Johnson Controls Gets It Right

A recent Johnson Controls study of women’s preferences for automobiles was interesting from a customer-centric marketing perspective.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel quoted Renae Pippel, Johnson Controls’ consumer research manager, North America, “For women the vehicle plays so many different roles. It might be the breakfast table when they’re dropping the kids off, and then it might be the commuter vehicle on the way to work, and then it’s a girls’ gossip area because you’re taking your friends out to lunch, and then it goes back to picking the kids up and turns into a homework place or family room. Or it’s an environment for downtime while you’re at soccer practice and can’t commute all the way home.”

Why is this interesting? Two reasons: One, how it illustrates the growing demand for personalization. Two, its focus on the problems women want to solve.

Let’s look at the demand for personalization. How do you figure out what product to make and sell? The customers’ demands are all over the place. The real question is, how can you mass produce a product that most customers will buy? The answer is you can’t.

We buyers want the low cost of mass production, but the personalization of custom manufacturing. The Dell model. The demand for this type of product solution is growing rapidly and expanding into every product category. Manufacturers take note! Customization is the future.

The other aspect of the study that caught my eye was the focus on the problems women want to solve. High marks to the research group and Johnson Controls. Rather than focusing on preferred features, models, or brands, the researchers looked at the real problems women want a car to solve for them. Again, these problems are diverse and personal, but this is the key to what women want in a car.

So as an auto maker, what do you do with this? Invent features you think will do what women want. And then pitch the features. After all they’re in the car sales business not the customer problem solving business. Can’t wait until one of them figures out what business they’re really in.