Searching for Unarticulated Niches

Read deep into Bloomberg BusinessWeek's article about Hershey's Will Papa, research chief, and you'll notice this sentence: "In his 30 years at P&G, Papa learned to search for what R&D types call unarticulated niches -- stuff people don’t know they want."

Unarticulated niches: Customer segments with unstated needs that the marketer aims to satisfy with a new product, either new-to-the-world or featuring some innovative twist that differentiates it from an existing product.

North American gum sales are stagnant or falling, in part because gum is no longer a trendy product among teens and because of growing preference for mints. Gum chewers are also fussy about sugar and artificial ingredients--and a bit confused by the proliferation of products screaming for attention at the checkout counter.

No wonder companies like Hershey want to convert chewers to their hybrid products. Above, the result of Papa's research: Hershey's Ice Breakers Cool Blasts, a combination of gum and mint. The idea is to deliver the breath-freshening taste of mint with the satisfying experience of chewing, an unarticulated niche. But does meeting the needs of an unarticulated niche lead to profits?

Who Needs the Amazon Dash Button?

As shown above, the Amazon Dash Button is for people who want one-touch convenience in online or mobile reordering of all kinds of household products, including Bounty paper towels (note the branded button). Many items are produced by Procter & Gamble (including Bounty) but many are from other producers, as well, as featured on Amazon.com's retail site.

MediaPost asks: "Is the Amazon Dash Button Clever or Ugly?" Don't forget, it was introduced on the eve of April Fool's Day, a rollout that Adweek says was "genius." Amazon Dash received a lot more buzz as media outlets speculated about whether it was a hoax, how practical it was or was it little more than a gimmick.

Amazon's spokesperson explains the reasoning behind the button design: "You should think of it as a physical representation of the one-click button from the website." In other words, Amazon is making buying faster and easier than ever--although shoppers do have the ability to cancel the order if they choose (if, for instance, they reordered more times than they realized).

Actually, Amazon sees the button as part of an evolution toward the Internet of things, in which your appliances can sense low inventory of accessories (like laundry detergent) and reorder in time to never run out. Amazon is already working with several appliance makers to integrate the Dash Replenishment Service technology for auto-reordering.

Who needs the Amazon Dash Button? Well, who needed Amazon Prime, with its annual subscription price for speedier shipping and video viewing perks--now a success for Amazon? Retail pioneer Amazon is known for its insights into customer behavior, and Dash is yet another example.

New Life for Lassie the Iconic Brand

Lassie became part of mainstream pop culture in the early 1940s, when the movie Lassie, Come Home was a big box-office hit, based on the popular Saturday Evening Post story.

After a profitable film career, Lassie arrived on the little screen as a 1950s TV series that lasted for nearly 20 years--and episodes may still be playing in reruns somewhere on the planet. Descendants of the original "Lassie" (real name: Pal) have portrayed the character for decades. Because Lassie is trademarked, any dog in the role must, legally, have four white paws and a sable-brown body, a white blaze atop the nose, and a lush collar of white fur.

These days, Lassie the iconic brand is looking for new life. Owned since 2012 by DreamWorks Animation, Lassie has been making the rounds of media outlets to attract attention and keep the brand in the public eye, even if this is "the world's most famous dog."

According to research commissioned by DreamWorks, Lassie has very high brand recognition among US consumers and is associated with attributes like loyalty. Nielsen's research shows that 70% of the respondents to a survey in China recognized the Lassie brand (iconic, indeed).

The previous owner of the Lassie brand had recent licensing deals with pet-food manufacturers and dog accessory marketers. But is Lassie the 21st-century brand relevant in a digital world where LOL Cats take center stage? Can Lassie bring home the big bucks for DreamWorks in the form of merchandising and licensing? Stay tuned.

