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Investigate Product Usage Problems

E-Commerce Provider

What we did
• Reviewed sales data and existing research
• Conferred with client executives on product usage problems
• Reviewed client’s strategic alliances and those of its major competitors
• Discussed product usage with client’s alliance partners
• Interviewed product users

What we discovered
• Client initially viewed problem as one of generating awareness and trial for the product
• Product had not been built with benefit of end-user research
• Category users were aware of the product, but its lack of feature-functionality competitiveness precluded use

Strategy
• Provide strategic review of product marketplace in a quickly evolving product category

Tactics
• Demonstrated how category users approached the marketplace
• Arrayed features representing "price of entry" requirements
• Compared client’s product feature-functionality to what category users considered important in their purchase decision
• Showed how a dominant competitor was quickly beginning to define the product category
• Identified what product modifications would be required to exceed competitive offerings

Results
• