How P&G Focuses on Consumer Insights
Just came across an article in Money with AG Lafley and Ram Charan’s discussing a new book The Game Changer and his management of P&G. I must’ve missed this article as it’s from way back in March.
I haven’t read the book just yet, but there were a few things in the article that I loved.
First one of the things Lafley said he asked of his managers and company to focus on once he took over as CEO:
1. We put the consumer at the center of everything we do. Three billion times a day P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world. Our goal is to delight consumers at two “moments of truth”: first, when they buy a product, and second, when they use it. To achieve that, we live with our consumers and try to see the world and opportunities for new products through their eyes. At P&G the CEO is not the boss - the consumer is. In ways large and small, we were not living up to the “consumer is boss” standard - and we were paying for that lapse.
Next two short excerpts Money published from the book:
Recognizing that it needed to look at consumers more broadly, P&G has moved away from traditional behind-the-mirror focus groups to more immersive research techniques, increasing its spending on such research more than fivefold since 2000. How does it do this? Among other things, thousands of infants and toddlers crawl through the Baby Discovery Center every year as P&G researchers watch how infants interact with their mothers, how they move, how their diapers work. There are also specially designed innovation labs. One looks like a grocery store, another a drugstore, and another the different rooms in a typical middle-class American home. Consumers might be asked to come in and be given $100 to spend. By watching how they navigate the aisles and what catches their eye, the company is able to unlock deeper insights into their behavior. The Feminine Care unit once even created a club for teenage girls to get them to relax and talk about menstruation.
VALUE, NOT PRICE
Particularly when innovating for lower-income markets, it is important to think about value, not price. Lower-income consumers are price sensitive, of course, but they will pay for products if they deliver a benefit they consider worth the money.
