Research is commonly used to look into the future. It’s called upon to answer questions like: How will this new product sell? Will anyone watch this sitcom? Does this movie have a chance at the box office? It can’t predict exactly what will happen, but it’s about the best tool that a business has to make an educated guess about how its products, services, or advertising will fare.

But research can do more, according to a new book, Market Research Matters. In addition to using research in the standard ways, authors Robert Duboff and Jim Spaeth believe that businesses should also use it on a more holistic, macro level, to look down the road at what’s ahead. They write: "All too often, people use research to view the world only as it is and not to think about how it might be."

By expanding the scope of their research, companies can better anticipate their customers’ new product needs, their competitors’ actions, and identify previously unforeseen dangers and opportunities.

The book’s somewhat vague title gives no clue to its intentions (something with a hint of foresight might have been more appropriate), but if readers look past that fact they will discover an informed and passionately written argument for integrating research into all levels of a company’s activities.

The book is dense (very little of the usual business-book fluff here!) but necessarily so, as they have a lot to cover in just over 300 pages, including showing readers how to use research to look at future brands, customer loyalty, the competition, sales channels, employee satisfaction, and the role of the Internet.

Aren’t naive

Duboff is partner and director of national marketing for Ernst & Young and also serves as chairman of the board of the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF). Spaeth is the ARF’s president. The two are obviously sold on the value of research but Messrs. Duboff and Spaeth aren’t naive. They admit they know of no firms in which research plays an integral role in practicing what they call Strategic Anticipation® (must every idea or concept these days be trademarked, registered, or copyrighted?), a Mercer Management Consulting term which is defined as "the ability to continually assess the environment, particularly focusing on targeted customers, and to act on the signals that change is coming."

As a result, they can offer no real-life examples for readers to follow. But the book does give you the questions to ask that may lead you down the right path. And it makes concrete suggestions on systems to use to structure the questioning, and thereby erect a framework for future-looking.

Asking the questions is the easy part; the hard part, to put it mildly, is to secure upper management’s commitment to research, along with buy-in from everyone in the company.

Dreaming is a luxury

Brainstorming, thinking outside the box - call it what you will, the ability to dream about what could be is, sadly, often viewed as a luxury. But the book makes a strong case for using research as a vehicle to see into the future, by talking to current and past customers and employees, by learning from your mistakes instead of sweeping them under the rug, and by researching your competitors.

Research typically takes an idea, puts it in front of a group of people and measures their reactions. Granted, without brainstorming, there wouldn’t any new ideas to plop in front of consumers, so somebody somewhere is doing some dreaming. But research is too often shackled to the here-and now, trapped by the need to prove its worth and relevance, when ample proof exists that it has both.

The authors close by saying: "Our belief is that most researchers are not researching the future, and even fewer decision makers are pushing them to do so. Our hope is that the information conveyed in this book will help change this balance, that decision makers will demand more from their researchers, and that the researchers will meet the challenge."

Market Research Matters is the first step toward realizing that hope.

Market Research Matters: Tools and Techniques for Aligning Your Business (312 pages, $34.95), is published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.