Product & Service

 „Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.“
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

It is the guest, and not the cook, who must like the dish

What does the optimum mobile telecom rate for those aged 20 to 29 look like? What difference does it make whether the slip-on cover of the head restraints used in railway cars is made of cotton or of polyester? Does the packaging of my sliced cheese also influence the perception of its taste? Is the cover of rescue costs to be a standard element of my casualty insurance or should it rather be offered as an add-on? Which benefits should be included in a frequent flyer programme if customer benefits and cost aspects are considered simultaneously – and can this bundle of services be standardised worldwide? Which branded features can I add to a car brand with little prestige so that image and willingness to pay will rise?

We want to support you with these and other questions which arise in the context of designing products. We analyse which elements and attributes of an offering, and which combinations of services, truly create customer benefits and, if required, which price premium they warrant in the view of customers.

In the case of complex products that allow for considering a large number of possible variations, conjoint analysis (adaptive or choice-based) provides us with a powerful tool which does not even require defining the product alternatives to be tested in advance. Rather, you have the possibility to assemble the individual product features into very different bundles “on the drawing board” after the analysis and to test these bundles against each other. The marketmind scenario calculator also allows us to consider the competitive environment and to compute market share forecasts for the assembled products.

Especially where products are specifically targeted to the customer, it is advisable to use our product configurator. For instance, in the insurance business frequently no two contracts are exactly alike:
they differ from each other in terms of risks to be covered, amounts of cover, risk categories, etc. What constitutes a problem for classical market research is resolved by our product configurator, which considers the situation of individual respondents already at the interviewing stage. This facilitates obtaining valid information for the optimum design of offerings also where these need to be highly customised.

If you should still be at the beginning of the product development process, we use qualitative methods like focus groups and in-depth interviews in order to generate input for product development early on.

We are delighted if eventually the customer likes the product – and consequently you do as well.