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CASE STUDY: How and why to add Laddering to your qualitative research
1. Laddering Up to
New Product Success
A Case Study Using Familiar Tools
to Meet New Challenges
Presented by
Michele Zwillinger, Zwillinger Research
NewMR Qualitative Research Event
March 28, 2012
2. What is Laddering?
= Why?
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3. Key Points
Many research applications
It’s simple – it’s just not easy
Presentation is critical to success
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5. Research Objective
To determine which technology features currently in or being
considered for the development pipeline supported the Infiniti
brand
Infiniti Brand Pillars
Brand
Peace Driving Hospitality
of Mind Pleasure
R&D Infiniti Advanced Feature Adoption Plan
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6. Project Steps
Report
Visual output
Analysis
Data collection
Guide
Screener/Recruit
Proposal
Bid
Discussion with client
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7. Example of Concepts Used:
Around View Monitor
Four independent video images
One overhead image of
vehicle’s parking position
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8. Guide
Describe Automotive Feature
Interested?/No/Why not; Yes/Benefits?
Why is that important to you? (Repeat)
Physical Consequences?
Emotional Consequences?
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10. Laddering Template
Feature Code: AVP – Around View Monitor
Level 1 Perceived Benefit: Video cameras make
blind spots more visible
Level 2 Physical Consequence: Won’t back into/
destroy something
Level 3 Emotional Consequence: Damage to car
car (mine/someone else's) is stressful
Level 4 Core Value: Peace of Mind
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11. Analysis:
Infiniti Feature Core Values
Accomplishment
Emotional Security
Freedom/Independence
Hedonistic Compassion
Peace of Mind
Pleasure
Self-esteem
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12. AVP Partial Spreadsheet
# Perceived Physical Emotional Core Values
Benefits Consequences Consequences
11 Camera more Avoid hitting or Concern about Peace of
accurate than running into other’s safety mind
sensor something Concern about repair
Easier to park costs
13 Video cameras Won’t back into Bad back; hard to Peace of
making blind something turn neck mind
spots more Won’t destroy Damage to car is
visible something stressful
Driving/parking Concerned about
easier/safer harming someone
5 Eliminates blind Relieves pain in No worry Peace of
spot neck No restrictions mind+
Safety, etc. Pleasure-
Be happy
Relaxed
Live life to the fullest
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13. Presentation
• Charted findings (substitute for HVM)
• Graphic superimposed 7 Core Values
over the Infiniti Brand Pillars
• Diagramed how each of the 25
features supported each Pillar
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14. AVP Benefits & Core Values
Core Value Peace of Mind (N=21)
Safety
Less stress
Emotional No injury to kids/people
Consequences Concern about property damage
Concern about monetary loss
Avoid hitting someone or something
Avoid damage to own car or other car
Physical Easier/better parking - Easier/safer backing up
Consequences Fewer accidents
Eliminates blind spots
See someone lurking around car/security in surroundings
Monitor vehicle surroundings/perimeter of car
Exterior cameras show blind spots
Perceived Benefits 360 degree vision
Overhead image
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15. Relationship of
Core Values to
Infiniti Pillars
Hospitality Peace of Mind Driving
Pleasure
Hedonistic Peace of Mind Pleasure
Compassion
Emotional Security Accomplishment
Emotional Security Self-esteem
Self-esteem Freedom/
Independence
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16. Relating Features
to Infiniti Pillars
Hospitality Peace of Mind Driving Pleasure
GLH PSH ROD ASP
PCH MAH SSH IOD
PKH CAH CTH RTD
NTD SOD NOD NTD
CAH CVP HDP GLH
ADH LSH ITD ITD
CTH
AVP COD PCH
AAP COD
PCP NTD
RTD PKH
ADH ASP
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17. Research Application:
Feature Prioritization Process
Step 1: Review of each Feature Summary Ladder from the Research
Step 2: Weighted Evaluation
Breadth of Support of
Core Customer Values
Breadth of Emotional
Consequences
Clarity of Feature’s
Benefit to the
Consumer
Appeal to Respondent Result = Three Tiers
(i.e. like or dislike) of Features Emerged
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18. Impact on Feature Adoption Plan
Research provided to
Nissan Motor Limited on
Infiniti Advanced
Features
Features in development
were evaluated based on
the research results, Features were
competitor assessment, included in Infiniti
feasibility investment, vehicles sold in the
and production costs US
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19. Success!
Popular Mechanics 2008 Breakthrough Award-Around View Monitor
Popular Science 2008 “Best of What’s New”-Around View Monitor
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20. Contact us to continue the dialog:
Michele Zwillinger, PRC
Zwillinger Research
+1-818-906-7562
mz@zrglobal.com
www.zrglobal.com
Editor's Notes
Hello!Thank you for joining me. I’m presenting this case study to share with you the benefits of using laddering when doing qualitative research. I’m Michele Zwillinger from Zwillinger Research. Since 1982 I’ve consulted with Fortune 500 Companies and High Tech Start-ups doing consumer research to help our clients introduce new products, and expand their businesses while increasing their profitability. I am a strong proponent of qualitative research that goes deep into consumer motivation to determine how needs, wants and lifestyle influence behavior.I have been using laddering as an important tool in my qualitative toolbox for over 20 years.
