Assuming what the customer wants via our sixth sense
Jason St.Clair
Our brains ability to think about what other people are thinking is one of our abilities that other animals don’t have. It’s our sixth sense and we tend to rely on this sixth sense greatly. However, our actual confidence in this ability greatly outpaces our actual ability. This tends to get us in trouble in more ways than one.
One of the biggest problems when we start a business is assuming that our sixth sense of knowing what other people want without asking them or actually doing the research to know what they want. Our egos get the best of us, sometimes that costs us greatly. For some big corporations, that can cost them millions, sometimes even billions. For this example, I’m going to use the Pontiac brand. In 2009 GM discontinued the brand because it was extremely unprofitable. GM slapping on the Pontiac Brand on GM cars and selling them for less than Chevy/GM version of the vehicles, therefore taking a loss. Also, GM was in the midst of paying back that significant governmental loan. Pontiac was basically the, “Hated Step Child.” However, before this happened they did in fact try and make waves in the automobile industry, basically making a few vehicles that no one else was really making, on top of that, let’s say a very unique look. This vehicle was the Pontiac Aztec. This vehicle is the worst selling vehicle of all time. “In the first five months of its life, through last December--a year in which the industry sold 17.4 million vehicles--only 11,201 Aztecs were "sold." I wouldn't be surprised if there was some air even in that dismal number. –Forbes.” This vehicle was supposed to be the flagship SUV for the Pontiac brand. It had everything, engineers stated, that this vehicle was one of the most advanced vehicles on the market at the time. So why did this vehicle fail?
The reason why the vehicle failed and cost GM a great amount of money was because they assumed they knew what the customer wanted. Features of features, great head room. “Stylish” Design. What ended up happening was GM created what was basically a Frankenstein vehicle. This thing was a mishmash of ideas all slapped together and they barely flowed with each other. How could’ve GM prevented this disaster from happening? Doing more market research, instead of “knowing” what the customer wants, then spending millions of dollars creating and marketing this idea, they could’ve simply asked what exactly people wanted. It seems that GM has learned its lesson. They just announced that they are cutting back production of many of their cars that they sell and refocusing and fine tuning on their products that their customers want.
The moral of this story is that you cannot assume what someone wants, yes we do have a great sixth sense, but do not over estimate this power. Do your research, focus on what people want, then create that magic. For help on getting this started, reach out to us on the contact form. We can help whether you’re a large company, a small one, or just getting started.
Jason