Sometimes it is a little difficult to answer the question, show me where research has paid off! Where is the return?  No doubt part of this is down to the fact that research is part of the discussion and like advertising it becomes difficult to disaggregate a direct effect.    Nonetheless, it was interesting to see the first quarter 2010 results from Starbucks state the impact of ‘getting closer to the customer’.

Inthe First Quarter of 2010, net income was $241.5 million, up from $64.3 million in the year-ago quarter. Same store sales jumped to 4% from –9% year on year. The reason: how Starbucks embraced customer research surveys and found out the seemingly basic finding that people in different regions had different tastes for their coffee:

     Sun Belt – prefer cold drinks     Northeast – like drip coffee     Pacific Northwest – drink more espresso A refocus on more local outcomes resulted in this dramatic sales response.  Sometimes then research can make real the most basic of insights. Why? Well in this case executives in charge of regions of the country were divided by time-zone and hence became divorced from real events on the ground. It was through research that executives could get a truer picture of what was happening, rather than one blinded by organizational structure.