In recent presentations on the value of good market research, we’ve discussed the winners and losers of the pandemic and associated lockdowns.

Among the obvious losers were gyms, but conversely makers of home fitness equipment home – such as Peleton – enjoyed incredible growth.

Last summer (2021), we posed the question about what would happen to businesses like this after lockdown restrictions eased. We suggested that businesses that were experiencing changes should consider getting close to their customers to find out what would happen when things returned to whatever normality was to become.

For Peleton, this would have been useful. Having enjoyed record growth in the earlier stages of the pandemic (around 250% in the first quarter...

The World is changing. The needs and aspirations of your customers (and potential customers) and your people have changed and they are likely to be different post-pandemic. Now more than ever, it’s vital to understand how they are thinking, and how it will affect your business when the lock downs are over.

Those of us who run businesses have to make frequent decisions on a wide variety of matters. It could be whether we should change our prices, spend more on social media, target different customers, change our product, offer supporting services or change our route to market. Or our decisions may concern our staff – is our pay structure competitive, are our people loyal, are they proud to work for us?

This is getting more difficult as we cannot rely on...