Pampers, the $10 Billion Brand

Procter & Gamble has 25 billion-dollar brands, but Pampers--the disposable diaper brand--is the single largest in the company's portfolio. Last year, Forbes ranked Pampers #51 in its list of global brands.

Of P&G's total sales, Pampers accounts for about 12%. And, just as important, Pampers is an absolutely key brand for P&G's main target market of mothers. Pampers has nearly 13 million Facebook likes.

A recent Bloomberg Businessweek article looked at P&G's research and development for improving Pampers products. Pampers researchers measure babies' "output" and diapers' absorbency from every angle, striving to prevent leaks and keep tender skin as dry as possible for as long as possible.

Researchers interview thousands of parents every year, and observe hundreds of babies for hundreds of hours, watching diaper performance as the children move. The head of P&G's diaper research lab says that "fitting a diaper is like trying to fit a snowflake" because no two babies are alike.

Pampers' marketers learned an important lesson when confronted with aggressive competition from Huggies, which in 1978 offered a shaped diaper to fit babies' bottoms. Many mothers preferred Huggies to the Pampers design of that time--and so Pampers shifted to shaped diapers and cranked up its innovation in a bid to recapture market share it had lost to Huggies.

The Swedish firm Svendka Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA) is a big competitor in Europe and is also looking to Asia for future growth. Pampers is in China, but global rivals such as Mamy Poko (from Unicharm) are also in China. In short, there's no end in sight for the international diaper wars.

Ethnographic Research for Marketing

Genevieve Bell plays a vital role in Intel's long-term strategy and marketing plans. It's all about understanding people.

As director of user experience research, Bell and dozens of her researchers fan out across the planet to observe and question consumers about their use of tech gadgets, in everyday situations. She even has her own page and video on the Intel website.

Recently, Bell told the New York Times about her role at Intel:

My mandate at Intel has always been to bring the stories of everyone outside the building inside the building — and make them count. You have to understand people to build the next generation of technology.

Ethnographic marketing research is on the rise, as companies like Intel, Procter & Gamble, Whirlpool, Diageo, and Ford strive to learn much more about their consumers--what they actually do, what they actually like, how they actually use products at home or in out-of-home circumstances, and what motivates them to choose and use one product rather than another. Often, consumers can't identify, articulate, or accurately describe what they do or want--yet ethnographic researchers may identify important clues through observation and follow-up questions.

Ford hired ethnographic researchers in the 1990s to discover why consumers weren't connecting with the new Mustang's power and styling. Riding along with consumers, the researchers learned that drivers sensed a car's power in many ways, through feeling the engine's rumble, listening to its sound, and viewing the design as an elemental cue to power and speed.

Based on these insights, Ford redesigned the Mustang to effectively convey the positioning of power and speed. According to a Ford design executive: "This vehicle has that sense of motion, even when it’s standing still. It captures your eye from 50 feet away — it’s instantly recognizable as a Mustang."

P&G's Line Extensions for Faster Cleanup

Few US consumers have the time or inclination to work long hours deep-cleaning their homes every week. Procter & Gamble has been updating products and packaging to give today's customers what they need for speedier spot-cleaning, based on studies showing how cleaning habits have changed.

"When we were kids, the majority of the country used to drop in some dish liquid, fill up the sink with water, soak all of their dishes and then after a bit of time clean them, rinse and place them in a drying rack," remembers the head of marketing for Procter & Gamble's Cascade and Dawn cleaning brands. "Today, consumers just don't have time for batch-processing."

Having observed customers up close and personal, P&G recently launched Dawn Platinum Power Clean dishwashing liquid, designed to soak foods off dishes in minutes, not hours.

Another P&G introduction is Bounty DuraTowel, designed to deliver the benefit of more absorbancy and making it easier to rip one hefty sheet off the roll in a hurry. The idea is that a busy consumer doesn't want to fuss with the roll; he or she just wants to snap a single sheet off when needed to deal with a cleaning project or an unexpected spill--and do it right the first time with one towel, not a handful.

