Just wanted to bring to your attention a great long-form piece by the AP’s Mae Anderson on Procter & Gamble’s adventures in ethnography as it determined how to sell its Gillette razors in India. The article offers, as one quoted party says, “a roadmap for companies seeking to court emerging markets.”
My favorite part? The stark lesson in the value of having the right product-usage context when conducting research, as illustrated by this passage:
Gillette, which is based in Boston, wanted to test the product among Indian consumers before launching it, but instead of making the costly trip abroad, they had Indian students at nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology test the razor. “They all came back and said ‘Wow that’s a big improvement,’” Carvalho recalls.
But when Gillette launched the razor in India, the reaction was different. Executives were baffled about why the razor flopped until they traveled to India and observed men using a cup of water to shave. All the MIT students had running water. Without that, the razor stayed clogged.
“That’s another ‘a-ha’ moment,” Carvalho said. “That taught us the importance that you really need to go where your consumers are, not just to talk to them, but observe and spend time with them to gather the key insight.”