K&A Café Monopol®: A new research approach for developing new product or performance ideas
The competitive pressure increases in all markets. New offers/products/concepts are good chances in this competition. Critical for companies is the ability to push new developments faster and getting an intuition how the target group will react to the planned offer and what could be the triggers and barriers for the acceptance.
Even today many firms deal with these projects incrementally – the concept will develop till a certain stage, then it goes to research and not until the results exist the developing process starts for further improvement – till the next research break. This process is temporally not very efficient.
In principle innovations all types will be successful in the market, if they either satisfy unfulfilled needs of the consumer or satisfy the needs better than existing product offers (requirement price!).
At the beginning of the idea development it is therefore necessary to detect the current needs of the target group regarding the selected topic and to be aware of the current problems within the topic respectively.
If these facts are known, a benefit solution can be analyse for developing a special product idea.
=> Prozess-Grafik
Overall we can always assert that consumer`s creativity is often far from our expectation. If the needs of the target groups are known, it is advisable to ask experts for a problem solution: At the Café Monopol within a mixed talk with consumers! Unlike the common Concept Lab an interaction occur between experts and target group and not a “zoo”-situation.
Open exchanges and effective control of the process are the primary aims of the Café Monopol. This method brings target groups and experts in a meeting together to achieve a goal-orientated and direct exchange: The experts of the companies (marketing, research, development, sale and so on), their service provider (consultants, advertising agency and public relation and so on) as well as the user.
This method is especially qualified for innovations projects, concept-developments (advertising, positioning, deisgn, promotion and so on), but also for the timing of the organisation of a project (workflow management, team building and so on).
The implementation consists of four steps:
- Little panel of experts for preparation,
- Actual Café Monopol,
- Pure panel of experts for rework the results
- Documentation of the results
(The name ’Café Monopol®’is originate from the brandmonopol®-concept. The concept based on the philosophy that brands are especial successful at the time when they dominate successfully a market, a sub-segment or a niche.)