I'm half American but have grown up and have been living in German speaking cultures all my life.
I have found that people here simply respond well to a little bit of formal language, so it's not surprising the author would habitually use it. People tend to take it as an implicit promise that you know what you're doing.
You can usually get away with a little semantic trickery though; of course we do market research, we're a serious business after all. It's just that in the startup context, the best way of doing this is trying stuff and actually observing behavior.
When called on the bluff, invent a qualifier: Oh of course market research works differently in the startup context; we call it "highly iterative" market research. (Schnelliterationsmarktforschung).
I have found that people here simply respond well to a little bit of formal language, so it's not surprising the author would habitually use it. People tend to take it as an implicit promise that you know what you're doing.
You can usually get away with a little semantic trickery though; of course we do market research, we're a serious business after all. It's just that in the startup context, the best way of doing this is trying stuff and actually observing behavior.
When called on the bluff, invent a qualifier: Oh of course market research works differently in the startup context; we call it "highly iterative" market research. (Schnelliterationsmarktforschung).