So what is “laddering” anyway? CLICK Very briefly, it comes from psychology and the understanding of human behavior, from Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Values.” In the 1980’s, Jonathan Gutman translated Maslow’s psychologicalwork into a marketplace model called “Means-End Theory.” He is the first person that I know of who used the laddering process in a commercial environment, to guide consumers from product attributes to emotional values relating to themselves and the products and brands they use.There’s no time today to get into the psychological or academic background of laddering research. I’ll just say that applying laddering research tools, as I’ll show later, allows us to do what we’ve been told NEVER to do in qualitative research – that’s right – we’ve all been trained to never ask a respondent “why?” And certainly not to do so repeatedly. Well, if you are doing laddering, you can break that rule; YES, you can ask “Why?” successfully, even repeatedly, to dig deeper into consumer motivation to identify CORE VALUES which is the purpose of using the laddering research technique.
My objective today is to share my enthusiasm about laddering with you and I hope you leave this presentation feeling as I do that: (CLICK)Laddering is not just for brand personality research – I will share one other application with you today – that of new product development – but there are more. (CLICK)Doing laddering is simple – it’s just not easy – it takes time, effort, and creative insights in collecting, analyzing and presenting the data to be successful. And (CLICK)How researchers present laddering RESULTSis critical to the success of the research project and interest in using the laddering methodology again. So, on to our Infiniti Case Study… CLICK
Nissan Advanced Planning & Strategy requested research to help them guide Infiniti engineering and design…for vehicles to be launched within the next 5 years. Today, I’m showing an explanation of what I did. The reality was significantly more complicated and provided a richer data set than I have time to do more than just hint at.CLICK
R&D Product Planning in Japan requested customer feedback on 25 advanced technology features that were in different phases of development.Nissan North America didn’t want to just show some stimuli to find out what American consumers liked, disliked, and why. They specifically requested that I design the Product Development project using laddering as they wanted to add to the learning they had gained from prior identity research they had done for the Infiniti brand. They wanted to go further and understand what their targetcustomers perceived were the benefits and values associated with these automotive features, and to see if there was a link between the features under development and the brand values they had identified for Infiniti in previous laddering research. Those core values, or pillars as they call them are: Peace of Mind, Driving Pleasure and Hospitality. You will see how the new features relate to them in a little while.So, I adapted Gutman’s Means-End Theory and combined it with traditional product development questions to help understand and explore consumer perceptions and language. This hybrid approach enriched the laddering analysis and helped Infiniti prioritize the features for the product adoption plan, ending up in the 2008 Infiniti line.CLICK
The PROCESS for this automotive product development laddering study was simple because it is similar to what we would do for any qualitative research study, but it was not easy as the analysis was complex and very time consuming.The steps are familiar to all of you. We recruited using a formula created by NNA to screen for people with a mindset similar to that of the Infiniti customer.The Guide included the combination of the laddering script plus a few traditional new product concept assessment questions. Data collection consisted of 100 laddering interviews in 8 markets in three weeks. The interviews lasted about an hour each.I analyzed each interview, obtaining a core value or values for each of the 25 features under development.And ended up with a report containing a graphic presentation of the data. ___________Before the interviewing began, however, we had to find a way to translate the engineering concepts into stimuli that would communicate visually, as well as with a written description. All parties to the project, researchers, marketers, and engineers, worked together to come up with that format. CLICK
The interview started with a traditional qualitative warm-up and a description about laddering to make participants comfortable with the probing, the repeated asking of “why,” “why was that important to you?” And why was THAT important…? After the introduction,there were 4 repetitive parts to the Guide.First (CLICK) participants were asked to: Describe each feature in their own words, not just repeat the description read to them. We needed to see if they really did understand the feature;then they were asked: CLICKAre you interested in a car with this feature? If not, why not? (that was to identify red flags) If they were not interested, the respondents wereskipped to another feature and they continued to view additional concepts until they found one that interested them.If they were interested in the feature, they were asked to identify the benefits of the feature? (often from 3-5 probes)Using theirwords, I then asked about each of the perceived benefits:(CLICK) Why is (that benefit) important to you? I chose the benefits to ladder based on what I heard from each respondent. (The descriptive consumer language was important not only for the laddering, but it added value for use in marketing later.) I laddered the importance of several physical consequences CLICK till respondents started speaking in terms of emotional consequences to identify the connection between the feature and its core value …each time probing to find out why the benefit is important to the respondent? (Alternative probes I used were: in what way was that important to you? How did that affect you? Why does that matter to you? But all were basically just variations of “why is that important to you?”) DO NOT CLICK – KEEP READING ON NEXT PAGE
Each participant probably saw 10-20 features; and laddered those they understood and liked, maybe 7-12.I rotated the 25 concepts so that each had an equal chance of being seen and there was no order bias. Those that were laddered by nearly all the respondents were well liked; those that were laddered by very few were confusing and or not liked/not seen as worth pursuing in the current form.There was no time to listen to over 100 hours of taped interviews, so I typed notes into an outline of the guide during the interview. Typing what the respondent said as he or she said it…We did video tape, so I was able to go back and watch the tape if something needed verification or expansion.CLICK Even listening with a researcher’s ears, noting only what I thought might be useful, I ended up with over 2000 pages of notes, carefully piled in 25-30 highlighted and color-coded, rotating stacks, on the conference room table (sort of like what this guy is forlornly looking at in this slide). People asked how I reduced all of that input into something useful for Nissan.I actually started the analysis doing a little each day. After each interview (if time), or after the day’s interviews, I consolidated my notes, and filled out a laddering template for each feature for each respondent. (CLICK)
Again, using AVP as an example, here is what the template for the laddering information from just one respondent looked like. Sometimes the core value was obvious, as it was in this case. IF it wasn’t, I left the bottom line, the core value, blank until I got a sense of the respondent’s thinking process. Sometimes the respondent got to the core value with three probes, sometimes asking why the benefit is important to the respondent took 5 or 6 times to get to the core value. By doing the input on the computer, I ALWAYS had room during the interview to keep probing till the respondent mentioned a core value or something similar to one.The list of CORE VALUES relevant to this research became clear after a number of interviews were done.
