Hearing the customer's voice
Editor’s note: Camille Nicita is director of qualitative research and Christi Walters is marketing research director at Gongos & Associates, Inc., a Bloomfield Hills, Mich., research firm.
Understanding the customer’s voice dramatically affects the eventual success or failure of new products. When corporations embrace a more customer-focused product development philosophy they not only create satisfying products, but also understand how to position those products to create differentiation. This translates into success in the marketplace.
However, considering the number of failed products and services on an annual basis, the question arises: How well do corporations really know their customers? And further,
- What is the customer’s connection with the product?
- What is really important to the customer?
- What does the customer really want and need?
- How are customers motivated to purchase?
- How do customers talk about the product?
- Is the customer’s voice differentiated from the internal voice?
To help corporations further understand their customers, marketing research methods must be employed to ensure customer-driven concept and product development. The model shown below helps illustrate how this theory works.
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To achieve differentiation in the marketplace, the complete picture (including all three components) must be captured. The key is to understand the customer (their wants, needs, motivations, emotions and values) and evaluate the marketplace (looking for gaps, opportunities and unmet wants and needs) before embarking on the development of a new product concept or product extension.
An example: Past automotive history suggests that excess plant capacity typically dictated whether a new vehicle would be manufactured regardless of what the customer wanted or what the market could support. Today, many automotive corporations have improved their customer focus and look at a more complete picture. For example, the dramatic increase in sport utility vehicle (SUV) sales has been customer/market-driven. When questioned, consumers articulated their specific wants and needs for a utilitarian vehicle. Consumer comments suggested that there was room for many types of utility vehicles based on diverse usage, styling desires, core values and unfulfilled gaps/opportunities in the marketplace. Hence, the sport utility market landscape is filled with many and diverse vehicles to suit a wide range of customer needs.
The purpose of this article is to introduce several qualitative techniques for gaining a comprehensive, customer-driven focus for product and concept development. (While our emphasis is on qualitative techniques, please note qualitative research should be used in the investigative stage and further quantitative validation is also recommended.) The following four areas will be explained:
- gathering the “voice of the customer”;
- identifying purchase triggers/need states;
- understanding emotional constructs or core emotional values;
- determining brand image.
While each of the above objectives is independently valuable, when combined, a clear picture for differentiation emerges. (Note: The model depicts each objective with its most relevant component.)
Gathering the “voice of the customer”
Gathering the “voice of the customer” means understanding the product through the consumer’s eyes -- this means placing more emphasis on the consumer’s words than the opinions of management, R&D, engineering, marketing and all other “internal” folks.
Gathering the “voice of the customer” is accomplished by:
- focusing on root wants/needs/benefits of usage; and
- understanding consumer language.
Root wants/needs/benefits (benefits)
Understanding root benefits resides in the following questions: What need does the customer wish to fulfill with the product? What problem is the customer attempting to solve through use? What benefit does the customer wish to receive?
Focusing on these questions helps to reframe our perspective away from the features and characteristics of today’s products and direct our attention to the root wants, needs and benefits derived from purchase and usage. An opportunity for innovation lies in uncovering these benefits. For instance, knowing that a consumer desires anti-lock brakes on his vehicle directs the product developer’s attention to the same feature time and again. However, knowing the consumer wants to confidently stop quickly on icy surfaces without sliding, skidding or running off the road opens the door to many potential product development solutions.
To ensure an exhaustive list of consumer wants/needs/benefits is gathered, it is important to have a basic understanding of the Kano Model of Quality and to gather needs at each level.
1) Expected Quality (point of entry, grave disappointment if missing). Example: Car gets me from point A to point B.
2) Performance Quality (the more, the better). Example: Car has good fuel economy.
3) Exciter Quality (if missing goes unnoticed, if present, satisfaction goes through the roof!). Example: Car helps to prevent me from getting lost in unfamiliar areas.
Note: An Exciter Quality today may be an Expected Quality tomorrow.
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Consumers typically talk about performance quality without prompting (the key here is to obtain “benefits” versus product features and/or solutions). Expected and Exciter Quality, however, require more effort from the researcher. Several tools to uncover Expected and Exciter Quality include:
Expected: Projective techniques
Exciter: Use storytelling, observation, and/or personal diaries to zone in on current frustrations, modifications, failures, confusion, fears, etc.
Relating lateral products, services or experiences to the product under study also aids the consumer (and the product developer) in thinking more creatively. For example, when investigating consumer needs for automobiles, asking them to think about benefits realized through the use of boats, snowmobiles, motorcycles or all-terrain vehicles may be just the needed bridge to stimulate outside-the-box thinking. Understanding how a particular benefit is carried out in another industry may provide insight to the much sought after “WOW.”
