Paul Raspin & Brian Smith 
Creating Market Insight 
How Firms Create Value from Market Understanding

‘Brian Smith and Paul Raspin demonstrate a thorough and pragmatic
approach to creating and applying sound market insight. Using
numerous practical examples, learning points and provocative
takeaways, they build on established strategic marketing principles
to give you actionable knowledge you can apply your business to
create lasting market advantage.’

Beverley Dipper, Market Insight Manager, Microsoft UK
Ltd

‘I have no hesitation in saying buy this book. It will find a
front and centre position in your bookshelf, with plenty of
post-its marking pages that you will return to again and
again.’

Mark Irvine, Strategy Manager, De Beers Diamond Trading
Company

‘A readable and well-founded description of how to generate
actionable customer insight and follow it through with passionate
and consistent execution’

Dag Larsson Global Brand Insight Director,
Astra Zeneca

Creating Market Insight addresses the key
strategic issue facing any company: How do we make sense of our
market and find those precious nuggets of knowledge that lead to
real competitive advantage?

Creating Market Insight:

* Explains how firms tailor their market scanning behaviour to
work well in the special conditions of their market

* Describes the process through which data is translated first
into information, and then knowledge

* Differentiates routine market knowledge from true insight and
details how firms turn insight into value

* Provides a detailed, step-by-step process that enables the
reader to emulate the success of insightful firms

Creating Market Insight is written for managers who need
to need to create value in the real world.

Table of Content

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

Chapter 1. Success, Strategy and Understanding.

What is success?

Success comes from strong strategy.

What does a strong marketing strategy look like?

What is this ‘market’ into which we’re trying to gain
insight?

The importance of market understanding.

Chapter 2. The difficulty of gaining insight.

Market complexity is making it harder to create market
insight.

Market turbulence is making it harder to create market
insight.

The frequency of failure.

The failure of data analytics.

Chapter 3. How Well Do You Understand Your Business
Environment?

The importance of self awareness.

Test your understanding.

Scanning mechanism.

Chapter 4. What Does Market Insight Look Like?

When is an insight not an insight?

A taxonomy of market insight.

The end in mind.

Chapter 5. What Do Real Managers Do to Understand the
Environment?

Scanning is generally ad hoc, informal and unsystematic.

Scanning is embedded and hard to manage.

Scanning is typically under-resourced, unmeasured and
unrewarded.

There are four major behavioural clusters of business
environment scanning.

Chapter 6. Understanding and Assessing the Complexity and
Turbulence of a market.

What is a market?

Understanding market complexity.

A process for evaluating market complexity.

Understanding and evaluating market turbulence.

Combining the assessments of market complexity and market
turbulence.

Chapter 7. What is the best way to understand the business
environment?

Strengths and weaknesses of Analysts.

Strengths and weaknesses of Categorists.

Strengths and weaknesses of Monitors.

Strengths and weaknesses of Viewers.

The best way depends on the market.

Chapter 8. Putting it together – how firms create
insight.

Developing scanning capability to make sense of the business
environment.

From information to insight.

Chapter 9. From Insight to Value.

Starting point: what market insight do we have?

What does our market insight imply?

Does it make sense to act on our insight?

How can we ensure that our market insight is acted upon?

The causes of non-implementation.

Resolving inadvertent non-implementation.

References.

Index of figures.

Index of Tables.

Index.

About the author

Dr Brian D Smith is a researcher, author and advisor in the
field of competitive strategy. Working at Open University, Europe’s
largest business school, he has published over 100 books, papers
and articles in this field. he works internationally with many
companies including Pfizer, Olympus and the Economist.

Dr Paul Raspin specializes in working with executive and
senior management teams to analyze business environments and
develop effective business strategies. He is an active researcher
and author in the field of strategic management. As a Director of
Stratevolve, a niche strategy consultancy, he has consulted
extensively in Europe and the US on developing competitive
advantage.