Cooking up success: Developing propositions for a smart kitchen

The Challenge

Our client, a leading domestic appliance manufacturer, wanted to understand how to develop and communicate propositions for smart kitchen appliances in a way that would resonate with consumers across four key markets. The aim was to encourage consideration of connected appliances at the point of renewal and overcome barriers to consideration.

Our Approach

To address the business challenge we used a staged process, which began with full client organisational involvement. This was important because we felt various groups such as design, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and finance held deep knowledge into the category. This ensured that any further proposition development would be aligned within the business. A KO stage brought together all the key stakeholders from across the business to review the propositions, and ensure that everyone was aligned on their meaning and intention. This allowed us to refine the proposition before taking them to consumer testing.

The second involved a series of consumer focus groups with key decision makers for new domestic appliances in four key markets. These groups helped were designed to test reactions to the propositions, understand any cultural differences by market, and refine them prior to quantitative testing.

A third session with the key stakeholders was then conducted to workshop the results and agree on the final approach and format for the new propositions and to select best execution of the communications campaign before taking them into a quantitative test in the four markets.

The Outcome

The research provided clear direction on how to develop and communicate propositions for smart kitchen appliances in a way that would resonate with consumers across the four key markets. Key insights included understanding of current awareness of smart devices in the kitchen, the cost of acquisition and trade-off against benefits and new complexities, interoperability with other devices and future proofing, and privacy and security. This helped our client to lay the foundations for the development and positioning of upcoming smart kitchen campaigns, resulting in increased consideration and sales of their smart appliances.