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The naked truth
By Washington Post Suds dripping down his face, the government worker mumbles in the shower, his eyes shut, his lips in motion. The people in his living room can't hear him. But they see his video image flickering on their black-and-white screen and make a mental note: Who is he talking to? God, it turns out. "I am in my own little world when I shower," the government worker, 52, later reveals. "I meditate. I pray." The social worker keeps turning the taps in her shower. Back and forth, back and forth. Two or three people watch and scribble into notepads: Why is she doing that? "I try to run (the water) on the sore spot," the social worker, 32, later tells her viewers. "I make it as hot as I can and then as cold as I can. I want the heat to get to it." Absorbing every quirk in the shower was a cluster of researchers from QualiData Research Inc. in New York. A growing number of companies regularly watch us use the most prosaic of products: diapers, computers, disposable cameras and, in this case, shower heads. The observations should spark ideas for new or improved merchandise, clever advertising campaigns, better services or all the above. Or so the companies hope. That's why Moen Inc., part of Fortune Brands Inc. (formerly American Brands), embarked on a deep dig into the consumer psyche as it developed a new massaging shower head, the Revolution, which has been in stores since August. "In the '50s it was the sunken living room," said Hy Mariampolski, QualiData's founder. "In the '70s it was the party deck. Now it seems to be the shower that's on the frontier of lifestyle extravagance." Mariampolski, a sociologist by training, is not your traditional market researcher. Neither was the legendary Al Moen. He invented the first single-handle faucet, but he stumbled on the idea by chance. While in college, Moen worked at a repair garage in Seattle to earn tuition money. As he cleaned up one day, a sudden burst of hot water from the two-handle faucet scalded his hands. A flash of genius, a product is born. That was in 1937, though it was a decade before a company bought his technology and brought it to market. Al Moen had no research to go on, just his own intuition and life experience. But these days, companies eager to leapfrog ahead of the competition spend big bucks in search of the life experience that will lead them to the next big thing. Many do it through "observational research." "It's a technique that gives irrevocable cues beyond what people say they want and need into what they really want and need," said Ralph Oliva, a marketing professor at the Smeal College of Business at Penn State. "It can be very telling in certain situations." This is what it told Jack Suvak, Moen's marketing research director: Showering is not just about lather and rinse. "Sometimes the obvious is not always apparent," Suvak said. But does that explain why Moen decided it needed to watch people taking a shower? Well, yes. Because, first, it's hard for people to articulate what they want about an everyday product such as a shower head, Suvak said. But also, for most of its 55-year history, the North Olmsted, Ohio, company has sold mostly faucets and sinks, and only to plumbing supply houses. It started selling shower heads to consumers only about three years ago. "We had to fill in the knowledge gap when it came to consumers," Suvak said. "What we didn't know is what's behind the shower curtain." So Suvak called Mariampolski, whose company has been studying consumer behavior since it opened its doors in 1981. Weeks of discussion between Suvak and Mariampolski boiled down to this: We must observe people in their showers, and we must observe them in the buff. "We realized this would not be something everyone in society would be eager to do," Mariampolski said. "Who, we asked ourselves, would be comfortable enough with their bodies to have us videotape them?" Ultimately, nudists made up a big chunk of the 20 or so volunteers recruited by Mariampolski. Each had to fill a niche, a particular age or body type. In several weeks' time, he rounded up people from their mid-twenties to early sixties. Fat and skinny people. Tall and short people. Males and females of various ethnicities. For about $250 each, they allowed Mariampolski's team into their homes, sometimes for half a day. They answered questions about their lifestyles and allowed the team to scope their houses and count their bathrooms. Then, with the research team planted in another room, the participants undressed and lathered up. Moen had tapped a design firm to build a tiny heat-and-moisture-resistant video camera and mounted it next to the shower head. They saw that most people have only one hand free while they shower. Most close their eyes sporadically. Often bathroom lighting does not penetrate the shower curtain. And because of these constraints, they have the darndest time fumbling around with massage settings. That's why the peanut-shaped Revolution features a control dial below the water stream that allows consumers to constantly adjust the force and pulse of the water while providing what the company called "phenomenal coverage." The center of the shower head spins and wobbles so that each stream of water twists and twirls, hence the name Revolution. Revolution appears to be a hit, selling out in some stores, according to the company. Moen executives say they're not surprised given the detail they've unearthed about consumer preferences and human physiology. From hydrotherapists, they learned that many people can sense a change in temperature of one degree and that showering stimulates the brain. From in-depth interviews, they know that people expect different things from their showers at different times of day: rejuvenation, or relaxation, or exhilaration. Because it has tried to engineer all this knowledge into its shower head, Moen is betting you'll pay up to $66 to buy the Revolution. With about 45 brands of shower head on the market, not including labels specific to certain stores, the average price of a shower head was $19.50 last year. Moen was not interested in the under-$20 category, because it realized that the over-$20 shower heads generated more than half the dollars in the market.
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From the Times Business report
From the AP
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