Harvard Logitech Case Study
What did you find impressive about the way Karcher handled the process? (i.e. the things that would work for your company)
It is clear from the case study that one of the benefits of Karcher’s approach was that it sparked his imagination and motivated him to look for ideas and invent new features for the Presenter. His method gave him a new sense of inclusion in the product development. Listening to the customer gave him an awareness that the engineer’s personal tastes is not necessarily what the customer wants or what will sell. Involving the engineer in market research is a great way to show them what the product looks like from the users perspective.
I was impressed the way Karcher got immersed in the research and how that impacted on his involvement sense of ownership.
Doing the research and hearing what customers had to say would help instil passion for the project, whether it was handled by someone from engineering or marketing. This is true. Putting the customer at the focus can do no harm. It is good to acknowledge that “what they want personally is what marketing will sell”
Prior to this project, marketing and engineering paired together for projects but had little overlap in their roles. They were even geographically disparate with the engineers based in Switzerland and the marketing team in California. Karcher understood the technology from an engineering perspective and it was a novelty to have him interfacing directly with the customer. The advantage of this was that he could translate customer requests directly into product features that would meet those requests. Normally the marketing department represented the voice of the consumer and they got their information through a market research group (or external source). By engineering talking directly to the consumer meant that the number of misconceptions and false impressions was kept to a minimum.
He went to talk to the consumers at their own premises. Buying a presenter is
It is clear from the case study that one of the benefits of Karcher’s approach was that it sparked his imagination and motivated him to look for ideas and invent new features for the Presenter. His method gave him a new sense of inclusion in the product development. Listening to the customer gave him an awareness that the engineer’s personal tastes is not necessarily what the customer wants or what will sell. Involving the engineer in market research is a great way to show them what the product looks like from the users perspective.
I was impressed the way Karcher got immersed in the research and how that impacted on his involvement sense of ownership.
Doing the research and hearing what customers had to say would help instil passion for the project, whether it was handled by someone from engineering or marketing. This is true. Putting the customer at the focus can do no harm. It is good to acknowledge that “what they want personally is what marketing will sell”
Prior to this project, marketing and engineering paired together for projects but had little overlap in their roles. They were even geographically disparate with the engineers based in Switzerland and the marketing team in California. Karcher understood the technology from an engineering perspective and it was a novelty to have him interfacing directly with the customer. The advantage of this was that he could translate customer requests directly into product features that would meet those requests. Normally the marketing department represented the voice of the consumer and they got their information through a market research group (or external source). By engineering talking directly to the consumer meant that the number of misconceptions and false impressions was kept to a minimum.
He went to talk to the consumers at their own premises. Buying a presenter is