The term Agile is most familiar to people involved with software development, but the basic concepts can be applied to consumer products successfully as well. At least two of its core principals – use of iterations and collaborative involvement of product users (i.e. customers) – were effectively practiced years before the term was introduced and became commonly accepted.
Wide acceptance of Agile methodologies arguably resulted in dramatic increases in software project’s ROI caused by:
- reduction in the number of abandoned projects
- cost reduction for user training and documentation
- increase in user adoption of the “final” product
In other words, the application of Agile methodologies reduces the uncertainties of delivering an expected outcome.
Development of software to simplify business user’s jobs, has at least one critical similarity to the development of many consumer products – customers cannot clearly articulate their requirements. Particularly, the latent ones. Of course there are tools to help you do this, Kano analysis, being one of the most popular. Unfortunately, not enough consumer product marketing professionals are known to use these tools. That manifests itself in a very high failure rate of bringing consumer products to market. The actual rates of consumer product failure are quoted anywhere from 30% to 80%. The numbers vary by industry and are controversial because they do not clearly articulate what “failure” means. I define a product “failure” when it did not deliver the originally forecasted revenue.
Accenture research estimates that the CE (consumer electronics) industry alone has spent $16.7 billion a year to “receive, assess, repair, re-box, restock and resell returned merchandise.” More than two thirds of these costs, or $11.2 billion, are characterized as No Trouble Found (NTF). In other words, the products did not meet the customer’s expectations. Personally, I find the term NTF very disturbing – $11 billion waste caused by poor market requirement definitions and misleading advertising, is indeed a big trouble. That number does not include the cost of the customers time wasted, hit to the brand reputation and environmental costs of transporting and stuffing landfills with failed products and packaging.
The cause of the CE product NTF fail is relatively easy to diagnose – too many products are conceived by engineers who value the “cool” factor the most, without any reference to actual customer needs. That approach worked well while the price and advertising were the most critical factors in customers purchase decisions. The last few years have seen a dramatic increase in the importance of customer experience delivery as the most influential factor in selecting a product. The revenue growth of the leaders (Apple and Samsung) are cooling down, while the rest of the CE companies are seeing a drop in revenue and profit contraction.
Meanwhile, there is some evidence that small “un-brand manufacturers” are doing well by practicing “Agile” – looking methods to capture market share from the established brands.
- They “collaborate” with the customers of their competitors by analyzing product reviews they published online. They learn what caused these products to fall short of their customers’ expectations and why they purchased these products on the first place;
- They design products based on the results of that “collaboration” and their interpretation of consumer needs.
- They manufacture small lots of products to test the accuracy of their interpretation, market reaction and analysis of the feedback before going to the next “iteration”;
- They form customers’ expectations by “communicating” the product properties with the language used by customers to describe their experience.
“Agile” product marketing is a better approach when scale of design and manufacturing does not work anymore. It is not “cool” that sells your products today, it’s the experience your company delivers to the people who buy them.
