With all the buzz around service design, customer experiences and the focus on "intangibles" I feel that I sometimes forget that there is still product innovation where new designs of tangible products turn into radical innovations in the respective field. The article "Speedo: Innovation in the Aqua Lab" in BusinessWeek is a nice reminder that innovations in product design are still essential for a sustainable business.

Dozens of records already have been broken by swimmers wearing the new Speedo and TYR suits in competition, leading to some complaints that such models give wearers an unfair advantage or do not comply with guidelines set by FINA, the swimming world governing body, which has already approved both suits. However, at a meeting held over the weekend at the World Championships in Manchester, Britain, to consider the criticisms, FINA confirmed, "All swimsuits approved so far are complying with specifications."

Read the full article here.

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Great news for Switzerland, another global leader in technology (besides Google and IBM) is opening a Research Lab: Nokia (See press release). The research lab will be located in Lausanne and the research program itself is with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich (ETH Zurich).

[The Nokia Research Lab] will focus on helping people benefit from a world where they are connected to each other, to the Internet and also to information from the surrounding physical world. Access to the “Internet of Things” from a mobile device will allow people to collect information from their physical environment, filter it based on their location or preferences and share with their friends or communities.

The initial joint research agenda will focus on pervasive communications:

• Exploring new interaction experiences and technologies utilizing all the human senses;
• Services and applications based on the user’s context, such as location, and personal preferences, e.g., information provided by sensors within a mobile device or in the surrounding world
• Internet services and technologies - enriching the Internet experience on mobile devices.

Personally, I think this is great news because it will will strengthen Switzerland’s position to become a “hotbed of innovation” (See the video from Google Earth CTO Michael Jones on this topic) and will move Switzerland one step closer to become the Silicon Valley of Europe. Discussions about that at “Will a Nokia research center suck up all the Swiss talent?” and here “Europe Is Searching For Its Silicon Valley“.

If you want to know more about the research focus at the new Laboratory, you should watch the embedded video. EPFL has already done a research project for Nokia in 2007 (Project title: Mapping the Digital World) and Francesco Cara, a design strategist at Nokia, has presented some of the results at lift08.

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Sohrab Vossoughi, Founder and President of ZIBA Design, writes in BusinessWeek that "It’s all About About Experience".

Many businesses understand that being "new" or "different" is no longer a differentiator. Countless companies are elbowing their way to the top with designs that are also "feature-rich" or "patent pending." Innovation in product design has lost its meaning and, therefore, its value.

There is still one frontier that remains wide open: experience innovation. This is the only type of business innovation that is not imitable, nor can it be commoditized, because it is born from the specific needs and desires of your customers and is a unique expression of your company’s DNA. Yet the design of an experience is often overlooked in the rush to market.

Read the full article here.

via [Putting People First]

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How is it possible that customers are more loyal after failures of products or services than they have been before? Excellent service recovery is the key and with the right activities, companies can fully utilize the service recovery paradox.

The “service recovery paradox” states that with a highly effective service recovery, a service or product failure offers a chance to achieve higher satisfaction ratings from customers than if the failure had never happened. A little bit less academically, this means that a good recovery can turn angry and frustrated customers into loyal customers. In fact it can create even more goodwill than if things had gone smoothly in the first place.

Nevertheless not all service recovery efforts will lead to increased satisfaction ratings as several studies have already shown. The key is to understand that there are certain situations when it is highly likely that a service recovery will lead to increased customer satisfaction. Services recoveries that are likely to be efficient are obviously those where the service failure is perceived to be not systematic or that the company had little control over it. But even in cases when it was a systematic failure and the company had control over the failure there is benefit for when service recovery activities are put into action to ensure that one can win-back customer’s and the source of failure is eliminated.

The key question is this: Are you aware when your customers encounter service failures? Have you thought about an “emergency plan” that can be put in action whenever your customers encounter a service failure? Or do you plan to take ad-hoc action when customers end their business relationship with you?

