MKT.12:1 - Problem frame

Use this pattern when a product, offer or customer decision depends on something you do not yet understand about people’s work, choice, use or experience. Perhaps customers praise a service but stop using it, apparently similar buyers choose differently, or a team cannot decide which difficulty to address. Start by stating the decision and the answer that could change it.

The useful result is an answer with a stated reach, or a precisely bounded unanswered question, delivered to someone who can use it. That can come from existing information, ordinary information gathering, or a deliberately designed inquiry. A new survey is not the default result.

The intended reader understands the product or service and can arrange a competent conversation, observation and basic analysis. A specialised sampling, measurement or causal claim needs the corresponding expertise. This pattern supplies the marketing question and the connections between inquiry and action; it does not confer interviewing skill or access to private material.

Use an existing sufficient answer directly. Repair an already established service error through the responsible operating practice. If the decision concerns the effect caused by an intervention, qualify that causal question separately; a customer’s account of an experience can inform it without answering it.