As the head of Matsushita’s videocassette recorder division once said, “Why do Americans do so much marketing research? You can find out what you need by traveling around and visiting the retailers who carry your product.”

Hands-on Research
Of course, Japanese corporations want accurate and useful information about their markets as much as U.S. and European companies do. They just go about it differently. Japanese executives put much more faith in information they get directly from wholesalers and

retailers in the distribution channels. Moreover, they track what’s happening among channel members on a monthly, weekly, and sometimes even daily basis.

Japanese-style market research relies heavily on two kinds of information: “soft data” obtained from visits to dealers and other channel members, and “hard data” about shipments, inventory levels, and retail sales. Japanese managers believe that these data better reflect the behavior and intentions of flesh-and-blood consumers.

Japanese companies want information that is context specific rather than context free—that is, data directly relevant to consumer attitudes about the product, or to the way buyers have used or will use specific products, rather than research results that are too remote from actual consumer behavior to be useful. When Japanese companies do conduct surveys, they interview consumers who have actually bought or used a product. They do not scrutinize an undifferentiated mass public to learn about general attitudes and values. When Toyota wanted to learn what Americans preferred in small, imported cars, for example, the company asked owners and others who had driven the car what they liked or disliked about the
Volkswagen Beetle.

Soft-data gathering.
Senior as well as middle-level Japanese managers get involved in gathering soft data because they see the information as