RMG HomeTrend Blog

How Effective a "Silent Salesperson" Is Your Trade Show Booth?

Every year when I walk the aisles of the International Home + Housewares Show, I am shocked by how poorly so many exhibitors’ booths communicate to the people who are attending the trade show. Cookware manufacturers are among the worst of the offenders. Walk the aisles of the South Hall where all the cookware manufacturers’ booths are and your eyes will glaze over from the sameness. Many cookware booths have absolutely no signage except for brand names and maybe a couple of beauty shots of some of the products. Few of the manufacturers have any signage that communicates the brand’s positioning or differentiates the brand from all the other cookware brands that are also exhibiting at the show. Few of the manufacturers even have signage that communicates at a glance what new products the company is introducing at the show.

In contrast, take a company like Bissell. Stand in the aisle by the Bissell booth and within seconds you will know what new products Bissell is introducing at the show and what the key selling points are for each new product. You will have learned about Bissell’s “closed loop manufacturing process” … all before you ever step foot in the booth and without ever having talked to anyone in the booth. Bissell’s booth is a very effective silent salesperson for the company. I can’t think of one cookware company whose booth was anywhere near as effective at communicating their positioning, their points of differentiation, their new product offerings, their brand as Bissell is.

It’s like the cookware exhibitors (and exhibitors in many other product categories) are saying to the thousands of people who walk past their booth over the course of the three days of the show, “it’s on a need-to-know basis and you don’t need to know.” Sure, the retailers who are already buying from them know all about the brand. After all, they get the personal tour. They have someone who takes them around to the various new items and tells them about the selling points of each new product. But what about the buyers from other retailers who aren’t current customers who are walking by the booth? Wouldn’t it make sense to have signage that sells them on the brand and highlights the new products? What about all the other people who walk by the booth? Whether they are trade guests, media, buyers, or exhibitors, they are also consumers of housewares products. Why not have signage in your booth that does the same thing that your packaging and point-of-purchase displays are supposed to do in the retail store -- be your silent salespeople?

Exciting changes to the HIPster web site that will help you keep your finger on the pulse of what's new

As you undoubtably know if you are a regular reader of my HomeTrend Forecast web-based newsletter or my HomeTrend Blog, I manage a panel of trend-setting consumers -- the HomeTrend Influentials Panel (HIP). HomeTrend Influentials are home owners who like their homes to look up-to-date and like to keep their fingers on the pulse of what is new for the home. (Take the HIPster Quiz for yourself to learn more about the selection criteria that I use to find HomeTrend Influentials.)

The HIPster web site has a password-protected HIPster area (www.hipster.info) where the HIPsters can go whenever they have a question they would like to get answered by other HIPsters, when they’ve tried a new product that they want to recommend to other HIPsters, and when they want to rant or rave about a product or company. Up to now, the functionality of this web site has been pretty basic but I am in the process of taking advantage of all the progress social networking has made in the past year to make the HIPster web site state-of-the-art.

Not only will the new improved HIPster web site make it easier for the HomeTrend Influentials to form a community, it will also make it much much easier for you find out what’s on the minds of the HIPsters and keep your finger on the pulse of what these very influential consumers are doing to and buying for their homes. The new HIPster web site will enable you to monitor what these very opinionated consumers think about and are saying about your products. You’ll be able to ask the HIPsters questions and get live real time feedback from them. You’ll be able to find out what HIPsters are concerned about and what changes they are making in their food prep, household cleaning, and garment care habits and practices. You’ll be able to detect emerging trends early on while they are still in their infancy. It will be like having your own proprietary database of consumers at your disposal whenever you have a question you want to ask them or an idea you want to run by them.

So, hope is here for those of you who have been admiring what the major consumer package goods companies like Frito-Lay and Proctor and Gamble are doing with online consumer panels but figured there was no way your company could ever afford an online consumer panel of your own. You DO have an online consumer panel at your disposal. And it’s not just any old consumers, it’s HomeTrend Influentials, those consumers who pick up on new home-related trends and embrace new home goods much sooner than the rest of the U.S. population and are the bellwether for the mainstream American population. And soon, with the new and improved functionality of the HIPster web site, you’ll have all sorts of new ways to keep your finger on the pulse of these trend-setting and trend-spreading consumers. Watch for announcements in early 2008 about the new and improved HIPster web site.

