Accelerating Research is Product Management

Shauna Pettit-Brown, Consumer Insights Researcher at Cambia, discusses how the field of market research is evolving, her approach to collaborating with product teams, and her strategy and toolkit for improving speed-to-insight.

Cambia Health Solutions is creating a consumer-focused and economically sustainable health care system. Shauna Pettit-Brown works with numerous teams in the organization to synchronize research with product development.

The field of market research has changed significantly in recent years. In the digital age, companies strive to be more agile and iterative. To do so, decision makers need to be able to get insights faster so that they can adapt to changes in the market and iterate faster. This has presented a new and exciting challenge for market researchers: how do you compress the traditionally long lead time to design, execute, and analyze research before reporting back?

You can do this, Shauna says, by using traditional methods in conjunction with modern methods that were built with these needs in mind. Traditional market research approaches are still important for characterizing and sizing the market. Qualitative research – whether it’s in home interviews or focus groups – provides critical insights on consumer needs.

However, smaller-scale tests and experiments fill in the gaps between larger and more time-consuming market research studies. Shauna uses Feedback Loop's rapid consumer feedback platform because it democratizes research, making it easy for anyone to get the insights that they need to make decisions.

Shauna still works with product teams on traditional market research studies, but as the product team begins to build things out, they can now validate ideas and iterate faster. Before teams could get insights on-demand, the stakes were much higher for asking the right questions. When you aren’t conducting a months-long study, it’s much easier to iterate.

At first, it was challenging to make these changes, but Shauna says that ultimately, research is used to make more decisions than ever before, and that’s good for everyone. She’s led the charge on helping her company become more customer-centric.

You’ll learn a lot in this episode about market research and experimentation.

Here are the highlights:

• How the field of market research is evolving (4:56)
• Shauna’s approach to combining traditional and modern research methodologies (8:28)
• How Shauna collaborates with product teams (12:14)
• How Cambia has become a more data-driven and customer-centric company (16:35)