Business-to-Business and Consumer Product Research & Consulting

Martha DeLong and John H. Campbell, the principals at CDRI, have been working with private companies, large and small, in the U.S. and Europe since the 1980s.

We have been assessing markets, strategies, and products since the question was whether Microsoft would win the platform wars with MSDOS.  We have been researching printer technologies since they began emerging from the dot matrix and “impact” printer world. We investigated wireless networking when it was in its infancy.  We have evaluated some good -- and plenty not so good -- ideas regarding how to use the Internet. We have helped improve medical equipment in emergency rooms, found better ways to design dental equipment, assessed design and marketing of many computing and test and measurement devices, and evaluated software user interfaces for everything from fourth generation languages to calendar software to web sites.

On the consumer side, we have asked beer drinkers what a label tells them about the beer, tenants what they want in housing, knitters what they want in a website, mothers what they look for when buying diapers, and parents what types of family-oriented activities they are looking for.

What have we learned? How to identify the constants and the opportunities in new and existing markets. How to help engineers tweak a design to better meet the needs of customers — and occasionally deliver the hard news that they need to start over. We know how to help marketers develop key messages. We know how to help market leaders retain their position and how to identify what a challenger needs to do to knock off the leader.  And we also know how to keep our client information confidential -- so, unlike some of the work we do in the public sector, you won't find specifics or examples of reports done for private sector client projects here.

For more information on our approach to market and product research, click here.  To find out more about how we can use our experience to help you improve your position in your industry, call or e-mail us today.