If you would like to learn more about the HomeTrend Influentials Panel, click here to get your COMPLIMENTARY copy of the "Inside the Heads and Homes of HomeTrend Influentials" report.

Now the Housewares Show is a Place to Conduct Consumer Market Research

Every year, thanks to the International Housewares Association (IHA), I get to bring some HomeTrend Influentials (HIPsters) to the International Home and Housewares Show. The HIPsters typically walk the show, do interviews with the members of the press, and do a panel presentation.

As usual, I’ll be at the International Home and Housewares Show with a group of HIPsters again in 2008. Only this year will be a little different from previous years. Yes, we’ll be walking the show, doing media interviews, and doing a panel presentation (Monday, March 17 at 10:30 a.m. in the Design Theater) as usual. But, we will also be doing focus groups on Saturday, March 15. Now for the first time ever, exhibitors will be able to get feedback on their new product introductions not just from their retail customers but also from real live consumers. And not just any consumers ... from HomeTrend Influentials.

HomeTrend Influentials are a good population from whom to obtain feedback because they pick up on new home-related trends and embrace new home goods much sooner than the rest of the U.S. population. As such, these influential consumers are the bellwether for predicting changes in the behaviors, habits and practices, and attitudes of mainstream Americans. If HomeTrend Influentials embrace a new product, very likely it is going to be embraced by mainstream Americans within a couple of years. If they reject a new product, very likely the product is not going to be embraced by mainstream Americans either.

If you’ve been hungering for consumer feedback on your new products (or new product concepts), here is your chance to find out what real live consumers think of your products. If you are interested, e-mail me at ajr@4rmg.com for a proposal.

The California Ban on Ozone Air Purifiers: Will it Mean Boom or Bust for the Air Cleaner Industry?

Last Friday, the LA Times announced that the California Air Resources Board banned in-home ozone air purifiers because ozone can cause significant adverse health impacts. Before issuing the ban, California regulators reviewed thousands of peer-review studies that definitively link ozone exposure to increased asthma and other potentially deadly respiratory diseases, permanent lung damage and other health problems.

Every time I see an ad for an ozone air purifier or hear some consumer talk about how much they like their ozone air purifier, I cringe. So, my first reaction to the news about the California Air Resources Board ban was “it’s about time someone did something about these products”.

While the California Air Resources Board focused solely on ozone, the fact is that ozone air purifiers not only put bad stuff – ozone – into the air, but many of them don’t take the bad stuff – like dust, pollen and tobacco smoke – out of the air. For example, a couple of years ago, client of mine tested one of the most popular ozone air purifiers using the ANSI/AHAM AC-1 test method and found that it had a Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) of something like 8. CADR is a measure of the appliance’s ability to reduce smoke, dust, and pollen particles in the 0.10 to 11 micron (μm) size range from the air. Using the rule of thumb that the CADR should be at least 2/3 of a room's area, an air cleaner with a CADR of 8 would be suitable for a 12 square foot room.

I started my housewares career as the Marketing Manager who was responsible for air cleaners at Norelco back in the early 1990's when Norelco was one of the market leaders in the category, so air cleaners have always been near and dear to my heart. So, my second reaction was “this is could kill the entire air cleaner category.” The California Air Resources Board did say that other types of air purifiers “can be safe and effective” but how many consumers are going have a knee jerk reaction and assume that all air purifiers are unsafe to use? How many consumers who might have been thinking about buying an air cleaner are going to be scared away by the publicity on the California ban on ozone air purifiers?

There is already such a huge gap between the number of U.S. households who own an air cleaner (17 million U.S. households, 16% of U.S. households) and the number of people who should own an air cleaner because they suffer from allergies (more than 50 million Americans have nasal allergies, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.) It’s time for air cleaner manufacturers (the legitimate ones that are members of AHAM’s Air Cleaner Certification Program) to step up and start advertising, promoting, and publicizing their air cleaners...or else there may not be enough of an air cleaner category left to advertise, promote or publicize.