There is no universally accepted Core Value list used by marketing researchers as each list must reflect the category, the brand, and the language of the respondents.I created this list (shown in alphabetical order, not order of importance or frequency) to reflect the issues and language relevant to the Infiniti target market as they were laddering these specific 25 automotive features. The list contains 7 core values that were repeated sufficiently often to be useful for the analysis. Most reflect Maslow’s hierarchy; one (Hedonistic Compassion – an inseparable combination of self-esteem and emotional security) was generated specifically for this project and has not shown up in other laddering projects I’ve done, it does however, really reflect the Infiniti target market mindset. To start the analysis, I collected all of the data from the various parts of the interview including the Core Values and dumped it into an Excel spreadsheet; with a separate tab for each of the 25 test features. Each tab included one line per respondent, as shown in the following example. CLICK
This is a part of the spreadsheet for the Around View Monitor. Each sheet included all the responses for every respondent viewing the feature. There was a column for the participant # on the left, followed by one column each for the components of the interview – the feature description or perceived benefits, the physical consequences, the emotional consequences and the core values as you see here.The full charts had a great deal more data than shown in this example, however, including a column for every potentially important attribute – for gender, car type & brand owned, city and other data about the participants so wecould analyze the data by different segments of interest to Nissan.Click
The next few presentation summary slides show how I synthesized the data to present the findings to Nissan.These few summary slides may make it look simple. The actual report was nearly 200 pages, containing the richness that the hybrid methodology of combining laddering and traditional questioning provided. Being able to encapsulate the guts of the project and communicate the laddering maps in a few graphics made it easy for all the stake holders to understand and use the research results.
This is an example of how I compiled the laddering data for all the respondents who viewed this feature in one sheet, showing the path from initial perceived benefits on the bottom to the Core Value on the top. Only the important and most relevant concepts were included in this summary page. More detail was shown in other parts of the report.This partial Around View Monitor summary slide is easy to understand and the format was replicated for each of the 25 features tested. The actual summary charts showed more information than this, including the number of respondents interested in the feature, and the components of additional less dominant ladders also associated with a feature.CLICK
The next step in the presentation process was to match the Core Value information from this study to the Core Values as expressed in the three Infiniti brand pillars of Hospitality, Peace of Mind and Driving Pleasure. Note that some of the core values you saw on the Infiniti Feature Core Values List such as Emotional Security and Self-Esteem linked to more than one Infiniti Brand Pillar that came from the original Infiniti Brand Identity Laddering Research.CLICK
After receiving the report, NNAreviewed the summary ladders and created a weighted scheme to help prioritize the features for the engineering adoption plan.The hybrid laddering technique provided what Nissan was looking for and generated rich information in addition to what came from the laddering component. We took a chance using laddering in a different way (beyond brand identity) and pleased all the stakeholders with the outcome. CLICK
The interviews were done in the U.S. The laddering research was used to evaluate each feature and (CLICK) then, the results were provided to Product Planning in Japan.Along with other internal factors the research results were used to prioritize development. Research was conducted in 2006 and by the 2008 model year (CLICK) the first vehicle designed based on the research was sold in the US.
As an aside,CLICK the feature we showed in this presentation (Around View Monitor) won several awards; and the 2008 Infiniti EX35 earned three spots in Cars.com’s list of The Top New Features of 2007 because of this feature – which was unique at the time.
I realize this was a rushed overview of the Infiniti automotive new product development case study. If you have more questions, my contact information is on this final slide. I look forward to discussing with you using laddering not just for brand identity and new product development research, but for other qualitative research solutions as well.Thank you for your interest in laddering and qualitative research. Feel free to email me at mz@zrglobal.com or call me at the number on your screen. Good-bye and have a great day.ESQ - SAVE
