Driving growth for a nascent consumer durables category in the US
Problem context
Our client, a consumer durables company based in Hong Kong, approached us with an interesting challenge. They wanted to launch three climate control innovations for consumers and business owners in the US and grow the category 2-3 times, and needed insight to achieve that.
Our approach
A multi-staged approach was constructed combining online and in-person research:
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Online ethnography where we ‘lived’ with 35 consumers and business owners for a month learning about their needs in their actual environment
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Physical prototype testing in 4 cities where consumers and business owners were invited to try the products in real life. Detailed feedback on the product design, usability and functionality was gathered.
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A quantitative study with over 900 consumers and 300 business users to size the opportunities and actions for each innovation.
Pictures of respondents’ homes. Online ethnography gave us valuable insight into the way that consumers lived and how business owners operated
Insight and impact
The work informed a number of important decisions for each of the innovations:
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Identified early adopter segments who represented 37% of the market and contributed 50% of the value
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Provided the engineering team in China with granular feedback on improvements required on the products’ design, usability, and functionality. This helped to inform decisions such as the bundle of features required, the look and feel of the devices’ casing, the ‘feedback’ from the control panel that the user needed, and the air throw required
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Determined the optimal price point and indicated where a premium could be charged for additional features and in different branding scenarios
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Recommended the brand architecture for the portfolio and positioning for each of the individual innovations
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Developed an engagement strategy for the priority segments based on go-to-market levers
Testing the prototypes allowed us to gather valuable feedback on the products’ design, usability and functionality
This case highlights the potential to use multiple research techniques with the same customers to maximise insight and impact when launching an innovation.
Some of our specific learnings from undertaking this project relate to the importance of cross-functional engagement, the merit of polymathic teams who can ‘do it all’, the need to design research tools with ease of experience in mind, and the value in focussing the client communication on the insights, actions, and implementation, and not on the techniques.
What we learned