Consumer language
Understanding consumer language (what the customer calls it, how the customer describes what they do with it), further enforces the focus on the customer and presents potential opportunities to break product development paradigms. This is achieved by throwing assumptions out the window and asking obvious questions. As the researcher, the key is to NEVER ASSUME you know what the customer means and QUESTION every nebulous term that drifts from the consumer’s lips.
Asking the additional “Why?” or “What do you mean by…?” sometimes brings the researcher to new and undiscovered territory. Further, probing for examples related to common terms (e.g., convenience, soft, quick, easy, healthy, etc.) provides the researcher with not only a definition but with snapshots of how the consumer interacts with the product/service. Finally, gaining an understanding of consumer language is often as easy as asking for a synonym to replace the currently used word.
Note: To prepare the respondents for the in-depth probing associated with gathering consumer language it is often helpful to warn them in advance of the obvious or even repetitive nature of your questions.
Identifying key purchase triggers/need states
To bridge the gap between the customer and the product category it is helpful to understand the motivating factors prompting the ultimate purchase of a product. To accomplish this, it is important to have basic knowledge of how and why a purchase occurs, the customer’s feelings about the purchase and potential implications the purchase makes in the customer’s life.
Understanding key purchase triggers/need states is accomplished through storytelling (third-person) and visualization (specific instances).
It is important to explore motivations in an indirect manner since the answers may be personally sensitive and require the customer to evaluate their “real” motivations, which they may not want to divulge. Approaching motivations indirectly allows the researcher to uncover the conscious as well as the unconscious rationale for purchase while keeping the customer as comfortable as possible.
Due to the indirect nature of these techniques, the analysis is more challenging and requires subjective interpretation to read between the lines and analyze both the spoken and unspoken.
Understanding core values
A core value is the relevant link between a product/brand/category and the consumer’s life. If corporations can identify and effectively communicate the core value(s) a product touches, then customers will embrace the product not only because it is a good product (meets wants and needs) but also because it touches them in a personal way. Some examples of core values include peace of mind, longevity, good health and self-esteem.
Investigating core values can be accomplished through:
1. Homework assignment
2. Laddering technique
The laddering technique is used to identify key linkages between product attributes, benefits provided by the attributes, and personal core values. Understanding core values is key to learning how to talk about a product in a meaningful way - this is essential to breaking through the daily advertising clutter that bombards consumers.
A typical customer ladder includes: product attributes => benefits => core values. Starting the ladder with a product attribute may sometimes make things awkward for the consumer. To make the laddering process easier and more personally relevant, customers are asked to complete a homework assignment prior to the session. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, customers select images, pictures or words that symbolize what the product/brand means to their lives. These images represent the framework of the interview, initiate the laddering technique and contribute context to the analysis. The new ladder looks like this: imagery => product attributes => benefits => core values.
For example, when investigating core values in the airline industry a customer might bring in a picture of a person sleeping in a hammock - this may symbolize the rest and relaxation he wishes he could achieve when traveling by air. Attributes contributing to rest and relaxation may include on-time departures/arrivals, courteous and helpful flight attendants and a smooth (lack of turbulence) flight. These attributes benefit the customer by making him feel mentally refreshed, physically energized and more productive after the flight. When asked how this is personally relevant, it may translate into the values of success and accomplishment.
Relating lateral brands, products, services or experiences to the core values further enhances the understanding of the core value and how it relates to customer’s lives. For example, understanding that a two-mile run also makes the business traveler feel mentally refreshed, physically energetic and more productive helps the researcher to better understand the “ideal” in the airline example.
Determining brand image
Understanding brand image and the brand image of competitors is crucial to differentiation. However, while it is imperative to understand where the current brand and its competitors live, it is just as important to understand gaps (where no brands live) because this is where potential opportunity dwells. If a link can be made between identified image gaps and a strong core value (explained earlier) a differentiated, ownable positioning may result.
A combination of projective techniques should be used to gauge brand image for the category. Brand sort and either a brand personification or brand obituary exercise provide a well-rounded picture - including an overview of the category landscape (where brands currently fall and gaps/opportunities exist) and in-depth analysis on two to three focus brands.
Set of tools
The qualitative techniques addressed above are not exhaustive. They are merely a set of tools to begin to better understand the customer. The key is to ask yourself: Now that you’ve been given a glimpse of the complete picture, how well do you understand your customer?
References
Kano, Seraku, Takahashi, Tsuji. “Attractive Quality and Must-Be Quality,” 1984 Presented at Nippon QC Gakka: 12th Annual Meeting.