Minimizing Technological Oversights: A Marketing Research Perspective

Technological advances provide vast opportunities for new product development. Some technologies are transformed into successful new products; others are not. In this paper we investigate the role that marketing research methods as currently conceived can play in aligning marketplace needs with technological potential. We discuss the types of opportunities that new technologies present to the marketplace and why the existing set of market research methods are insufficient to assess the potential for all of these new technologies. We then discuss some emerging, non-traditional marketing research methods and assess their potential for addressing the technological oversights problem. We conclude with implications for academics and for practitioners.