­fer­ences between mar­ket research and user research. Part of this con­fu­sion stems from sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two process­es; lead­ing many peo­ple to think the two process­es are syn­ony­mous. Even though they share sim­i­lar steps, each focus­es on very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and answers dif­fer­ent ques­tions.

Giv­en that UX design relies so heav­i­ly on accu­rate user research, con­fus­ing mar­ket research for user research can have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences on your UX design efforts.

What Is Market Research?

Mar­ket research is a sys­tem­at­ic process of col­lect­ing and ana­lyz­ing tar­get cus­tomer data, the com­pe­ti­tion, and the tar­get mar­ket envi­ron­ment to aid in mak­ing mar­ket­ing, brand­ing, mes­sag­ing, posi­tion­ing, and pric­ing deci­sions. The pri­ma­ry goal is to under­stand what peo­ple will buy and how to incite them to buy your prod­uct.

Mar­ket research relies on large, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant sam­ple sets, which often lim­its the research to those meth­ods that can be applied to larg­er groups. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, such research relies large­ly on self-report­ing meth­ods that iden­ti­fy what peo­ple say, rather than what they do, and can take months.

Mar­ket research typ­i­cal­ly relies on sub­jec­tive, self-report­ed data, which has its lim­i­ta­tions. Mar­ket research is good for get­ting user reac­tions to an exist­ing prod­uct, but isn’t very use­ful in iden­ti­fy­ing inno­va­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties. At best, mar­ket research only uncov­ers incre­men­tal improve­ments of an exist­ing solu­tion.

What Is User Research?

User research, on the oth­er hand, focus­es on under­stand­ing the behav­ioral aspects of the users and more accu­rate­ly iden­ti­fies their needs. This research dri­ves spe­cif­ic design deci­sions by deter­min­ing how peo­ple will use a prod­uct and how to con­trol user inter­ac­tions via the inter­face design.

User expe­ri­ence design is based on the notion that users always have a reac­tion or expe­ri­ence with every inter­face, whether you design for it or not, so it is bet­ter to design for a desired expe­ri­ence. User research focus­es on under­stand­ing the knowl­edge base and behav­ioral aspects of users with­in the giv­en domain. It also serves to more accu­rate­ly iden­ti­fy the trig­gers, expect­ed tasks, and desired out­comes of the intend­ed users.

Since user research is used pri­mar­i­ly to dri­ve design deci­sions, it doesn’t require large sam­ple sets. His­tor­i­cal­ly, 3–5 users can iden­ti­fy about 80 per­cent of the design issues with a prod­uct in about a day. One advan­tage of rely­ing on small­er sam­ple sizes is the abil­i­ty to col­lect more objec­tive, observ­able data, and to con­duct iter­a­tive research to fur­ther refine the results.

What peo­ple say and do are always very dif­fer­ent things. Obser­va­tion­al research is much more objec­tive and more accu­rate­ly defines the need users have, even if they don’t know what that need tru­ly is. As Hen­ry Ford is (mis)quoted as say­ing, “If I had asked my cus­tomers what they want­ed, they would have said faster hors­es.”

Case In Point

Years ago, the trav­el lug­gage indus­try was stag­nat­ing and mar­ket researchers heard cus­tomers com­plain that they want­ed lighter lug­gage. For years, lug­gage com­pa­nies focused on mak­ing lighter lug­gage.

Then one com­pa­ny sent researchers out to observe trav­el­ers in air­ports, to watch peo­ple use trav­el lug­gage. They not­ed how cum­ber­some the lug­gage was to car­ry, espe­cial­ly when tra­vers­ing the long cor­ri­dors of air­port ter­mi­nals. So, instead of focus­ing on mak­ing lug­gage lighter, the com­pa­ny decid­ed to add wheels to the lug­gage, and a design rev­o­lu­tion began.

You Can’t Get There From Here

When ask­ing for direc­tions in Maine, you some­times hear “You can’t get there from here.” This usu­al­ly means that the path to a desired objec­tive is so con­vo­lut­ed that it’s too dif­fi­cult to describe.

User reac­tions to an exist­ing design are usu­al­ly lim­it­ed to the users’ under­stand­ing of the cur­rent solu­tion and pro­vide only incre­men­tal improve­ments over an exist­ing design, not tru­ly inno­v­a­tive insights.

Users aren’t very good at think­ing out­side the box. Giv­en that your team is more knowl­edge­able about your prod­uct domain than your users, they are more like­ly to iden­ti­fy inno­v­a­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties by observ­ing the users than they are by ask­ing users for ideas.

Mar­ket research pro­vides a gen­er­al direc­tion to inves­ti­gate, but user research more accu­rate­ly dri­ves UX design deci­sions.

Market Research vs. User Research

• Wants vs. Needs
• Reac­tive vs. Proac­tive
• Sta­tis­ti­cal Sig­nif­i­cance vs. Good Enough
• Incre­men­tal vs. Inno­v­a­tive
• Time Con­sum­ing vs. Quick
• Infre­quent vs. Iter­a­tive
• Sub­jec­tive vs. Objec­tive
• Direc­tion vs. Design

I can tell in just a glance what kind of research was done when I look at a design. If it looks pret­ty much like every oth­er design in that domain, it’s like­ly based on mar­ket research. But if it unique­ly solves a spe­cif­ic user prob­lem, then it was like­ly based on real user research. More­over, it will also be the mar­ket leader because it solves a real user prob­lem.

Both research meth­ods have their uses, but you must avoid rely­ing on mar­ket research to dri­ve your UX design effort. UX design requires dif­fer­ent infor­ma­tion than what you get from con­duct­ing mar­ket research. The result­ing dif­fer­ence becomes glar­ing­ly obvi­ous once you’ve con­duct­ed actu­al user research.