According to a recent USA today article, you could be hurting brand loyalty by asking your customers to fill out “another” customer satisfaction survey. Consumer fatigue issues should have us all rethinking how we measure brand loyalty. Here are a few consumer quotes to highlight consumer complaints: Read the rest of this entry »
Stop the surveys, please!
January 13th, 2012Using Secret Facebook Groups for Innovation
June 17th, 2011In the mid-90’s, new product development teams took a leap forward in innovation efforts by breaking free of focus group rooms to learn from consumers in their home or store environment. Today, we are taking another innovation leap by getting closer to consumers’ by participating in their social media environments. To learn more about how social media approaches will impact proprietary NPD work, Read the rest of this entry »
Is the “BMW i” already past it’s prime?
February 22nd, 2011BMW announced this week that they will be using the sub-brand “BMW i” for their electric and hybrid cars which will launch in 2013. While the sub-brand strategy is a departure from Mercedes approach of using the Smart brand, is the BMW i concept innovative? Read the rest of this entry »
Kohler’s Innovative New Product Strategy
January 30th, 2011In January, Kohler launched a new product called Elevance Rising Wall Bath. I wanted to feature this product in my blog as an example of a well thought out innovation strategy.
Elevance is an ergonomic bathtub that was cleverly designed to target the growing number of aging Americans renovating their homes. Here is a link to a video that will give you a sense of how well they tied their design features to aging consumer needs Read the rest of this entry »
Should you invest in Re-Value Engineering?
October 25th, 2010Last week’s evolveNPD post mentioned a former Kraft executive’s prediction that companies will invest in what I’m calling Re-Value Engineering: focusing on taking out less important features and lowering the price, rather than just adding more features and cost into products. Do we see signs of this already? What does it mean for our industries? Here are a few examples from this week’s news… Read the rest of this entry »
Making the case for market research
October 13th, 2010A colleague of mine recently posted a great question to the Linked-in group NPD, Innovation and Growth: “If you were going into a company without dedicated researchers how would you make the case for research? Especially at an innovative company not likely to believe innovation can be readily identified through research.” I have had the great fortune going through this process with a company over the past six months. Here are a few insights from that process for those of you interested in growing your research function. Read the rest of this entry »
Consumer choice: Is more, better?
October 1st, 2010Every trend has it’s doppelganger; the alter ego of that defies the trend and takes a new stand. The super-size food trend was reversed with 100-calorie packs. Super-size grocery stores were countered by neighborhood markets. So where are we now and where are we going? Should we be focused on choice or simplicity? Read the rest of this entry »
Product superiority and the science of pleasure
September 24th, 2010Product Superiority is the holy grail of product development. What makes a product superior? If you are in the food business, you might say it is about winning in a blind taste test. But what if your product isn’t superior on a blind basis? Should you reformulate? Not necessarily. According to an interview with Paul Bloom, professor of psychology at Yale University and author of How Pleasure Works, Read the rest of this entry »
Monika Wingate is the owner of Fountainhead Brand Consulting and V.P. of Membership for the Wisconsin Product Development and Manufacturing Association (PDMA). She has helped a variety of companies develop new products and growth strategies including CUNA Mutual, Hormel Foods, U.S. Bank, and Kohler.
