From Jon Fernquest
See “Customers are your best marketing department”, business section, page 3
Customer participation in product development using the internet is a new idea that future Thai entrepreneurs will probably use a lot. A few years ago, Thai students at a university near where I live in northern Thailand worked with local craftspeople to design OTOP (One Tambon One Product) products for western markets. This article suggests ways they could have used the internet to get feedback to improve these OTOP products.
Getting customers involved in the design of products is not a new idea as the article points out. Suggestion boxes, surveys and interviewing customers in focus groups are also common market research techniques.
Creative use of the internet in marketing research is a new idea, however. Kettle Foods and Jones Soda are using the internet to design new flavours for potato chips and soft drinks. How do they motivate customers to participate? Since the customers who help with product design ideas are not employees of the company, the activity has to be fun for them. What ways does the author suggest product design can be made fun for customers?
How do http://del.icio.us/ and digg.com work? Check them out online. How could you use these sites to get new creative ideas?
Finally, think of how you could adapt these ideas to Thai businesses like OTOP products for export. For instance, if you collected the email addresses of tourists who bought OTOP products you might be able to follow up and use their ideas in market research. Where do people of your age group like to go in their free time? Restaurants? Internet game rooms? How could a business owner use the techniques in this article to create a better experience for their customers?
You can hear this column by clicking here and here.
To read more about the technology that http://del.icio.us/ uses, see the following sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_syndication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_%28file_format%29
entrepreneur – a small business owner who takes risks with a new business idea
feedback – opinions that show whether something new is successful or not
a banner – a large title or headline that stretches across the front page
to blend – to mix together different things together
to pitch – to sell
customised label – a label made specially for you
the flavour is their baby – they feel like a parent, i.e., like the flavor belongs to them
suggestion box – a box in a store or business for customers to put written complaints or suggestions into
survey – a list of questions to find out what public opinion is about something
focus group – a group of customers who are interviewed in a group to discover how they feel about the product
market research – trying to find out what consumers of a product think are the important features of the product
motivate – to make someone excited about doing something, to make them do it
to follow up – to maintain contact with a customer
an RSS feed – a web feed, news about new things on the web that are fed automatically to you
bookmarking – marking a favorite place on the web so you can go there again
a web board – a place on the web where people have discussions that are stored on the web board
Customers are your best marketing department
ARNAT LEEMAKDEJ
Last year Kettle Foods ran a people's choice award for a new flavour of potato chip. The winners were Spicy Thai flavour and Cheddar Beer. Both are going into production now. On the homepage at www.kettlefoods.com, you can see a large banner that reads, ``Help Blend our Next Flavour''. Here is how it works: you buy the five packages listed at a special voter's price and vote for the flavour you like. By referring friends to try the chips, you could receive more support for your flavour.
Another company, Jonessoda.com, makes all kinds of sodas based on people's suggestions. This has resulted in some varied and strange flavours, such as Fufu berry, Berry Lemonade, Orange & Creme and Crushed Melon. You can submit the flavour, recipe and name, and the company will try very hard to pitch the suggestions to stores. You can even upload your photo and it will print a customised label and ship it to your home. The company is developing these products with the help of people on a web board, and people love it. They feel they are part of the product's development, and the flavour is their baby.
Recruiting customers into the design process is not new. Companies have been listening hard to their customers. Walk into any Bangkok store and you will see suggestion boxes everywhere _ mostly empty, though. The thing is, people want to write something but they just don't have time. Besides, it looks funny if you take the time to write something to put in a suggestion box. Store employees may think you are complaining, or you may be unsure whether your suggestion will go to the right person or straight into the nearest trash can. People are reluctant to put comments into a suggestion box or pick up a phone to call a call centre and spend 15 to 30 minutes talking to a machine.
Kettle Foods and Jones Soda are different from conventional co-operative customer product development programmes because they use technology to gather ideas online, with interesting incentives. Thai companies may think this is unfair because you would only capture an online audience, which will not reflect the true opinions of your population profile. But you are not running a national election, you just need good ideas from as many sources as possible. Online or offline, it doesn't matter. The company just needs to get organised in a creative way to allow people to join in to achieve a fruitful result.
First, you need to recruit the people. Don't make them feel like they are working for you. They are your best marketing department but they are not your employees. However, you must allocate the resources to repay them somehow. Special prizes, free gifts, sweepstakes, credits, whatever works. I like the Jones process because it makes you feel like you are going on the website to play and have fun. Other sites try to restrict people to ideas that are only relevant to the product and that really turns people off.
Once you get people interested, make it convenient for your target group. An IT product can easily be added to a web site to allow people to participate. I wrote about e-rules in a previous article, noting how the US Department of Transportation allows people to discuss the draft of a new law, and consider the major issues, details and fines, for example, before the bill goes to legislators.
The hottest site on the Internet today is del.icio.us. An unconventional URL? Yes that's right, no boring www, it's http://del.icio.us. It started as a personal bookmarking site where people could store references to their favourite web pages, accessible wherever they go. Del.icio.us then puts these bookmarks in a list, to show the most popular universal resource locators (URLs) in real time and via an RSS feed. This is known as ``social bookmarking'' and has inspired many copycats. In this case, the public are directly creating the product. The outcome? A product that meets people's needs.
Another example is digg.com. It allows people to submit news, on which visitors can click. The news that gets the most clicks or ``diggs'' is ranked in order.
This new trend is changing the way we interact socially. In the past, technology has taken between six months and a year to get accepted, but del.icio.us and digg have proved exceptions. New technology gets ``digged'' or bookmarked by someone and in a matter of hours the news is promoted and fed to RSS readers all over the world.
Democracy has proved once again that even though it may seem like some people are stupid, as opinions accumulate, listening to the public is never wrong for a company. We just have to devise a product or process that is fun, easy, and a benefit to all.
Asst Prof Dr Arnat Leemakdej is director of the Master in Finance programme (MIF), Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, Thammasat University. He can be reached at arnat@velocall.com
