By Thu Trang Võ
Clock Exercise: Realising what is real value for customers
This article is reserved for my most inspiring teacher: Mr Patrice Bonneau. I first met him in Marketing of Innovation course. With years of working experiences as a consultant of innovative marketing, Patrice has typical characteristics of marketer: Creative, optimistic, talkative, social and outgoing. Although his way of describing things is quite difficult to understand literally, I succeeded in changing my mind towards creativity and applying his method – Semantic Analysis into our project KIDCOM.
We experienced this exercise at our first lesson, in which we imagined that we were Clock Manufacturer. We were ordering R&D to design a new model of clock. Patrick showed us 20 different models of clock and then asked us to choose the most appropriate one for the launching event. Each model appeared in just 3-5 seconds and we had to make decisions immediately!
By Patrice’s facilitating and guiding, we identified 4 main criteria to assess the model: Readable, Precision, Reliable, Fashionable. After that, each of us voted for our choice. Finally, Patrick summed up the results as the table.
Next, he asked us if we were customers, how much we were willing to pay for our chosen model of clock. He showed us the real price later.
Here we discovered the difference between the eyes of an engineer and the eyes of a customer. Engineers focus more on functions, features, quality of the clock while customers choose the clock that they like – base on their emotions. In this case, engineers are standing on the Usable Value’s View. Customers pay more attention to Estimate /Attractive Value of the product.
Who pays for the products and brings money to companies? The answer is clear: Customers. How do customers think this product is valuable while the other is cheap? All is just estimated by customers, not by engineers.
Without speaking out, Patrice made us understand that when designing a product/service, we should put ourselves in customers’ shoe to think what is really value to them.
Wow, learning through experiences – a method that I, as a trainer, used a lot in my courses was applied creatively by my beloved teacher. Thank you, Patrick, for opening my mind and make a better of me.
