The Hindu Business Line : Customer-driven innovation

A 100-acre plant capable of producing 70,000 tons of candy per year. That was the facility Mars Incorporated, US had, by 1995, in its new market, Russia. “By the end of the decade, Mars had become the dominant Russian candy maker with a market share of 40 per cent. Similarly aggressive expansion placed Mars as the number one candy maker in the world at the turn of this century,” narrates a case study in Strategic Product Creation by Ronald L. Kerber and Timothy M. Laseter ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

Category-leading brands of the privately-held, multibillion-dollar Mars include M&M’S, Snickers, Dove, Starburst, and Skittles, apart from pet food brands Pedigree, Whiskas, and Cesar. Until very recently, the company had a platform approach to innovation, based on iterative product extensions. Then came a shift in thinking: to “consumer-focused innovation based on marketplace research.” Which was when Mars discovered many things, such as that snacking is occasion-based. Mars responded. It now makes “M&M’S available in 21 different colours, which can be ordered over the Internet and mixed and matched in any combination and quantity. That proposition proved so popular with consumers, that the company now offers M&M’S with personalised printing of initials, names, and messages on the individual candies ...” Sweet insights, up for grabs.

Rewards of friendliness

Benchmarks in Hospitality & Tourism
Ed: Sungsoo Pyo

In winter 1999, the Tirolwerbung (Tyrolean Tourist Board) and the IFK (Institut fur Kundenzufriedenheit or Institute for Customer Satisfaction) decided to develop a new measure – the Austrian Guest Satisfaction Barometer. Behind the idea was “the awareness of the economic consequences of quality and satisfaction, and the idea that each hotel in Austria should monitor quality and satisfaction systematically and regularly,” write Kurt Matzler and Harald Pechlaner in one of the essays included in Benchmarks in Hospitality & Tourism edited by Sungsoo Pyo ( www.jaicobooks.com). An interesting analysis the authors report is about how customer complaints may actually increase with the level of satisfaction. Dissatisfied customers may be reluctant to complain for various reasons; and guests who complain tend to be more loyal, especially “if complaints are satisfied with friendliness”, they reason. Even more important than redress, therefore, seems to be friendliness of the employees when customers complain, the essay concludes. Ready takeaways.

Electrical toy

Brand Names and Product Dynasties: Lessons in Retrospect
Barrie Blake Coleman

When Alexander Graham Bell first invented the telephone, he and his cohorts offered to sell the patents to Western Union – then the world’s most important communications company, thanks to its domination of the telegraph – for $100,000,” recounts www.guardian.co.uk about one of ‘technology’s top 10 legal battles’. The year was 1877. And Western Union’s chief William Orton wrote: “Mr Bell, After careful consideration of your invention, while it is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that it has no commercial possibilities – indeed, there seems little future for an electrical toy,” as Barrie Blake Coleman recaptures in Brand Names and Product Dynasties: Lessons in Retrospect (Westland).

Invaluable lessons.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com