How do you develop a product for end users in a different country, with a completely different culture and lifestyle, when you have a very small budget and a very limited understanding of the market?
Developing a product the right way that addresses end user needs is hard enough when the end users are clearly identified and collocated with the product team. But if the end users are available at low cost, we can at least get 10-20 detailed interviews down in a relatively short period of time with very low cost. That, plus a couple of strategically deployed ethnographical projects, can help a product manager slice and dice potential end users into archetypes, build up user profiles at an adequate level of detail, flesh out their needs, wants and expectations, and help drive the product concept. We would be able to develop a product positioning statement before generating product requirements and specifications, which is the only way to develop good products in my book.
But when the end users are in a completely different country that do not share cultural norms with the product team, this can become a very expensive proposition very quickly. Not only does the product team need to understand the end users’ behavior surrounding their product space, they need to work overtime to understand the social context surrounding the rest of their end users’ everyday life.
It seems that the only way to achieve an adequate level of understanding of the end user is to team up with someone local who is versed in ethnography for marketing, spend a good two weeks in the target country, and put in some intense work surrounding detailed interviews, shadowing and immersion. That can be an expensive proposition especially for a small company. I’ve seen this done when I worked for a consulting company back in the nineties – it’s tons of fun, very educational and extremely intense. But I really think this is the right way to do it.
The alternative way – developing a theory of what those end users need, without developing a deep understanding of the end users as people first, basically involves putting the fate of your next big thing in the hands of chance. You MAY get lucky and guess correctly, or you may be so far off the mark that the product will never see the light of day.
My theory is that if a company cannot afford to do the research and planning, it is probably better for that company to phase its product roadmap and plan to expand into markets they understand first, build up revenue, and then invest in new product development for new geographies once they have the resources to do it right.
