#7 I encountered an online market research firm, Macromill, Inc.!

From Nov. 7 to Nov. 9, I participated in the Boston Career Forum , a Japanese-English bilingual job fair. As many as 190 Japanese international companies came to the event to hire Japanese students who are studying in the USA and students from any countries who can speak Japanese and English. In the Boston Career Forum, every companies had a small booth, and students visited booths of the companies they are interested in, listened to approximately 30-minute company information and submitted their resume.


In the Boston Career Forum, I found an interesting company, Macromill, Inc., a Japanese online market research firm, and listened to the company information session. I was excited at that time because in our marketing class, we learned about market research. The textbook, "Principles of Marketing," says that "Some large companies have their own research departments that work with marketing managers on marketing research projects. In addition, these companies-like their smaller counterparts- frequently hire outside research specialists to consult with management on specific marketing problems and to conduct marketing research studies."(p.106) This company, Macromill, is the outside research firm!!Main role of this company is listen to a client about their problems, identify what kind of questions they need to answer, conduct a primary research, analyse the data they get for the client, and make a strategy with the client. In today's blog, I want to share what I learned from the company information session.





What I found interesting from the company information session was the difference of sales and marketing. A person from Macromill explained that the act of sales is asking people who do not want to buy and persuade them to buy, on the other hand, marketing is justification; making the system in that people want to buy spontaneously with their own will. He illustrated this difference with an interesting example.

The example is about the Odenplan station in Stockholm.
In the station, there was a escalator next to a stairs, so most people chose escalator, and people really need the escalator, such as the elderly and pregnant, cannot use it comfortably. To solve this situation, there are two possible ways. One is putting the poster saying "Please use stairs so that people in need can use the escalator." This is asking people to do what they are unwilling to do. The other way is to make a system that each stairs makes sound as people step on, so that people enjoy to use stairs and spontaneously choose stairs over escalator. This is what marketing need to do. Marketing is giving a reason, justification or incentive to do something.
Marketing strategy is to make a system to change or affect people's behavior!