How to enter the premium grill segment: Customer pains provide the clue
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Vendbridge Case Study: Outdoorchef, DKB Household AG // 2015-16 CLIENT: DKB HOUSEHOLD AG, SWITZERLAND; BRAND: OUTDOORCHEF How to enter the premium grill segment: Customer pains provide the clue How do we enter a new segment? What is most relevant for premium grill users? We have plenty of ideas in the pipeline – but are we betting on the right things? How do we achieve true innovations rather than incremental improvements? These were our client’s questions. The answers lay in understanding users’ perspective. The Challenge The Insights OUTDOORCHEF, a DKB Household brand, is a leading Besides a large spectrum of insights, three pain areas with manufacturer and seller of premium grills. Over 25 years major customer pain points were identified: ago, the company became famous for its invention 1. With the growing diversity of tastes and of items put of the gas kettle barbecue, which made barbecuing more on the grill. a one-temperature solution does not work versatile, healthier, and safer. Since then, its innovations anymore. Meat lovers, fish fans and vegetarians all have been driven by its engineers, who came up with new want their food at the same time, without any product feature variations every year. compromise to the end result. Meanwhile, the competition – most notably, Weber – was 2. As cooking has become a lifestyle issue and catching up and it was clearly time to change gears. consumers’ lives are shifting outdoors, the design of a OUTDOORCHEF decided to take a new approach: start grill has come to matter much more now than it did 10 by building a deep understanding of consumers, then years ago. have end-user needs and pains drive innovations. The 3. Gas involves an inherent safety issue, in particular goal was to develop a new grill generation at a premium with children around – and the fact that gas grill price. Using the Customer-Focused Innovation (CFI) accidents are extremely rare does not ease people’s approach, the company managed to achieve a quantum worries. These three pain points were highlighted in leap in customer and user understanding. the briefs to R&D. 1 Vendbridge AG
Vendbridge Case Study: Outdoorchef, DKB Household AG // 2015-16
«Our innovations in 2016 are all based on the results of the CFI project. We
compare each new product feature to those results, and check whether it is
really customer-relevant»
André Franz, Head of Marketing and Sales, OUTDOORCHEF
Some insights and results from the OUTDOORCHEF case
Peace of mind at last
The strongest pain point identified was a vague but ever-present fear of a potential gas
explosion. The R&D team was initially hesitant to tackle this safety issue. However, as the results
of the CFI project were so persuasive, a two-fold solution was developed: The new SLS Safety
Light System indicates proper functioning of the gas grill; the ignition has been made child-safe.
Some like it hot — some lukewarm
Although people love having a simple BBQ, expectations to its quality are rising in the premium
segment – so it is essential to provide the right heat for each food to be grilled. OUTDOORCHEF
therefore developed a new line: the DUALCHEF. It includes the new DGS TM Dual Gourmet
System, which allows to grill foods at different temperatures side by side: from as low as 80°C to a
maximum of 380°C.
Steak for you, fish for me
When you have a barbecue for several people, you want to serve all guests at the same time – no
matter whether they are steak or fish lovers. Now if you put different foods on the same grill at the
same time there is a risk their tastes will affect each other. This pain point was particularly strong,
so the company put enormous effort into product development to resolve it. The result is the new
DGS TM ZONE DIVIDER (patent pending), which keeps different dishes separate and prevents
their tastes from mixing.
Less gas, less energy
Nobody likes to carry gas bottles – and everyone knows how annoying it can be when they you
run out of gas in the middle of a barbecue dinner. Most back burners in the market are very
inefficient and consume lots of gas. This pain point became the topic of a specific brief to R&D.
Eventually, they came up with the new DGS TM HEAT DIFFUSER (patent pending): not only does
it reduce gas consumption – it also eliminates the traditional back burner system.
In the design, details count
A grill is not simply a grill these days, a mere appliance sitting in the corner. It is more of an
outdoor furniture, which people like to place in clear view on their terrace. The bad news: As CFI
results showed, most of the designs don’t go down well with consumers, as they lack top-of-the-
line materials, a high-quality build, a love for detail, and top-notch looks. Realizing this,
OUTDOORCHEF introduced the D-Line in a completely new, European high-end design.
Women are from Venus, men are from Mars
The gender-specific CFI Value Maps revealed that men and women “live in two different worlds:”
While they usually make the buying decision for a grill jointly, women tend to want much more
information up front. Realizing this, OUTDOORCHEF provided most POS with communication tools
focused around FAQs.
