Customer foresight

[1] But even today, research reveals that numerous inventions fail due to a lack of customer centricity.

As customer foresight relies a lot on insight generation through interactions, a systematic selection of study participants is of great importance.

The customer foresight journey typically starts with the identification of relevant business needs by e.g. analyzing market dynamics, visions and objectives and value propositions.

In a second step, change dynamics are analyzed and research materials on future scenarios are collected e.g. by applying scenario planning, doing desk research, roadmapping and gathering inputs from science fiction (for an example of a multi-method study approach in the field of customer foresight see Hahn et al.

[7] Then, the most suitable dialogue partners and project participants are selected by applying pyramiding techniques, screening, scouting or broadcasting.

Based on these inputs, practical implications are identified which are then integrated by decision makers through strategy workshops, backtesting or design thinking sprints.

In contrast to customer foresight, it uses large scale, quantitative tools to examine future consumer behavior in a representative way.

The research project built on the results of a Trend Receiver study that examined the question “How do we want to live in 10 years?” within six areas of life: living, leisure and work; health and nutrition, consumption and finance; communication; identity and expression as well as community and society.

As a consequence, empirical research can approve or reject projections made and increase the validity of the qualitative results and their importance for corporate strategy and decision making.