More than 230 leading marketing research companies, marketers and marketing academics attended the first UTSpeaks public lecture for 2005 last Tuesday to hear UTS marketing research expert Professor Jordan Louviere.
Professor Jordan Louviere

According to Louviere, despite research showing most new products and services failing to meet management expectations, many corporations and government agencies still place costly bets on their future success with little or no indication of market demand or willingness to pay.




Professor of Marketing and Director of the UTS Centre for the Study of Choice in the Faculty of Business, Professor Louviere's address challenged costly and unproductive marketing research paradigms that purport to predict future product and service demand.




He said understanding and predicting the choices consumers make is the key to anticipating and predicting outcomes.




"But after almost 45 years of research on the quality and accuracy of human decision making we are still not very good at it," Professor Louviere said. "We need all the help we can get and there are no gurus or seers out there with all the right answers."




"Most studies suggest only about 10 to 13 per cent of new products and services succeed. This is probably worse than chance and we might be better off flipping coins or tossing dice.




"All too often science, engineering, IT and the list goes on, do not try to anticipate consumer demand or willingness to pay. Entrepreneurs in particular stand out because they 'just know' it or they will succeed."




In his lecture Professor Louviere covered a number of case examples, including the marketing research being conducted for space tourism products, using the very latest in consumer choice modelling technologies. He said the processes and techniques being applied were being perfected through collaboration between the UTS Centre for the Study of Choice, The AGSM Centre for Corporate Change and the the CRC for Smart Internet Technology.