New brand research – incompetent or ignored?

The argument about the usefulness of research in new brand development is a hardy perennial. The essence of the debate is distilled in the difference between disruptive innovation, whereby whole new categories are created (where research can easily be misleading); and pre-research in familiar areas. A possible exception to this general principle was New Coke. The failure to recognise the importance of the Coke brand was just about understandable. It probably did need in-market exposure to galvanise drinkers to resist the new version. It might have not come up in pre-research in quite the dramatic way it played out. 

But the Tesco Fresh & Easy example in America is harder to understand. We’ve been led to believe that the pre-research was extensive: living with families, building model stores, presumably extensive quantitative and qualitative interviews. The specific consumer issues that are said to have contributed to failure are the unfamiliarity of  American shoppers with self-checkout – disliked – and the design/shopping atmosphere – also disliked. A further important issue was the store locations and of course, the worsening economic picture. 

Location is probably difficult to feel confident about in a new retail venture, particularly when the planning is done in very economically optimistic times. But I would have thought the self-checkout feature was so fundamental to the consumer experience that it would be independent of economic conditions. How in the world could anyone miss this in advance? If the concept wasn’t built in centrally to the research it was very poor research design. My guess is that negative findings were ignored, since the business model required self checkout and the decision was already taken. As to the rather chilly design, that too should have come up in the research and could easily have been changed providing the timing allowed it – and if not, why bother to ask? A look around most of US retailing, particularly the downmarket stores, shows that a modern – one could even say European aesthetic (clean and fresh to some, cold and clinical to others) is singularly lacking. All that noisy colour may be tasteless to a designer’s eye, but it’s comfortable and familiar to shoppers.

So my reading is that Tesco didn’t pay enough attention to all that research or it was a very incompetent research programme. Or, perhaps, most likely of all, politics and ego got in the way. The offer, like all new brand offers, was a mix of functional, sensual and emotional benefits, all of which could have been fully explored. It wasn’t as though people were exposed to something they had never experienced. Women are experts in retailing and this was, after all, just another store, not a whole new concept in shopping.

It’s easy to be wise after the fact and I was originally very impressed with the commitment Tesco showed to ostensibly researching this new market in depth. It would be a mistake to dismiss all pre-research on the basis of this example. 

Judie Lannon is the editor of Market Leader, The Marketing Society’s quarterly journal.

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