Project Description

“Delivering insights to aid both innovation and market activation across the core markets for oral care”

THE CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH

A world leading oral-care technology company asked UniqueView to help them to discover the unmet needs, consumer types, trends and information source channels for both consumers and dentists in China specifically in regard to teeth whitening products and services. The goal was to deliver a cross-category (rechargeable toothbrush and adjacencies) consumer targeting tool that provides actionable insight to drive strategic decision making and deliver insight to feed into both innovation and market activation across the core markets for oral care. We set up a series of methodologies to meet these objectives.

OVERVIEW

A four-phase Exploratory Protocol was used for this study.

PHASE 1 & 2 – Consumer Online Community & Dentist Phone Depth Interviews

First phases were to help evaluate the segmentation through an online community with consumers and in-depth phone interviews with experienced dental physicians on a number of criteria, including statistical and commercial, and to richly define the core segments that will generate value for the client.

Through these 2 phases, people were categorized into 7 types, which were

  • Trailblazer: high achievers, confident and very sociable, and consequently set high store on their appearance
  • Protector: secure in themselves and their decisions, contented & financially comfortable, but not particularly tech savvy
  • Easy-lifer: laid back and happy with things as they are – they don’t seek change for change’s sake
  • Aspirer: energetic, optimistic and confident. Quite tech focused and comfortable financially
  • Carer: careful, disciplined people for whom a healthy, balanced lifestyle and good Oral health is important & worth spending time on
  • Conformist: Conformists are self-conscious and very aware of social pressures, but lack confidence
  • Traditionalist: older consumers who are content with the status quo. They’re happy in their own skin, and don’t look to the opinions of others for their self-worth

PHASE 3: Dental Visits

6 dental surgeries were visited in Shanghai to help deeper our understanding of consumers needs and behaviors particularly in relation to tooth whitening. The visits were also useful in exploring trends that patients were looking for in regard to tooth whitening and seeing what dentists are offering  and understanding the pros and cons of the current solutions. The visits also helped give our non-Chinese client observers a feel for how dentist surgeries are in China.

PHASE 4: Consumer In-home Interviews

In-home interviews are particularly suitable for this project, particularly after we had gathered the segmentation information as it allowed us to explore more deeply comsumers, from different segments, daily oral healthcare procedures as well as giving us an opportunity to see what they had purchased for their oral healthcare needs with the goal to provide further insights into differences between category sub-segments.

CONCLUSION

The research findings provided our client with a comprehension of Chinese consumers’ needs, expectations and purchasing habits regarding their oral healthcare routines. The key findings of the study helped them understand more clearly:

  • what their target consumers needs were in regard to oral healthcare
  • what factors increase the appeal and credibility of brands and products
  • how respondents research about whitening solutions and which channels they primarily use for the research 
  • which segmentation(s) are best target group for at-home whitening.
  • the factors most highly correlated with manual toothbrush to rechargeable toothbrush conversion.