Line extensions like these can potentially cannibalize sales within the existing product line but also have great potential to attract new customers--or at least retain current customers who might otherwise defect to another brand.

Yet the more choices consumers have, the more confused they may become. The challenge for marketers is to simplify the choice, clarify points of differentiation, and sharpen the focus on what's really relevant to the target audience.

Line extensions are only part of P&G's marketing plan for higher sales and profits. The firm is also reinforcing the connection between its many individual brands (Bounty, Cascade, etc.) and the corporate parent. If customers like and trust one P&G brand, they might try another P&G brand. Last month, P&G held a one-day sampling event in which it distributed 40,000 free samples in one day in the heart of New York City. Why choose Manhattan for this massive sales promotion? "It's the world's biggest stage," explains a P&G executive.

Marketing Research, Hollywood & Broadway Style

How will audiences react to a new movie or Broadway show? Given the ever-increasing price tag of creating and presenting entertainment products, it's no wonder marketers are testing different ways of, well, testing before launch.

For example, producer Ken Davenport is testing his new Somewhere in Time musical by giving Portland, OR audience members hand-held meters to use in rating each element. The show, based on the well-known movie starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, received fairly positive critical reviews. Before spending another $9 million or so to bring it to Broadway, however, Davenport is asking dozens of audience members at each performance to rate songs and scenes on a three-part scale: “Love this part,” “Neutral about this part” and “Hate this part.” By looking at the ups and downs of audience reaction (see photo), Davenport can get an idea of what works and what doesn't.

Of course, Broadway producers typically gauge audience sentiment by watching and listening as the show goes on, noting when/where people laugh or seem bored. That's the time-honored tradition of out-of-town tryouts, when plays get tightened up and songs are added or cut according to audience reaction. Will hand-held meters help Somewhere in Time become a Broadway box-office smash? Only time will tell.

Hollywood studios have used sneak peek previews and audience reaction cards to test movies for years. These days, targeted market research is helping studios better understand the movie-going public's interests and preferences and fine-tune marketing for individual movies. Yet marketing research for movies has had a bumpy road, in part due to the difficulty of pinpointing what will attract audiences and still support the creative concept of each film.

One key element in marketing movies is the trailer--plastered all over social media, with the goal of going viral and generating sufficient buzz to boost ticket sales during the first weekend. "Trailer view searches are predictive," says Google's head of entertainment. According to Google's YouTube experience, "94% of variation in a film’s box office opening can be explained with trailer-related title search volume 4 weeks prior to release, coupled with seasonality and franchise status." In other words, studios use searches as metrics for anticipating and tracking movie marketing performance.

Can Facebook Help Researchers Decode Emotions?

Being able to decode a person's emotional state--just by glancing at his or her face--would be a big boon to marketers. Now researchers think they've cracked the code, training computers to recognize not only facial expressions but also body language and other subtle cues. Here's a quick look at such research:



Can social media further this research? In the words of one researcher, "If you do an experiment on Facebook, you've got half a billion people in your sample."

Ask Your Customers!

Thinking about introducing a new product, expanding your line, checking on service quality? Ask your customers! They're already browsing your Web site, Facebook page, or Twitter posts, if they care about your brand. Loyal brand fans want to be involved and have their voices heard. Just ask, and you'll be surprised how many customers will answer.

You won't get a statistically valid sample, but you will get qualitative data to help you make up your marketing mind. Just as important, you'll get fast feedback if you use social media or online surveys--and speed is vital in today's intensively competitive marketplace, where many decisions simply can't wait.

There are a number of tools you can use, such as Survey Monkey, which the city of Salem, MA uses to poll residents about municipal priorities, service performance, and more. The Survey Monkey site has case histories of how companies have used its tools to support marketing decision-making.

Marketing research is rocket science, but if you need a quick-and-dirty indication of what the market thinks of a new product idea, ask your customers.