Steve Jobs was asked what research Apple did for the iPod and he responded with none. He then went on to say

“It is not the customers job to know what they want”

I remember the first MP3 player that I ever purchased, ordered off eBay for a low price and certainly it reinforced the old saying, “you pay for what you get”. It was clunky, hard to use, unreliable, and it did not last very long. I am sure that there are many younger people in the world today who do not even realize that MP3 players existed well before the iPod hit the market ten years ago!

I have a distant memory of the Sony Walkman being launched. In a similar way to how the iPod has taken over the language of what we used to call an MP3 player, many of the Walkman’s competitors were still referred to as a “Walkman”. If you are reading this and you have no idea what a Walkman is, then you are probably in the same category of people who think that the iPod was the first ever MP3 player.

There are not many companies in the world that can launch a brand new product like Apple can and have people line up for days just to be the first in the world to buy it. It is so interesting to hear that the same company publicly admits that they do not do product research, because as Steve Jobs said, “it is not the customers’ responsibility to decide what they need”.

I don’t believe that any customer research for the initial iPod would have returned the concepts of ‘click wheels’ and iTunes syncing.

I have made the mistake many times in the past of listening to customers and spending time and resource on product research. Whilst it is an important consideration, our business vision and direction should not be influenced by the loud voices of a few.

Imagine how the world would be today if Apple had listened to negative feedback from a prototype iPod over ten years ago. Analyzing the trend of our customers, looking at purchasing patterns and studying the demographic is an important part. However, we do need to balance whether we open our products and services up to public criticisms and scrutiny, or whether we trust our judgment, our research, and our understanding of our target market.