The Gap Between What Customers Say and What They Really Want

Your customers have a blind spot.

They are experts at explaining their problems. They can tell you where a process is slow, what frustrates them, and what they wish was easier.

But if you ask them for the solution, they’ll almost always describe a slightly better version of what they already have.

They can’t invent a future they’ve never seen.

This is the trap of conventional customer research. It focuses on the solutions customers can articulate, leading to incremental tweaks and minor improvements. It’s a path that makes you marginally better but fundamentally the same as everyone else: just another choice in the market.

The world’s most dominant brands draw the map.

Breakthrough growth comes from knowing customer problems so well that you can offer solutions they can't yet describe.

The $600 Million Sauce

In the early 1980s, Prego was struggling against Ragú. Prego found this frustrating.

It knew its sauce was the best. It used top-quality ingredients and often won blind taste tests.

Their real problem stemmed from a lack of understanding. They didn’t know what Americans truly wanted in a pasta sauce.

Initial research only deepened the confusion. They saw that customers at home were making endless personal tweaks. How could they create one perfect sauce if everyone wanted something different?

In 1986, they hired market researcher Howard Moskowitz. He came with a radical belief: customers couldn’t tell you what they wanted if the solution wasn’t already on the market.

He knew asking them to describe their ideal sauce was useless.

Instead of asking, he experimented. His team created 45 different variations of pasta sauce, tweaking six core variables. They took these sauces on the road and had hundreds of people taste them.

The data didn’t point to one perfect sauce. It clustered into three distinct groups of preference: Regular, Spicy, and Extra-Chunky.

That last one was the breakthrough.

No company was making an extra-chunky sauce. No focus group had ever asked for it. But when people tried it, a huge segment of the market fell in love.

It met a hidden desire for texture that customers couldn't explain. They lacked the context to express it.

Prego launched its Extra-Chunky line and generated $600 million over the next decade.

The Grip That Changed the Kitchen

Often, an unspoken need can be seen in a brief moment of empathy.

This was the case for Sam Farber, the founder of OXO Good Grips. While on vacation, he watched his wife, who had mild arthritis, struggle to use a standard metal vegetable peeler.

He realized the problem wasn't the blade; it was the handle. For decades, kitchen tools had been designed with little thought for the user's comfort and grip.

This showed a common need for comfort and control that reached beyond just those with arthritis. Everyone just accepted the hassle of cooking with awkward tools.

No one was asking for a "fat, comfortable, rubber-handled peeler."

Farber developed a line of tools with chunky, ergonomic, non-slip handles that were easy to hold for everyone. OXO's massive success came from solving the problem of a bad handle, rather than trying to engineer a better blade.

The Obvious Idea No One Asked For

At times, a breakthrough occurs when you spot a solution in a different context.

You can then apply it to a problem that many have stopped noticing.

For most of the 20th century, an absurd ritual played out in airports: people would haul heavy luggage by hand. This universal pain point was simply accepted as the price of travel.

In 1970, luggage executive Bernard Sadow struggled with two heavy suitcases. He noticed a worker effortlessly moving a heavy machine on a wheeled skid. He had a flash of insight. He went home, attached four small casters to a suitcase, and added a pull strap.

He had solved a problem that travelers had endured for decades.

But when he first showed his "rolling luggage" to department stores, they rejected it. They didn't think anyone would buy it. It took time for the market to catch on to a solution for a problem they never knew they could solve.

How to Find the Problem Hiding in Plain Sight

If your growth has stalled, it might be because you’re solving problems your customers name, not the ones that truly matter. To find the unarticulated needs that lead to breakthroughs, you have to look beyond the survey data.

Ask these questions about your own research:

• Are you exploring or just confirming? Are you, like Prego, exploring new options that your customers might not have thought of? Or are you just asking them to rate your current reality?

• Where is the silent struggle? Like OXO, are you observing your customers with empathy? Look for the points of friction and discomfort they've accepted as normal.

• What has everyone stopped seeing? What common pain points has your industry, including you, just accepted as "the way it is," like we did with wheeled luggage?

To make your brand irreplaceable, immerse yourself in your customers' world. This helps you build solutions that they may not even know they need.

This is how you stop being another choice and start being the only one that matters.

Onward,

Aaron Shields

P.S. Are your customer insights only backing up what you already know? This could leave you open to competitors who are digging deeper. Reply to this email. I’ll arrange a free 15-minute call to help you find the one question that could reveal your next big opportunity.