5 THE SAMPLE OF ONE

Market research is a valuable tool in marketing. It provides decision-makers with information and guidance on the decisions and choices they need to make.

Sometimes someone is just so sure that they have a winning idea they just act on it.

Richard Branson is one such man.

Interviewed for the book The Company Man, he said that all the insight he needed to create Virgin Atlantic was one phone call, or rather the lack of one:

“I decided that there must be room for another airline after I spent two days trying to get through to People’s Express. That was the sum of my market research.”

And the moral is that sometimes you don’t need great swathes of market research. Is all your market research really necessary?