MRT'S 2005 ANNUAL
VOICE OF THE
CUSTOMER
CONFERENCE
From Fuzzy to Focused
How to
Interpret & Translate Customer Insights into Innovative New Products
September
26-28,
2005 /
Boston, MA |
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Voice of the Customer Goes
Hi-Tech on the Web
How to Elicit the “Truth”
About What Customers Prefer and Why They Select the Products
They Choose
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Ely Dahan
Assistant Professor of Marketing
UCLA |
"Dahan enabled us to understand how demand for our products
and
service is constructed, and make decisions based on this"
- G. Greathouse
Professor Dahan will provide an
overview of two novel internet based methods to evaluate new
product features and full concepts. The first method employs
stock market games to measure the underlying preferences of the
“traders” and the second utilizes recent breakthroughs that
solve large combinatorial problems to identify underlying
customer decision processes.
These methods and their results
will be compared to more traditional methods of determining
customer wants and needs, including surveys, focus groups,
concept tests, and conjoint studies.
Key Take-Aways:
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Learn new methods to more
efficiently and cost effectively gain customer insights on
new product ideas
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Gain a better understanding of
how customers rank product features, what’s involved in
their process of elimination and how (and at what point)
they make key trade-off decisions
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How
to apply these concepts and methodologies to your own VOC
program
Ely
Dahan, is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the
UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he was awarded the
Dean George Robbins Teaching Prize in 2004. He came to UCLA from
the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research focuses on
internet-based market research methods, adaptive conjoint
analysis, securities trading of concepts, mass customization,
models of new product prototyping, and the economics of cost
reduction. Research by Dahan and his colleagues has recognition,
including the 2004 AMA EXPLOR Award for most innovative
web-based market research, the 2003 John D.C. Little Award for
best Marketing paper in Marketing Science or Management Science,
and the 2001 Hustad Award for best paper in the Journal of
Product Innovation Management.
"Mind-expanding content and ideas. Worth the entire cost of
the program. Dahan had an
excellent rapport with the audience."
- O. Williams
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RELATED ARTICLE featuring ELY DAHAN:
"The
Future of Marketing" ...read
the excerpt... |
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Gaining Competitive Advantage
By Leveraging User Innovation Communities
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Eric von Hippel
Professor & Head of the Innovation Entrepreneurship Group
MIT Sloan School of Management |
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 SPECIAL
BONUS!
Attendees of the conference
will receive a FREE copy of
Eric von Hippel's latest book, Democratizing
Innovation
[More
Info] |
Users that innovate tend to
form communities and freely reveal the innovations they develop.
Companies ranging from car manufacturers to electronic game
manufacturers are learning how they can work together with these
communities for mutual advantage.
Prof. von Hippel will examine
multiple strategies and approaches that companies such as Harley
Davidson, GE, Statacorp, LEGO, Linux and others are taking to
react and benefit from user innovation communities. His talk
will specifically explore how these companies successfully:
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Create mass-market user
customization communities
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Encourage customization,
maintain community and create strong brands
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Create community links to
easily add user developed innovations to their standard
offerings
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Integrate user developed
innovations into commercial products on a regular basis
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Enlist user communities to
assist with product support
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React and respond to user
communities that cannot be controlled
Professor
Eric von Hippel is Head of the Technological
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of
Management. His research is focused on the sources of and
economics of innovation. von Hippel has developed methods that
enable firms to rapidly and efficiently create breakthrough new
products and services by building on information gained from
innovating lead users. These Lead User methods have been found
valuable by many leading-edge companies worldwide. In his new
book, Democratizing Innovation (MIT Press, April 2005), von
Hippel discusses the latest work in this field.
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RELATED ARTICLE by ERIC von HIPPEL:
"Democratizing
Innovation: The Evolving Phenomenon of User Innovation"
...read
the excerpt... |
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Marriott:
Going From “Like to Love”
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Marriott International, Inc. |
Marriott is expanding its
market leadership and preference by building upon its business
foundation of operational excellence and loyalty with its
experience mission to engage the guests on a deeper, more
meaningful emotional level.
This new strategic direction is
grounded on deeper consumer insights including taking a
psychographic versus demographic approach to the business,
leveraging behavioral insights, and a sweeping economic
segmentation of lodging. Many different guest methodologies were
used including voice of the customer, behavior observations,
qualitative and quantitative custom research, and ongoing guest
tracking and quality assurance systems.
The expected business results
are stronger market share, stronger pricing capabilities,
long-term stakeholder loyalty, and a sustainable competitive
advantage that cannot be easily copied. Desired take-away from
this session are observations about:
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The
power of creating a corporate strategic direction by linking
and integrating multiple guest and business driven insights
and processes;
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Getting past the obvious and
getting to business strategies that resonate with the
guest’s fundamental core values (“consumers can’t always say
what they need; people don’t always do what they say; and
people don’t always do what they are supposed to do”)
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Creating a guest based
blueprint for each brand from the insights and translating
that into product and service innovations.
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