Read more about the service recovery paradox in these publications:

VP Magnini et. al., “The service recovery paradox: justifiable theory or smoldering myth?,” Journal of Services Marketing 21, no. 3 (2007): 213-225.

CA de Matos, JL Henrique, und C Alberto Vargas Rossi, “Service Recovery Paradox: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of Service Research 10, no. 1 (2007): 60.

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One of the key success factors for designing new services is not just the world’s best brainstorming technique but even more important are deep consumer insights that look beyond the obvious. Using the right set of methods for market research the task to uncover consumer needs, motivations and behavior becomes very doable. With this knowledge it is usually pretty straightforward to identify new opportunities for service improvement. The Nordic Consumer Policy Research Conference is one stage where consumer insights are presented and - contrary to common practice - the complete proceedings can be downloaded for free on their website at http://www.consumer2007.info/

The consumer insights are structured into the following sections:

1. Ageing
2. Children
3. Competition
4. Culture
5. Technology
6. Finance
7. Design
8. Family
9. Food
10. Housing
11. Inequality
12. Politics
13. Sustainability
14. Innovation

Here are the summaries of a few selected papers that are currently of special interest to me, be sure to have a look since there are a lot more online.

Enjoyment and Concern. The Importance of Food and Eating for Ageing Consumers (Link to PDF)

Sweden, as well as most Western European countries, faces an ever-growing older population. The overall aim of the project has been to contribute to an increased in-depth, knowledge and understanding of consumers’ over 55 years of age, their views, preferences and expectations for food and food consumption. In three separate studies, each lasting a year and each applying qualitative, ethnographic methods, three groups of consumers +55 of special interest have been studied: city centre dwellers (n=29), new Swedes in the city suburb (n=24), and inhabitants in a rural area (n=28). The results demonstrate the importance of food and food consumption in the respondents’ lives. Even so consumers +55 cannot be considered as one group but several. Different values and habits in relation to food have been shaped by a complex interrelation of experiences during earlier periods of their lives and their present situation: social, economical and physical. Healthy food – gourmet food; food as a necessity – food as pleasure; food as a mediator of change – food as a tool for holding on to traditions are only a few of the images resulting from the project.

Broadband Internet Access – Product or Service? (Link to PDF)

There is a mismatch between product providers’ market strategies and consumers’ demands and concerns related to broadband in Norway. Providers of broadband internet access focus heavily on price and technical descriptions, like bandwidth, in their market communication, while consumers have great expectations to time efficiency and content availability. One might suggest that they view the purchase differently, where the consumer consider broadband internet access to be foremost a “service” as opposed to the provider who consider

it a “commodity". This discrepancy causes frustration – probably on both parties. This paper focuses on the consumer side of this issue, and argues that the mismatch can be fruitfully understood in light of two factors: competence and time. Required technological competence can be seen as an important factor related to the domestication of broadband internet access, and as time is scarce in modern households it is subordinated to the moral economy of the households (hence the focus on functionality).

Women dining alone in restaurant rooms (Link to PDF)

The purpose of this project was to discuss women’s single dining by investigating the reception of a woman arriving alone in the evening and ordering a dinner including glasses of wine in upper class restaurants. Methods used: Visits to ten different restaurants in a large city in Sweden. Field observations were done and interviews, i.e. colloquies, were held with both women and men who had experience of single dining in restaurants. The results show, that there is neither any hindrance for a woman to enter an upper class restaurant and dine alone; nor were there any special treatments offered. The colloquies were interesting, women talked with fear of single dining in restaurants, they talked about being exposed and placed in public view as a body of womankind. She and her sisters may need some other kind of concept to feel relaxed when visiting restaurants. What can be done to offer comfort? How can she become a satisfied customer? A new group of customers, women in urban society, needs a new consumer policy, which makes them feel comfortable when dining in modern restaurants.

Read these and other research findings at www.consumer2007.info

Photo courtesy of *Your Guide

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