Businesses are discovering hidden markets for their products through a new market research technique called Customer Case Research. The new technique borrows methods used by detectives and investigative reporters to discover what drives customer purchases, according to a Chicago marketing consultant and a DePaul University professor who have co-written a journal article on CCR.

CCR results have been used to launch new products, grow established products and revitalize stagnant or declining products, explained co-authors Gerald Berstell, a marketing and strategy consultant who uses CCR, and Denise Nitterhouse, an accountancy professor at DePaul.

Nitterhouse and Berstell describe the CCR process in a cover article they wrote for the summer edition of the journal Marketing Research, published by the American Marketing Association. To illustrate the seven purchase drivers that CCR can identify, the authors discuss local and national marketing success stories of companies that have used the new technique.

CCR uses in-depth interviews and observations of a relatively small number of real customers to determine why people buy or don't buy a product.

Customers are interviewed at the point of purchase or place the product is used. Customer case researchers "observe behaviors and ask questions until they can construct a detailed narrative of the chain of people, influences and events that lead to specific purchases," the authors wrote.

For example, Nitterhouse and Berstell discuss an architectural boat tour organization in Chicago that wanted to attract more customers. On a traditional, large-scale survey, most people had checked "interest in architecture" as a very or extremely important reason to take a boat tour.

But CCR on 50 passengers discovered that architecture wasn't really what had generated that day's business. Most of the passengers interviewed said they took the cruise to entertain the out-of-town friends or relatives accompanying them. The result was new advertising and positioning themes for the boat tours.

CCR explains the customer point of view more clearly than other research methods, Nitterhouse and Berstell conclude in their article.

"The case studies are who-what-where-when-why stories designed to get everyone in a company--including R&D, operations, customer service, MIS, and human resources--into the shoes of the customer," they wrote. "People relate to vivid individual stories far more easily than to abstract aggregations."

Contact: Robin Florzak, 312/362-8592