[Case Study] How product feature priorization increased client market share and profitability

The ask

Our client, one of the largest Home Appliances companies in the world, had been fighting for market leadership in Freestanding Ranges in a large country in Latin America. A tough competitive landscape was shrinking margins and compromising their market share position, and they were about to launch a product to change this scenario. 

There was a lot of expectation and time pressure around this new launch, and the Product Management team needed to finalize next-generation platform requirements and pricing. Their main concern: they weren’t confident about whether they really knew which product features would really make a difference in purchasing consideration, satisfaction, and positive word of mouth.

Their main request was to utilize Birdie’s system of intelligence to quickly capture and analyze the competitive landscape, with breakdowns by different demographics and price tiers, to answer questions like:

• What were the key product functions and ascribed attributes for purchase decisions in the category?
• What did consumers like and dislike about the leading brands?
• Which purchase, usage, and service elements drove satisfaction?
• What were the opportunities and gaps in the market to be addressed by a new product launch?

The solution

Birdie’s dashboard was set up to analyze consumer comments from multiple sources, processing thousands of data points to quickly identify the main product attributes, contexts of use, expectations, and complaints from consumers in different cohorts and price tiers – all in less than 20 days. 

“The platform uncovered several untapped contexts of use (how, when, and for what consumers used the products), categorized relevant product and usage attributes, and most importantly, weighted what each of these consumer groups really valued and looked for.”

The dynamic and easy-to-use interface of the platform highlighted trending attributes and purchase drivers, assets & liabilities of each brand, and the impact of each aspect on client satisfaction. 

That allowed our client to get a faster and broader understanding of the category competitive landscape to estimate which actions and features would have higher results.

The results

As one key finding, our client’s Product team discovered that a feature that they had decided to invest in as a key differentiating factor for that product launch wasn’t as valued by consumers as mentioned in recent surveys. 

In fact, with COVID-19, consumers’ habits had already changed and they were looking for a totally different value proposition than the one that they had in mind – practical, easy to clean products. 

“This insight made them change their product and communications strategy, investing in a more affordable (and valued) feature that allowed them to save around 7 dollars per unit produced.”

Some other key results:

• Strategic decision of shifting the investment from a performance feature to a usability feature that was 76% cheaper;
• 50% faster insights turnaround time; 
• US$3.7M in estimated cost savings/year;
• Clear value proposition statement per consumer group;
• Additional revenue and market share under analysis.