Getting your products into the hands of HomeTrend Influentials

I am changing the reward structure of the HomeTrend Influentials Panel. Up to now, members of the HomeTrend Influentials Panel who participated in the various different research studies received a modest cash incentive. I am changing to the type of incentive system used by the companies who manage large online consumer panels such as e-Rewards Opinion Poll, Zoomerang, and BzzMarketing. That is, the HIPsters will earn a certain number of points for each research study they participate in. For example, they earn $5 in HIP dollars when they take the weekly HIP online single-topic quickie survey and they earn $25 in HIP dollars when they take the longer, more comprehensive quarterly trend survey. They’ll be able to redeem their HIP dollars at the end of the year for the latest in cool housewares and home goods products.

To make this work, I am going to need to be able to offer the coolest and the newest housewares products to the HIPsters at the end of the year when they can redeem their points. That’s why I am initiating the HomeTrend Influentials Sponsorship Program. The Sponsorship Program is designed to be a “win/win” for the sponsors and for the HIPsters. It benefits Sponsors because it gets their products into the hands of the consumers who have tremendous influence over mainstream consumers. These are, after all, consumers who delight in talking with their family, friends, and co-workers about what’s new for the home and who are sought out by friends and family for advice on what to buy for their homes. It benefits the HIPsters because they’ll be able to get the newest coolest housewares and home goods products simply for participating in HIP research studies.

Here is how the program will work: Charter Sponsors will offer the HomeTrend Influentials Panel some of their newest, coolest products at no charge or at a significant discount. In promotional consideration for free and/or discounted product, I will prominently feature (including company logo, brief description of the company, and link to the sponsor’s web site) and heavily promote the Charter Sponsors on the pass-word protected HIP members-only HIPster.org web site.

Does this Sponsorship Program sound like something your company might be interested in? Send me an e-mail. Simply click on the e-mail link below my photo on the left hand side of this page.

I need your feedback: What Do YOU Think of Online Consumer Panels

I really don’t get it.

I just read an article in MediaPost’s Marketing Daily about how companies like AOL and Procter & Gamble are having real mothers test their products through ModernMom.com’s Modern Moms Tested program.

This is just the latest article that I’ve read about companies who are harnessing the power of online consumer panels. I’ve written about online consumer panels in the RMG HomeTrend Blog. In my May blog posting, I wrote about how Frito-Lay uses its two online community panels to test and validate product and marketing approaches for its snack foods, get reactions to competitive products, and evaluate how Frito-Lay products are displayed in supermarkets. In my June blog posting, I wrote about how Vornado tapped into several online consumer panels to help them develop their new air cleaner and its packaging.

Here is what I don’t get. What I can’t figure out is why housewares and home goods manufacturers don’t seem to be embracing online consumer panels.

Now, I admit that I, like Frito-Lay, P & G, and many others, am an unabashed believer in the power of online community panels as a research tool and I obviously have a vested interest in online consumer panels since I have just such a panel – the HomeTrend Influentials Panel (otherwise known as HIP).

But my reasons for asking are not a thinly veiled attempt to try to drum up business (although there are dozens of ways you could utilize HIP to get valuable insight from real live consumers during all stages of product development from concept to prototype to package design to advertising to product introduction.)

I am asking because I really want to know what you think of the idea of using online consumer panels to do market research. If you post a comment, I promise that I am not going to contact you directly to try to sell you something. I want to know if you have ever, would ever, consider using an online consumer panel and if not, why not. I want to know if you have ever done anything with a consumer online panel. Were you satisfied with the results? If not, why not? I want to know if your company has established its own online consumer panel. If you have, how is it going? PLEASE share your thoughts and experiences. To post a comment, click on the word “comment” below.

By the way, I highly recommend MediaPost’s Marketing Daily. You can sign up to get a daily e-mail that lists the topics being covered in that day’s Marketing Daily. If any of the topics interest you, you click on the link that takes you to the MediaPost web site so you can read the full article.

Do people buy the food prep products they see used or advertised on cooking shows?

