Industry, durables & services

Our durables and services specialists provide innovation services for a range of sectors including home appliances, consumer electronics, consumer telecoms, consumer IT, garden equipment/  DIY and consumer based financial services sectors.

We specialise in innovation, beginning with strategic business planning, from marketing landscape, competitive positioning  and opportunity development through to concept ideation, screening and testing. The difference in our approach is driven by our people who are experts in the particular challenges of the durable markets. We do not simply adapt consumer packaged goods approaches, but build our knowledge into the products and services we provide in order to drive your competitive advantage. Typical business questions we are asked about new and existing products include:

• How do I segment the market and what products should I introduce to meet the needs of the target group?
• Which of my new product ideas will create the biggest opportunity for my company?
• How good is my new product idea?
• How do I optimise my trade strategy?
• How should I price and optimise marketing spend?
• What combinations of possible features for this product will maximise sales and profit?
• How should I market a portfolio of products to maximise sales?

Our tools are designed to meet our clients' needs across a range of durables industries and we provide solutions at all stages of the product lifecycle, form defining the market, to helping prioritize early concept ideas, to estimating demand for your new product before or even after it is launched.

The Vantis database

This global innovation database for durables and services stores results on more than 10,000 concepts. From this database and learning we can assess and benchmark your new ideas in order to give high predictability as to likely in market success. Because we know what works and why it works, combining this benchmarking with Vantis analytical tools can provide powerful models to and optimise new ideas, forecast in market volumes and to maximise profitability and ROI on marketing spending. Typical innovation programmes include identifying:

• the product ideas that will create the biggest opportunity for a brand or manufacturer
• how to price to optimise marketing spend
• the relative importance of technology, style and brand to specifiers and consumers
• the optimum combination of products and features to maximise sales.

To find out how our durables and services team can help you, contact joe Marshall on 020 7347 3000, joe.marshall@ipsos-mori.com.

Case studies

Early concept screening to prioritise NPD

For a major blue chip company we developed a standardized research program (a customised version of our DemandScan® methodology) to provide early concept screening for all their new product initiatives. This starts at the earliest stages of quantitative concept evaluation in order to help the client to prioritise NPD investment, as well as optimise product concepts, and even consider the communication platform.  We are now working across four divisions, ranging from typical domestic durables through to specialised business-to-business applications with them.

Market forecast research helps start-up raise investment

We recently worked with a new start up company, backed by one of the largest venture capital investments ever raised, that has developed a major breakthrough technological innovation, with potential applications across a wide range of consumer electronics products Qualitative research was conducted to develop and fine-tune new product concepts to showcase the new technology, and three of these - two consumer products and one B2B - were evaluated in a Market Simulator® forecast study. This research clearly identified that two of the new product propositions have enormous market potential. This research has been instrumental in helping the client to find investment for product development and the first of the two products will be in production early in 2008.

 Innovation planning aligned with both business structure and consumer groups

Our client, a major international telecoms company, is embarking on a dynamic and prolific innovation process. We recently carried out a major concept screening project for them, to help determine their innovation pipeline for 2008.The project ran in five different countries, and covered both consumer and business-to-business targets. A total of 22 different concepts were tested.The main outcome of our research and analysis were recommendations on which concepts to progress: not only for the total consumer and business targets, but for several different consumer groups, and specific business types. In addition, the analysis was all aligned with the client's business structure, so that each team in their business could immediately identify and agree their innovation plans.