What's My Story?
I've worked as a market researcher for Hewlett-Packard for a dozen years, initially in secondary market research and for the last 10 years as a primary market research manager. Throughout the years I've managed research budgets in the millions of dollars per year and have managed the following types of research:
- Hardware products from inkjet printers to cameras to high end copiers
- Various software products for consumers to large enterprise customers
- Prototype concepts targeting various customers and applications
- Services and software solutions from micro businesses to enterprise
- I have utilized over twenty different research methods in order to ensure that HP receives the highest quality of information available
- I have logged nearly a million miles, conducting market research all over the world, in over 25 countries, in order to understand the differences in customer expectations in differing cultures and economic environments
Along the way I have worked with HP Presidents, Vice Presidents, Section Managers and Product Managers to understand the business decisions that they are considering and to ensure that we will get market research information that will provide a trustworthy, primary data point in making multimillion dollar decisions.
How This Web Site Got It's Start
A friend-who is not a market researcher- got a job with a smaller company and was tasked with conducting a market research project. She called me to get a few vendor's names and numbers. What was meant to be a 5-minute discussion and some help writing an RFP (request for proposal), turned into a 45 minute discussion on the pros and cons of different research methods. I decided to find a web site that would give her the information that she needed, in simple English, that could help her write a basic research plan and to decide what type of research would best serve her purpose. After searching the web for hours, I found web sites targeting market researchers, full of technical jargon and lacking the fundamental pros and cons of different research methods. I also found hundreds of vendor web sites that touted only the research methods that their companies offered, but offering no objective overview of all the market research methods currently available.
The independent, objective, web site that I was looking for simply didn't exist, so I decided to make one myself and MarketResearch101.com was born.
If you have any questions or comments about this web site please don't hesitate to let me know.
Chris Hawkes
