We do a lot of market research to help technology and telecom companies grow. Most of our work is for new markets. Some is, although, for new products or even new launches. Some of it, even, is to research product features in technology markets.  Usually,  we do original research for demand generation marketing to use in demand generation campaigns.

We love to work with highly engineered products and services. It’s always such a fascinating challenge to find the best way to ask questions. What’s the best way to ask questions?

Especially when they must always balance the need to be understood, with the need to be forward-looking. You also have to ask questions in manner that respondents, usually an technology buyer, must actually think to answer. But how do you research product features in technology markets?

While every marketer wants to know how product features stack up, every marketer also always wants to know pricing. However, pricing has its own rather involved survey methods to obtain.  And those methods can get expensive, too. So to get a quick direction on pricing, and to research product features in technology markets, ask a simple question. And so what it it?

Best Question to Research Product Features in Technology Markets

Our favorite survey question to research product features is “How willing are you to pay extra for …this set of features?”  It doesn’t sound like much, but neither did the NPS at first, either.

To get an idea of this question in action, here’s an example in the illustration below.

By taking a glance at it, you see the trend and quite clearly. Large enterprises have 3 main features. So what are they?

The top 3 features that large enterprises most value

• Per user content analysis for security
• Device redundancy for high availability
• Global load balancing between data centers

Compare to medium-sized enterprises.

Unlike their large counterparts, they value only two of the same top 3 features.

So you can see by merely asking for what product features they’d pay extra for, you’re finding out how they compare with each other. And that’s why we really like it — it’s simple and respondents mus think about trade-offs.

Obviously, the recommendation for the marketing team is to use these product features often and prominently in demand generation campaign and marketing programs. So it all starts with asking which product features a buyer would pay extra for when marketers research product features in technology.

If you want to see the actual research, go to Brocade’s web site at http://brcd.it/6014Tn1E

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