Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e- Improving Decisions
with Marketing
Information
Text © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2002235see exactly what products have sold each day and how much money each depart-
ment in each store has earned. But the scanner also has wider applications for
marketing research.
Information Resources, Inc. (www.infores.com), and ACNielsen (acnielsen.com)
use consumer panels—a group of consumers who provide information on a
continuing basis. Whenever a panel member shops for groceries, he or she gives an
ID number to the clerk, who keys in the number. Then the scanner records every
purchase—including brands, sizes, prices, and any coupons used. In a variation of
this approach, consumers use a hand-held scanner to record purchases once they get
home. For a fee, clients can evaluate actual customer purchase patterns and answer235 Chapter 20
Whirlpool Heats Up Sales with Marketing ResearchMarketing managers at Whirlpool want to satisfy
customers. So they do a lot of research to find out
how satisfied customers really are. For example,
Whirlpool participates in a survey that results in the
American Satisfaction Index. This survey of 50,000
consumers allows Whirlpool to benchmark what cus-
tomers think about its quality with ratings for other
firms, including competitors. The ratings published in
2000, for example, put Whirlpool among the top com-
panies studied, and its rating was up 2 points from
the year before. But the research doesn’t stop there.
Each year Whirlpool sends an appliance satisfaction
survey to 180,000 households. Respondents rate all
of their appliances on dozens of dimensions. When a
competing product scores higher, Whirlpool engi-
neers take it apart to see why and build the best
ideas into their new models. However, they don’t just
wait for competitors to figure things out first.
A recently introduced oven, now one of Whirlpool’s
hottest sellers, illustrates their approach. A survey
showed that consumers wanted an oven with easy-
to-clean controls. That didn’t seem consistent withprevious sales patterns; the firm’s MIS showed that
models with knobs consistently outsold models with
easier-to-clean push buttons. Rather than disregard
the survey, Whirlpool designed a range with touch pad
controls by listening to consumers at every step along
the way. Consumers who played with computer simu-
lations of the touch pad explained what they liked and
didn’t like. Videotapes of consumers who tried proto-
type models in mall intercept interviews provided
ideas to further refine the design. The result is a touch
pad control that is easy to clean and so easy to use
that consumers don’t even need to read the manual.
Consumer research has been an even more impor-
tant factor in Whirlpool’s growth overseas. For
example, until recently only about one-third of Euro-
pean households had a microwave oven. Whirlpool
researchers learned that more people would buy a
microwave oven if it could crisp food as it heated the
food. Whirlpool designed a microwave with a broiler
coil and other innovations. The result is an oven that
is popular in Britain for frying bacon and eggs and in
Italy for crisping pizza crusts.^15http://www.
mhhe.
com/
fourps
Data from electronic scanners helps retailers decide what brands they will sell and helps their suppliers plan so that products arrive at the
store in time to prevent stock-outs.