Market research doesn’t always reveal the truth about your customer...

Market research doesn’t always reveal the truth about your customers’ virtues Let’s be honest. No one wants to look dumb in front of their peers. We nod along when someone brings up a topic we don’t understand. We laugh at jokes we don’t get because everyone else is laughing. We say “of course” when we’re unsure — because it’s easier than admitting we’re lost. This happens in market research too. People take surveys with the best intentions, but they still shape their answers to look smart, responsible, or virtuous. They say a message was clear when it wasn’t. They say they support sustainable products, even if they rarely buy them. They say they bought an EV to save the planet — but it was really to save money. I’ve spent years running research in the EV space, including conjoint studies to understand what actually drives adoption and financials consistently rises to the top. Lower fuel costs. Lower maintenance. Federal and state incentives. Time-of-use charging savings. HOV lane access. Environmental values are good for storytelling. But financial value is what changes behavior. This gap between stated values and actual behavior shows up everywhere — not just in EVs. And it’s measurable. A meta-analysis of 28 stated preference studies found that people overstate their willingness to pay by a median factor of 1.35 (Little & Berrens, 2004). When market research gives people space to protect their self-image, it’s no longer revealing behavior. It’s capturing aspiration. If you’re building strategy based on stated intent, without validating it through behavioral data or tradeoff modeling, you’re not grounded. This is where research becomes strategy. And this is what I help companies do — connect what people say with what they actually do. If you’re working through that gap, let’s connect.