How Market Research Failed the Brands?

Market research indicated that consumers would never buy sony’s

Walkman cassette player that didn’t have the capacity to record and
users would be irritated by the use of earphones. The Walkman went
on to sell 330 million units.

When Eureka Forbes launched its first vacuum cleaner in 1982, they
hired a consultant to analyse the market for vacuum cleaners. After few
days, the consultant submitted a report asking the company to shut
shop, as no one will buy a Rs.3000 vacuum cleaner when brooms are
available for Rs.3 apiece.

Pepsi was the preferred drink in all the blind tests and they exploited
this research output by communicating over mass media. They could
not increase their market shares.

After 10 years of research, 4 years of development, spending 250

million USD and year-long promotional teasers, Ford Launched
“Edsel” car with much fanfare and the car was a spectacular flop,
became a Failure Case Study.

The reasons why a market research fails are innumerable. Chief among
them is the lack of “Empathy” and proper “Observational Research”.
Let us look at other reasons why market research fails?
WRONG CONTEXT, WRONG RESEARCH METHOD

PEPSI, COKE and SIP TEST — In 1980s Pepsi ran a commercial “Pepsi
Challenge” asking people to take “Blind Taste Sip Tests” — The results
were astonishing — Many people preferred Pepsi than Coke. Pepsi
exploited this results in their commercials. Coke though disputed
Pepsi’s results, ran their own blind tests and was shocked to know that
the results were same. Coke, went ahead, changed the secret formula,
conducted more tests, got a lot of positive response from focus group
tests and launched “New Coke”. There was outrage, massive protests
for the “New Coke” and customers forced Coca-cola to bring the old
coke. Why did “New Coke” fail? What was the problem with Sip Test?

Testers did not drink the entire can. They just took a sip, whereas
normal customers drink a whole can. Users may prefer to drink a can
of cola in their home, sitting and watching some sports game. People
behave differently in their natural context than an artificial context.
Tests were not conducted with the subjects in a natural environment.

In Sip tests, consumers will like the sweeter product and they would
rate it high. Pepsi was sweeter than Coke. If you drink the whole can of
Pepsi, the sweetness would be overpowering. So, Pepsi was designed to
shine in Sip tests. Pepsi had citrusy flavour burst, which would
dissipate over the course of the can.

Coca-Cola meant to be refreshing liquid — so less sweet — raisins

vanilla flavour would remain over the course of the whole can,
providing consistent taste. A normal user will not blindly buy a cola —
The tests missed out the user’s associations, memories with the brand.
The brand plays a major role. Pepsi even with those blind tests results
could not become a market leader.

WRONG TARGET SEGMENT, FACT ONLY BASED

RESEARCH

MAXWELL’S COFFEE HOUSE — In 1950s America was a nation

hooked on coffee. Due to rising prices of Arabica Coffee Beans and
their vulnerability to bad weather conditions, Maxwell Coffee House
saw Robusta coffee seeds(Tastes poor) as a possible option, which is
reliable, cheaper and they were plentiful. They decided to add a few
robusta beans to existing coffee blend and ran sensory tests with their
existing customers. The consumers tasted both maxwell’s coffee blend
and Robusta mixed coffee. Nobody could find a difference. The
company went ahead and launched the blend.

As time went by, to remain competitive, every year Maxwell continued

to increase the Robusta level in the coffee blend and before launching,
they did run sensory tests. Every time, consumers failed to tell the
difference between the slightly increased levels of Robusta and the
previous blend.

This fact-based approach helped Maxwell Coffee House to sell coffee

and retain customers for some time. Sales boomed, Profits were
healthy. Slowly, sales declined, though tests show long time coffee
drinkers were happy with the product.

The problem was — Maxwell Coffee House was not attracting new
generations of customers. A small addition of Robusta each year added
up a lot of Robusta in the latest blends. If a consumer had been
drinking coffee for years, and the change was subtle every time, he or
she would feel the taste tolerable. Young people when they drank coffee
with so much Robusta felt the bitterness and unpleasant. Their existing
customers were comparing new blend with previous taste, whereas
new customers or youngsters had a different benchmark.

NEW CATEGORY PRODUCT AND CONSUMER NEEDS

EDUCATION

HERMAN MILLER”S AERON CHAIR — Designers Bill Stumpf and

Chadwick spent a lot of time in observing people working in offices and
understood that the new chair should solve health problems(Back,
neck, spinal), help them to perform various tasks — To provide the best
comfort, simplify their life.

The Aeron Chair was a radical design — Highly engineered for

ergonomic comfort — Posture-fit mechanism to help users to sit in
various postures to do the particular task, easy to access, easy to use
mechanisms without getting up from chair, mechanism to avoid back
pain, to avoid shirt coming out of Pant, Stretchable thin soft material
to avoid back sores.
When Herman Miller showed the Aeron Product to few focus groups
for review — The results were shocking. People felt it was ugly. The
product was called “The chair of Death”. Facility managers and
Ergonomic experts told that it was impossible to sell the “Aeron Chair”
to corporate clients. Many suggested covering the chair with foam. But
Herman Miller team went ahead, launched the product and it was a
huge success. Why did market research showed that product would
fail?

When users saw the product first time, they told they hated the product
and it was ugly. We need to understand that this product was an
unusual product and they had not seen anything like earlier. We need
to understand the “Familiarity Bias” psychology of consumers. Their
hate was misinterpreted — They might have meant that the product
was unusual, which they were not used to it.

When consumers were asked to sit in chair and experience, they gave
bad ratings initially — The reason — When consumers spend less time
with the product, they get little experience which would not sufficient
to judge the product. When Herman Miller asked people to use the
product for a couple of days in their office, the results were
overwhelming. Usage in the context, for a longer period — consumers
were amazed at the experience of comfort and usability.

Regarding the chair’s aesthetics — Consumers were used to chairs with

softer, thicker foam covered with fabric, cushioned, upholstered —
Their existing mental models on aesthetics were different from what
they saw in Aeron Chair. How could we value their response, when
they were not familiar with the new design language?

References — Wired to Care by Dev Patnaik, Blink by Malcolm

Gladwell, Designing for Growth by Tim Ogilvie and Jeanne Liedtka,
Ford Edsel Wikipedia, Richard Feloni-Businessinsider.com,
Unconscious Branding by Douglas Van Praet