Client Challenge
Changing buying patterns among lower middle class Americans worried the Chief Innovation Officer of a multi-billion dollar consumer products company. Marketing and Sales were concerned that the highly respected product development team, renowned for producing premium performance, was not prepared to respond quickly enough to produce lower unit cost products while maintaining the spirit of the brand portfolio.
Amritt-Client Process
Working with the head of open innovation, Amritt investigated the market ecosystem for frugal innovation and supply in India and China. We brought back a bouquet of 11 ideas that could potentially ignite short and medium term product development and create improved margins for the client. We followed up by taking a client team on a guided trip to India; together we visited homes, stores, distributors, and product designers to enable a first-hand appreciation of the new product development process in a country with a large middle class with a much smaller wallet size.
Impact
Two of the 11 ideas, could be implemented in the U.S. market with minimal engineering effort and an immediate impact of profit margins. One idea was considered too radical for Western markets but was picked by the client’s emerging markets team and by changing the product packaging and configuration, sales of the product in 7 emerging countries spiked by over 14 percent.
