The State of Voice of the Customer:
Settling the Really Big Debates

Gerry Katz [Bio]
Executive Vice President
Applied Marketing
Science, Inc.

John Mitchell [Bio]
Principal
Applied Marketing
Science, Inc.

The Voice of the Customer has become a hotbed of both buzz and controversy in the world of New Product Development over the past few years. Some recent issues have provoked heated trade journal articles, rebuttals of articles, and even rebuttals to the rebuttals of articles.

Come have breakfast with VOC experts Gerry Katz and John Mitchell who will share their learning from more than 250 engagements. Bring your own experiences to share in this lively, interactive session in which all of the really big debates will finally be resolved (or not)!

Topics discussed may include:

• Focus groups vs. individual interviews

• Ethnography/contextual observation vs. face-to-face interviews

• Outsourcing vs. do-it-yourself VOC

• Customer- vs. team-executed affinity diagrams

• Qualitative vs. quantitative

• Face-to-face vs. telephone vs. web data collection

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Gerry Katz
Executive Vice President
Applied Marketing Science

Gerry Katz is a recognized authority in the areas of new product development, design of new services, product marketing, and market research, with nearly 35 years of consulting experience. At AMS, he has led more than 100 major client engagements employing The Voice of the Customer (VOC), Quality Function Deployment (QFD), and a large number of other marketing science applications. His client assignments have covered a wide variety of industries, with particular emphasis on healthcare and medical technology. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA), the world's leading professional society devoted to the study and practice of developing and commercializing new products and services. He is also certified as a New Product Development Professional (NPDP) and is a contributing editor to Visions Magazine.

Gerry is the author of several award-winning papers, and received the William O'Dell Prize from the American Marketing Association in 1988. His articles have appeared in The Journal of Product Innovation Management, The European Management Journal, The Journal of Marketing Research, and Interfaces.  He has lectured frequently at the business schools of MIT (Sloan), the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), Dartmouth College (Tuck), Carnegie-Mellon University, and Harvard University. Gerry has appeared on the NBC Today Show and in The Wall Street Journal.

Gerry holds a B.S. in Management Science from the University of Rochester and an S.M. in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

John Mitchell
Principal
Applied Marketing Science

John Mitchell consults for product development teams across a wide range of industries, with particular emphasis on software, high-tech, and medical devices. He has led engagements to help clients capture, interpret, and respond to  the Voice of the Customer in the U.S. and abroad. In addition, he has helped hundreds of product developers develop effective Voice of the Customer capabilities within their own organizations through onsite coaching and training seminars and numerous speaking engagements.

John joined AMS from WebCT, Inc., a global provider of e-learning software and services for higher-education institutions, where he was responsible for customer insight and market analysis as part of the product marketing team. He has held management consulting positions in the information technology strategy practice of Booz·Allen & Hamilton, Inc. and the Business Solution Delivery group at Andersen Consulting LLP (now Accenture, Inc.), where his prior engagement experience encompassed technology strategy and software development projects in educational publishing, transportation services, amd government.

John holds an AB from Harvard College and an MBA from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.