Research that I conducted with my panel of HomeTrend Influentials (HIPsters) revealed that while the vast majority of HIPsters watch cooking shows on television, slightly more than half have never bought any cookware, bakeware, kitchen gadget, or small appliance because they saw it advertised on a cooking show.

I was a little surprised by this finding. I would have expected that a much larger percent of the HIPsters who watch cooking shows would have purchased food prep products that they saw advertised on those shows. After all, the majority of HIPsters love to cook and bake ... and people who love to cook and bake are typically always on the lookout for new food prep products that will make cooking and baking easier, faster, or more fun.

I was even more surpised to find that the percent of HIPsters who have purchased a food prep product because they saw it used on a cooking show is not that much higher than the percent who have bought a food prep product because they saw it advertised on a cooking show (56% versus 45%). I would have expected a lot more HIPsters to be like the one who purchased a splatter screen because "we saw Alton Brown make southern fried chicken and had to have the splatter screen he used.” Given the amount of Pampered Chef products that I see in HIPster kitchen cupboards and cabinets, they certainly buy what they see demonstrated at a Pampered Chef party. So why don't more HIPsters buy products that they see used (or advertised) on cooking shows?

For one thing, there is no opportunity for viewers to buy products they see on cooking shows on a whim. Watch an infomercial and you can immediately pick up the phone and call the 800 number. The same is true of home shopping networks. See a new kitchen gadget as you walk down the aisle of Target or Wal-Mart and you can immediately throw the item into your cart. What if you see an item on a cooking show that you'd love to buy?

A Real World Example of How One Company Used Used Online Consumer Panels to Help Develop a New Product

In my May 3 post, I wrote about how snack food manufacturer Frito-Lay is using online consumer panels to test and validate product and marketing approaches for its snack foods, get reactions to competitive products, and even to evaluate how Frito-Lay products are displayed in supermarkets.

It is not just consumer package goods companies that are utilizing online consumer panels to gather valuable insight into their customers. Vornado Air Circulation Systems, Inc., a manufacturer of air cleaners, heaters, and humidifiers, tapped into several online consumer panels – including my company’s HomeTrend Influentials Panel – to help them develop their new air cleaner and its packaging.

Back in late 2005, the folks at Vornado decided they needed to learn more about air cleaner ownership and air cleaner usage, habits and practices before they started product development on their new air cleaner. My company’s 100-member HomeTrend Influentials Panel was the ideal consumer panel for this research study. Because HomeTrend Influentials (HIPsters) are the bellwether for the mainstream American population, finding out what members of the HomeTrend Influentials Panel look for when buying a new air cleaner gave Vornado insight into the features and benefits Americans want in an air cleaner. Finding out what the HIPsters think about some of the most popular air cleaners on the market helped Vornado figure out how to differentiate their air cleaner from the many other air cleaners on the market.

Vornado used the findings from the HomeTrend Influentials online bulletin board focus group to determine the direction they wanted to go with product development and gave them insight into how to position their new air cleaner.

By early 2007, Vornado had completed the product development phase of the air cleaner project and was in the process of developing packaging. They came up with three different package designs that they really liked but couldn’t decide which of those designs to go with. They needed to find out what prospective air cleaner purchasers thought of the three package designs. For this study, the HomeTrend Influentials Panel was not the right online consumer panel to use because we needed 200 people who either owned or were planning to buy an air purifier in the next year. So we turned to the Zoomerang Sample online consumer panel to find the right people to survey.

Vornado discovered that survey participants liked two of the package designs equally well which helped them come up with a hybrid design that is the best of both worlds.

Vornado utilized consumer market research to increase the odds that their new air cleaner would be a marketplace success. When it comes down to it, that is the purpose of consumer market research – to reduce your risk of marketplace failure and increase your odds of marketplace success. Online consumer panels are typically the most cost effective – with the quickest turnaround – of the consumer market research methodologies. There are dozens of ways you can utilize online consumer panels such as my company’s HomeTrend Influentials Panel to reduce your risk of marketplace failure and increase your odds of marketplace success. To find out more about how online consumer panels can increase your odds of marketplace success, go to this month’s HomeTrend Forecast newsletter.