Charcoal grill or gas grill? That is the question
Exploring the user perspective revealed a huge difference in pain points between charcoal and
gas grill users – an insight that also enhanced our understanding of the competitive landscape.
With OUTDOORCHEF being known for gas grills and the main competitor for charcoal grills, the
insights gained provide the basis for a new strategy: By contrasting the downsides of charcoal
grills with the upsides of gas grills, the strategy aims to get customers to switch.
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Vendbridge Case Study: Outdoorchef, DKB Household AG // 2015-16
«You are the only ones at this fair who present something truly innovative for
the BBQ market: the DUALCHEF»
Retail specialist’s comment at the world’s largest BBQ and grading fair, the SPOGA (2016)
The CFI Approach minimized and cross-functional alignment was easier.
Country: Germany Spin:
Research scope: People who like to barbecue (= total To «spin» the results into most relevant innovation ideas
market), broken down by gender, type of grill (gas or and market concepts, a series of workshops followed to
charcoal), and price segment. make sure clients understood the results and would
embed them in the organization, as well as to revise sales
User discovery:
narratives and sharpen the market communication.
A deep and broad survey was conducted, based on a
Specific R&D and agency briefings were developed
mix of one-on-one interviews and mini focus groups and
based on the pain points discovered.
using the jobs-to-be-done logic. The «job to be done»
was determined simply as «having a BBQ» – starting with
The Outcome
the actual idea of having the BBQ (with or without guests)
all the way to cleaning the grill. To gain new insights, ‣ A new, innovative barbecue grill line, the DUALCHEF –
separating male from female respondents turned out to successfully launched on the market and received
be very helpful. We also made sure to include a mix of very well by specialized retailers
different grill types. In the process, we identified over 200 ‣ Access to a new customer base, as the client
user expectation metrics and selected 95 for validation. managed to enter the top price segment: Average
The second part of the discovery focused on gaining an RSP for gas BBQ is € 500-750, DUALCHEF is priced €
unbiased, validated user point of view, emphasizing the 1200 - 2’200
areas and single expectations where both relevance and ‣ Two pending product patents, underlining the client’s
dissatisfaction were particularly high. Putting all rated innovative power
expectation metrics in relation and mapping the results in ‣ Uplift of the brand OUTDOORCHEF in various
a CFI Customer Value Map provided clear guidance on dimensions through high-end looks, price, and
where specific action was needed that would be product performance
appreciated by current and future customers. As the
‣ Marked improvement in the organization’s consumer
discovery phase was driven by user input only, internal
orientation
preconceptions in customer understanding were
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Vendbridge Case Study: Outdoorchef, DKB Household AG // 2015-16
The jobs-to-be-done logic
«Customers don’t want a quarter-inch drill,
they want a quarter-inch hole »
T. Levitt
While psychology has defined what a user need is, and created all sorts of models to explain human behavior,
business has not. Therefore companies tend to focus on the wrong things when trying to innovate. The focus primarily
on products and technology, or market dynamics and customer behavior – and fail to consider what customers really
want and why they want it. Jobs-to-be-done is a logic to understand user needs for business purposes. Approaching
user problems from the jobs-to-be-done perspective can help to identify user needs.
About DKB Household / DKSH About Vendbridge
DKB Household is a subsidiary of the publicly traded Vendbridge supports companies to turn growth
Diethelm Keller Group, a globally operating Swiss initiatives into market success. As the leading
holding company managed by the fourth generation of customer insight expert, we frame the business
its founding family. DKB Household specializes in the strategy from the customer perspective, identify
what customers really want and spin the growth idea
development and management of brands focusing on
towards the discovered opportunities.
home living. The portfolio of house brands includes
Zyliss, Cole & Mason, Outdoorchef, and Culinare,
We call this Customer-Focused Innovation (CFI). A
as well as brands that are managed under licenses,
proprietary method co-developed with our clients
such as Jamie Oliver and Ken Hom. DKB Household is
and proven in more than 100 projects.
a market leader in the design, development, and
distribution of household and kitchen products. The
company’s prodcuts are sold in more than 60
Contact:
countries.
Beat Walther (beat.walther@vendbridge.com)
‣ DKB Household was established in 2005 Yann Wermuth (yann.wermuth@vendbridge.com)
‣ DKSH origins dates back in the 1860s
‣ DKSH operates 780 business locations with 30’000 www.vendbridge.com
employees in 36 countries worldwide
‣ Generated revenues were 10.5 billion in 2016
More information:
www.dksh.com
www.dkbrands.com
4 Vendbridge AG
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