Description
market research on consumer behaviour of TIVO.
CASE ANALYSIS
•
TiVo was launched in 1999 as a personal video recorder or PVR with a bundle of revolutionary features.
• •
In spite of the revolutionary features which it was providing, it had a slow start. Similar products like Microsoft’s UltimateTV and Replay TV had failed and withdrawn from the market.
•
Various innovations of the product TiVo were introduced in the market like the one bundled with a satellite receiver DirecTV and two tuner systems.
•
The response to such an innovative product, which should have been taken hands on by the customers, had a much subscriber base than was forecasted and only a narrow profile of customers subscribed to it raising questions about the perceived universal appeal of the product.
•
The company generating negative cash flows.
To find out the reasons for such a slow growth, the marketing team at TiVo headed by Brodie Keast tried to find out answer to some of the questions that were posed by the situation namely,
• •
nature of TiVo’s appeal for potential and existing customers and how to encourage advertisers, TV networks, service operators and content owners to increase the awareness of TiVo among television consumers and show them its relevance
•
how to utilise the deep emotional response to bridge the gap between what customers understood and what they acted upon, because although the
awareness, product understanding and intention to purchase was increasing, the growth was still too slow.
To answer the above questions, the following steps were taken: 1. Customer emails and published opinions had been analysed 2. Weekly meetings were held to introspect customer experience 3. In-home user observations had been carried out 4. To crystallise the insights from the above, a set of large-scale consumer surveys had been designed. 5. The findings had been implemented in all aspects, from pricing to commercials and advertising.
To deduce insightful conclusions from the key available findings and decide the further course of research, Keast turned to the TiVo’s User Experience Group which used to run bi-annual consumer surveys to study consumer behaviour, since the inception of TiVo. • • • It monitored product satisfaction It came up with guidelines for improvements Various matters that were covered included buying experience, installation process, usability of technology, and day-to- day experience with the service.
SURVEY FOR SATISFACTION AND DEMOGRAPHY
The survey of March 2001 focussed on the users of the TiVo DirecTV combo. The survey uncovered the following findings regarding the consumer behaviour: • • 90.1% customers were satisfied and 96.4% would recommend it Features of the TiVo like the Trick Play and status bar were easy to use and the most preferred features • A study of the demographics revealed that 78% of its subscribers were between 25-54 years of age. • The subscribers were affluent people consisting of primarily, the professionals and upper management occupations.
ATTITUDE SURVEY
Another survey namely the Attitude survey was crafted in March 2001 to gather information about TiVo’s impact on people’s lives. The survey was send to 6400 customers through an email and it was ensured that subscribers of all duration but using TiVo for more than 2 months were represented. The key findings of the survey were: • • • • • 69% said that they watched more TV with TiVo 89.6% admitted that they surfed channels less frequently 70% of the content they watched was recorded, only 30% was live. 82.6 % said that they enjoyed TV more with TiVo 96% said it would be difficult for them to adjust life without TiVo.
THE “LOGS”
TiVo units collected diagnostic data as well as “personal viewing information log” which tracked every click of the remote control as well as the time index related with each click. This data was anonymized before being sent to TiVo headquarters. These data gave snapshots of the habits of the entire household and hence added nuances to the survey results. Studying the data for some most popular events like Superbowl also helped study the viewing habits of TiVo viewers as well as the popularity of a particular winning goal which was the most replayed action during the game.
CONCLUSION
The use of technology for surveying helped TiVo to provide networks and advertisers with tangible results related to the consumer behaviour during popular events like Superbowl. Due to such an approach adopted at TiVo, it was able to survive the slow growing industry inspite of the failures of giants like Microsoft and the others.
doc_268406726.doc
market research on consumer behaviour of TIVO.
CASE ANALYSIS
•
TiVo was launched in 1999 as a personal video recorder or PVR with a bundle of revolutionary features.
• •
In spite of the revolutionary features which it was providing, it had a slow start. Similar products like Microsoft’s UltimateTV and Replay TV had failed and withdrawn from the market.
•
Various innovations of the product TiVo were introduced in the market like the one bundled with a satellite receiver DirecTV and two tuner systems.
•
The response to such an innovative product, which should have been taken hands on by the customers, had a much subscriber base than was forecasted and only a narrow profile of customers subscribed to it raising questions about the perceived universal appeal of the product.
•
The company generating negative cash flows.
To find out the reasons for such a slow growth, the marketing team at TiVo headed by Brodie Keast tried to find out answer to some of the questions that were posed by the situation namely,
• •
nature of TiVo’s appeal for potential and existing customers and how to encourage advertisers, TV networks, service operators and content owners to increase the awareness of TiVo among television consumers and show them its relevance
•
how to utilise the deep emotional response to bridge the gap between what customers understood and what they acted upon, because although the
awareness, product understanding and intention to purchase was increasing, the growth was still too slow.
To answer the above questions, the following steps were taken: 1. Customer emails and published opinions had been analysed 2. Weekly meetings were held to introspect customer experience 3. In-home user observations had been carried out 4. To crystallise the insights from the above, a set of large-scale consumer surveys had been designed. 5. The findings had been implemented in all aspects, from pricing to commercials and advertising.
To deduce insightful conclusions from the key available findings and decide the further course of research, Keast turned to the TiVo’s User Experience Group which used to run bi-annual consumer surveys to study consumer behaviour, since the inception of TiVo. • • • It monitored product satisfaction It came up with guidelines for improvements Various matters that were covered included buying experience, installation process, usability of technology, and day-to- day experience with the service.
SURVEY FOR SATISFACTION AND DEMOGRAPHY
The survey of March 2001 focussed on the users of the TiVo DirecTV combo. The survey uncovered the following findings regarding the consumer behaviour: • • 90.1% customers were satisfied and 96.4% would recommend it Features of the TiVo like the Trick Play and status bar were easy to use and the most preferred features • A study of the demographics revealed that 78% of its subscribers were between 25-54 years of age. • The subscribers were affluent people consisting of primarily, the professionals and upper management occupations.
ATTITUDE SURVEY
Another survey namely the Attitude survey was crafted in March 2001 to gather information about TiVo’s impact on people’s lives. The survey was send to 6400 customers through an email and it was ensured that subscribers of all duration but using TiVo for more than 2 months were represented. The key findings of the survey were: • • • • • 69% said that they watched more TV with TiVo 89.6% admitted that they surfed channels less frequently 70% of the content they watched was recorded, only 30% was live. 82.6 % said that they enjoyed TV more with TiVo 96% said it would be difficult for them to adjust life without TiVo.
THE “LOGS”
TiVo units collected diagnostic data as well as “personal viewing information log” which tracked every click of the remote control as well as the time index related with each click. This data was anonymized before being sent to TiVo headquarters. These data gave snapshots of the habits of the entire household and hence added nuances to the survey results. Studying the data for some most popular events like Superbowl also helped study the viewing habits of TiVo viewers as well as the popularity of a particular winning goal which was the most replayed action during the game.
CONCLUSION
The use of technology for surveying helped TiVo to provide networks and advertisers with tangible results related to the consumer behaviour during popular events like Superbowl. Due to such an approach adopted at TiVo, it was able to survive the slow growing industry inspite of the failures of giants like Microsoft and the others.
doc_268406726.doc