A New Market Research Tool: Online Community Panels

Social networking sites are Web sites that provide virtual communities for people interested in a particular subject or just to “hang out” together. The most well-known of the social networking sites, of course, is MySpace.

But now, companies are starting to harness the phenomenon of social networking for market research purposes.

Take Frito-Lay, for example. Frito-Lay has two 300-member invitation-only online community panels, one consisting of moms with at least two children and the other of 40-plus Boomers who have no kids. The company uses these online community panels to test and validate product and marketing approaches for its snack foods, get reactions to competitive products, and evaluate how Frito-Lay products are displayed in supermarkets.

Frito-Lay has become a believer in the power of online community panels as a research tool. Michelle Adams, director of Frito-Lay’s consumer strategy and insights group, says that the company has gotten “terrific insight” from this virtual form of ethnography.

I, too, am a believer in the power of online community panels as a research tool. In the three years since I established the HomeTrend Influentials Panel (HIP), I have conducted all sorts of research studies with the panel, including focus groups (both traditional and online), online click-through surveys, in-home product tests, and in-home interviews. Like Frito-Lay, I have found that I get “terrific insight” from research studies done with the HomeTrend Influentials Panel.

I invite you to discover the power of the HomeTrend Influentials Panel for yourself by participating in the May HomeTrend Influentials Survey online click-through survey. You can take a “test drive” of the HomeTrend Influentials Panel for as little as $400.00.

If you are interested in participating in the May HomeTrend Influentials Survey, send me an e-mail.

Keeping Your Finger on the Pulse of Today's Housewares Consumer

According to a University of Maryland study, today’s mothers spend more hours focused on their children than their own mothers did 40 years ago. They certainly do not have any more hours in the day than their mothers did. In fact, many actually have fewer hours at home since so many more mothers are in the workforce than were 40 years ago. So how do they do it? How do they manage to eke out more time to spend with their children? They are spending significantly less time on other home-related activities. For example, they are cutting back markedly on housework, which was down more than 40 percent over 38 years.

At first blush, it would appear that the fact that today’s mothers are spending less time on household chores in order to spend more time with their children does not bode well for the housewares industry. After all, women with children, and especially married women with children, spend a disproportionate amount of money on housewares and home products, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, if the demographic group that spends the most on housewares is spending less time on home-related activities, it stands to reason that they are spending less on housewares products.

In reality, today’s homemakers (whether they are in the workforce or not, whether they have children or not) are spending more on housewares products, even though they are spending less time on home-related activities. The reason: they are constantly looking for new ways to get the household chores (like shopping, cooking, cleaning) done faster. Case in point: the vast majority of members of my proprietary panel of HomeTrend Influentials (HIPsters) who have made some changes in the way they prepare meals, clean house, and do laundry in the past year, are using new meal prep and cleaning products that they were not using a few years ago.

Interestingly, many of the new housewares products that HIPsters are raving about – products like the Swiffer, the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, the Scrubbing Bubbles automatic shower cleaner, and Pledge wipes – are not products that were developed by housewares companies. They are products that were the brainchild of consumer package goods giants Procter and Gamble and S.C. Johnson.

Why? Because companies like Procter and Gamble and S.C. Johnson have their finger on the pulse of the American homemaker. They really understand what consumers like and don’t like and more important, their needs and frustrations.

To compete with the P & G’s and S.C. Johnson’s of the world, you have to understand the housewares consumer as well as they do. You can’t afford not to. But how can you stay competitive with package goods companies like Procter and Gamble and S.C. Johnson when they can afford to spend so much more on market research than you can?

You don’t have to have P & G size market research budgets to understand your consumers. Bissell proved that several years ago, when the company Bissell needed to find out how U.S. consumers would respond to a new cleaning appliance that Mark Bissell had found in Europe. Bissell’s marketing research director at the time, Erich Pagel, conducted an in-home test for just $1,500. He worked with the local Parent Teacher Association in Grand Rapids to find 20 volunteers who used the product in their homes for several weeks. Pagel then followed up with in-home visits, where he watched the PTA mothers interact with the product.

It’s not about fancy research methodologies. It’s about listening to the consumer. It’s about getting outside the walls of your company and into the heads and homes of your consumer.

How well do you understand your consumer?