Research Background

A worldwide refrigerator compressor company want to innovate and dive more into clients’ side to help with the following aspects:

  1. Identify ways to produce market differentiation against competitors
  2. Identify consumer needs for future development
  3. Identify business partner needs for market differentiation

And they set goals to be achieved for each type of respondents:

Stage 1 – Qualitative

  • For End-users:
    • Overall appealing factors
    • Unique benefits offering
    • Advantages over current product and available offerings
    • Importance of benefits communicated and needs resolved
    • Premium can be paid to this benefits
  • For OEMs:
  • Overall appealing factors Differentiation
Unique benefits offering
  • Barriers to adoption
  • Impact on their current production line
  • Potential future for commercialization
  • For Retailers:
    • Overall appealing factors
    • Competitive advantage
    • Unique benefits offering
    • Impact on their current product offerings
    • Benefits communicating and potential acceptance from consumers

Stage 2 – Quantitative

  • Check consumers’ sensitiveness to price of each added-value feature

Research Methodology

Stage 1 – Qualitative

  • End-users: 24 (2.5 hours) ethnography interviews (in home + accompanied shopping)
  • OEMs: 4 (1 hour) phone interviews
  • Retailers: 6 (2 hours) IDI

Stage 2 – Quantitative

  • 1,600 online surveys

Overview:

  • For End-users:
    • Overall appealing factors Unique benefits offering
    • Advantages over current product and available offerings
    • Importance of benefits communicated and needs resolved
    • Premium can be paid to this benefits
  • For OEMs:
    • Overall appealing factors Differentiation
Unique benefits offering
    • Barriers to adoption
    • Impact on their current production line
    • Potential future for commercialization
  • For Retailers:
    • Overall appealing factors
    • Competitive advantage
    • Unique benefits offering
    • Impact on their current product offerings
    • Benefits communicating and potential acceptance from consumers
  • Stage 2 – Quantitative
    • Check consumers’ sensitiveness to price of each added-value feature

City Coverage

  • Shanghai, Beijing and Chengdu

Target Audience

  • End-users:
    • Male and female
    • 25-59 years’ old
    • Working in refrigerator retailing sector
    • Personally responsible for refrigerator sales and marketing
    • Have been working in current position for over one year
    • Have been working in the industry relating to refrigerator for over 5 years
  • OEMs:
    • From client’s list
  • Retailers:
    • Male and female
    • Not working in relevant and sensitive industries
    • 25-59 years’ old
    • A good mix of household composition and working condition
    • Purchased a brand new refrigerator in the past 12 months
    • Have purchased specific types of refrigerator, including Side by side, French Door, Top Mount, and Bottom Mount
    • Key decision maker or joint decision maker when purchasing
    • Don’t put price/cost as the top consideration when purchasing
    • Key user or joint use of refrigerator at daily life
    • Middle to high household income (Above 8,000 RMB in Chengdu, and above RMB 15,000 in Shanghai and Beijing)
    • All to be open to new ideas, particularly creative and articulate

Deliverables

The deliverables for this project include the following:

Qualitative Research:

  • English recordings of interviews from end-users, OEMs and retailers
  • Full report

Quantitative Research:

  • Online survey data input
  • Full report

Research Results

In qualitative stage, the research helped our client understand their potential customer’s perspectives on:

  • Refrigerator usage
  • Purchasing considerations and motivations
  • Purchasing behaviors
  • General price considerations
  • Would consumers pay a premium for value-adding features?
  • Value propositions & applications per type of refrigerator

In quantitative stage, the research tested new technical features and helped our client:

  • Define end-users’ needs & current users’ problems
  • Find out which combination of features would be best for consumers, including noise, food life, freezer burn, energy efficiency, multi-temperature compartments
  • Identify differentiation criteria to hedge against competition