Gordon Ramsay Quotes

It's not the consumers' job to figure out what they want

It had always made sense to me to build a business based on what people really wanted, rather than guess what we thought they might want.

Salads was a big indicator of that - there was a huge market out there for it. And why not tap it? Some of the things we are doing now around the globe are responding to customers. It's not because some guy sued you.

You have to understand who your customer is and her motivations and marry it to what's happening in the outside world.

We're not in the business of shaping consumer demand. We respond to it.

Too many bar owners built a bar for themselves... when they should have built what their market and demographic demands!

Market leaders inevitably slip into decline when they tell the people what they want instead of giving the people what they want.

To create something you want to sell, you first study and research the market, then you develop the product to the best of your ability.

Research is an organized method of trying to find out what you are going to do after you cannot do what you are doing now. It may also be said to be the method of keeping a customer reasonably dissatisfied with what he has. That means constant improvement and change so that the customer will be stimulated to desire the new product enough to buy it to replace the one he has.

It isn't the consumers' job to know what they want.

I love market research because you really have an idea of what your consumers are looking for.

I don't believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.

Customers don't know what they want. There's plenty of good psychology research that shows that people are not able to accurately predict how they would behave in the future. So asking them, 'Would you buy my product if it had these three features?' or 'How would you react if we changed our product this way?' is a waste of time. They don't know.

One of the things which make any company successful, in particular the Home Depot, was that we understood and catered to the customer. If it didn't sell, it didn't make a difference what we thought or our research told us. They told us if it was successful by buying it or not.

It's incredibly important to be - once you do have a product - acutely observational about the trends.

When you understand your customer base, you have to provide them with what they want.

My dad built his business by providing products he figured the customers would want.

A. T. Stewart started life with a dollar and fifty cents. This merchant prince began by calling at the doors of houses in order to sell needles, thread and buttons. He soon found the people did not want them, and his small stock was thrown back on his hands. Then he said wisely, "I'll not buy any more of these goods, but I'll go and ask people what they do want." Thereafter he studied the needs and desires of people, found out just what they most wanted, endeavored to meet those wants, and became the greatest business man of his time.

What are you doing at the moment? How does that compare to your competitors? What do you want to achieve? How can you create something people want?

A successful business must have a sound knowledge of its market and work on how its product or service will be different, stand out and improve people's lives. If you can ensure it responds to a real need in the market place, your business can punch well above its weight.

The simplest way to assure sales is to keep changing the product the market for new things is indefinitely elastic. One of the fundamental purposes of advertising, styling, and research is to foster a healthy dissatisfaction.

Doing business is all about providing a good product or service to your customers. A good businessman is he who knows that what is successful today may not be so tomorrow. Technology changes so fast, and so do people's needs and wants. That's why it would do well for a businessman to know how to adapt to change. He must constantly reinvent the business, or it won't last.

Anything new and different is most susceptible to market research.

If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups.

The idea that comics stores, distributors and publishers simply 'give the customers what they want' is nonsense. What the customers wanted they didn't get - and they left.