Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com

Consumer Research Should Not Stop with Market Introduction (Confirmatory Research)

All too often I have found that companies shift gears dramatically when they introduce a product into the market. No longer are they in the learning mode. They are firmly entrenched in the evaluative mode. That is, they are looking at what is happening and ignoring why. They tend to look at share, penetration, awareness, repurchase, etc. They seldom look at why things are happening. For instance, I believe we should pay very close attention to the consumers who hear our message and purchase the product but when the time comes to repurchase, they say, "you got me once, but not again." What was it about the product that did not live up to the consumer's expectations? Can it be effectively changed? Is it worth changing?

I keep a box of Ariel Ultra Concentrated Laundry Detergent on the top of my book case as an example of how we can overlook a good idea by not understanding the consumers and their basis of choice. Ariel was a ¼ cup laundry detergent introduced into Test Market in 1979. I came into the Package Soap Division in late 1980 when the product was being pulled from the market. I tried unsuccessfully to get funding to understand why the product did not live up to expectations. We only knew it did not deliver the expected sales.

Nine years later a group of us introduced a very similar idea called Ultra Cheer. Major revisions were made to the packaging to signal the fact that it was a concentrated product requiring a much smaller volume of product for a wash load. In the first two weeks the product was sold to the public, we conducted in-store interviews as well as utilizing in-store video of the purchasing process. Comments and actions of the consumers indicated that there was a serious value problem. Action steps were quickly taken and the rest is history. Ultra Cheer went on to be a market success and within six months, Tide Ultra was on the market. Soon after Ultra appeared everywhere in many other product categories.

Another venture happening about the same time involved Cinch. Not the Cinch Cleaner on the market today, but Cinch Dishwashing Detergent. Cinch Dishwashing Detergent was introduced into Test Market in the mid-1970's. The first market did not do well at all. They re-introduced it into another market with a different strategy. The second market was also failing and they still thought the concept was a good idea and were in the process of starting a third Test market. Again this was 1980. And again I proposed we do some in-depth consumer understanding. Actually we put interviewers in the store to identify shoppers who had experience with Cinch and debriefed them on their experiences with cinch and their purchase history since purchasing Cinch. It turned out that Cinch's "Reason fro Being" was causing the consumers problems and they would not re-purchase it because of these problems. Cinch was positioned as a tough cleaning dishwashing detergent. It contained an abrasive which would settle at the bottom of the bottle. The separation caused it to be ineffective as planned (and promised), and it also left the consumer with a poor value impression. They could not get all the product out of the bottle. Since the grit was the basis of the product and we could not solve the separation problem, the project was dropped.


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