Marketing research: Guiding companies to focus on the right problems

Keep insights innovation alive by asking the right questions

Editor’s note: Bonnie Chiurazzi is founder and insights strategist at Vibe Insights Lab.

Insights teams that bring ideas to life often get comfortable with their solutions. They build something successful, refine it over time and assume it will always work – until one day, it doesn’t. Instead of exploring what truly needs to be solved, they double down on optimizing what already exists. They tweak, refine and attempt to squeeze out incremental gains rather than taking a step back and asking the fundamental question: Is this still the right solution?

The companies that remain innovative, the product managers who drive meaningful impact and the marketers who consistently connect with their audiences have one thing in common: they fall in love with the problem, not the solution.

Why companies often overlook evolving problems

During World War II, military analysts studied returning aircraft to determine where to reinforce them with extra armor. They mapped out bullet holes across the planes and concluded that the wings, fuselage and tail needed strengthening. But despite their efforts, planes kept going down.

That’s when statistician Abraham Wald made a breakthrough observation: they were looking at the wrong data. The planes they studied had survived those hits. What about the ones that never made it back? They were likely hit in critical areas like the engine or cockpit. The real problem wasn’t reinforcing the bullet-ridden areas – it was strengthening the parts of the planes that showed no damage at all.

Companies make this same mistake all the time. They focus on what they can see – the solutions that worked in the past – without questioning what they might be missing entirely. They keep optimizing products, refining campaigns and tweaking strategies that once drove success while failing to ask: Are we still solving the right problem?

This is why real innovation comes from falling in love with the problem, not the solution. When companies fixate on optimizing what already exists, they risk missing the deeper, evolving needs of consumers – the ones that could make or break their long-term success.

There’s a reason many organizations struggle to innovate. Once a company finds early success, its natural tendency is to shift from exploration to exploitation – meaning it stops questioning the foundational problem and instead focuses on optimizing what it already has.

This is how companies find themselves stuck:

• They prioritize incremental improvements over transformational change. Instead of rethinking how to meet customer needs, they make small modifications to existing products and campaigns, hoping that will be enough.
• They resist change due to the sunk cost fallacy. If significant time and money have already been invested in a particular solution, leaders may hesitate to abandon it, even when the data suggests it’s no longer working.
• They mistake execution for strategy. A relentless focus on efficiency and short-term results often leads to teams optimizing for what’s easy to measure, rather than questioning whether they’re even solving the right problem.
• They assume consumer needs stay the same instead of continuously building empathy for their target audience. Consumer behaviors, expectations and pain points evolve constantly, and failing to adapt means becoming irrelevant.

This pattern isn’t just seen at the company level. Product managers can find themselves stuck defending road maps that aren’t delivering impact. Marketers may continue running campaigns that aren’t resonating. Even researchers can fall into the trap of gathering data to validate a preexisting belief rather than digging into what’s truly happening in the marketplace.

As Marty Cagan explains in “Inspired,” great teams don’t fixate on solutions. They interrogate the problem relentlessly. They challenge assumptions. They explore unmet needs. Because at the end of the day, people don’t buy products. People buy solutions to their problems and resolution to their deepest needs.

The role of market research in asking the right questions

How do companies avoid getting stuck in solution-first thinking? By ensuring they never lose sight of their target audience and the evolving problems that the audience is facing. That’s where research and insights professionals come in.

Insights professionals act as translators between companies and their current and potential consumers – helping businesses understand shifting consumer needs before declining engagement, retention issues or shrinking market share force an urgent (and often panicked) response.

Here’s how ongoing research helps keep innovation alive:

Discovery research – uncovering the real problem.

• Before brainstorming new products or features, companies should be asking: What are people struggling with in this marketplace? What are their unmet needs? Where are they experiencing friction?
• Discovery research – whether through qualitative interviews, ethnographic studies or behavioral analysis – allows businesses to dig beneath the surface and uncover the root of the problem, rather than treating symptoms.

Audience insights and segmentation – understanding who you’re solving for.

• Not all consumers are the same and treating them as a monolith leads to one-size-fits-all solutions that often fit no one particularly well. Effective audience segmentation helps teams build empathy with consumers and identify which people are being underserved, which behaviors indicate emerging needs and how to craft tailored experiences that resonate.

Concept testing – pressure-testing ideas before full commitment.

• Falling in love with an idea before validating it is a common pitfall. Concept testing ensures that before companies invest significant resources in a new initiative, they have a clear understanding of whether it actually solves a real problem that exists in the marketplace and solves that problem in a way that consumers find valuable.

Competitive and market intelligence – keeping a pulse on the industry.

• Sometimes companies get so focused on internal execution that they lose track of external changes – new competitors, shifting customer needs or changing brand perceptions. Continuous insights gathering helps companies anticipate change, rather than react to it too late. 

When companies consistently invest in insights, they prevent stagnation. They ensure that instead of getting trapped optimizing old solutions, they remain focused on what matters most – solving real problems in a way that can’t be ignored by consumers. 

How researchers can help stakeholders refocus on the problems

For companies that find themselves stuck, shifting mind-sets can make all the difference. Here’s how researchers can help their stakeholders refocus on the problems:

Ask better questions.

Instead of: How can we improve this feature? Ask: What pain point is this addressing? Is this still the right problem to focus on?

Make discovery research a continuous habit, not a one-time project.

Customer needs are not static. Building a regular cadence of audience insights – through customer interviews, behavioral tracking and survey data – keeps teams informed about shifting needs before they become a crisis.

Encourage a culture of curiosity and challenge assumptions.

Strong teams create an environment where people feel safe questioning strategies, road maps and campaign effectiveness without fear of resistance. Ask yourself, if we weren’t already doing this, would we still prioritize it?

Look outside your industry for inspiration.

Some of the biggest innovations come from applying ideas across disciplines. Observing how companies in different industries approach similar challenges can spark fresh thinking.

Accept that solutions are temporary.

Even the most successful products, campaigns and strategies have a shelf life. The faster teams can recognize when something has run its course, the easier it is to move on and refocus on the next challenge. It can be almost impossible to determine the exact expiration date for any given product or service. Hedge your bets by always keeping an eye on future innovations.

Innovation doesn’t come from clinging to past successes. It comes from staying obsessed with the problem – continuously questioning, exploring and reevaluating what consumers truly need. So don’t get stuck trying to force an old solution to work. Instead, fall in love with the problem again. Companies that remain deeply curious about their consumers – their motivations, struggles and desires – are the ones that continuously create solutions that create positive change in the lives of their consumers.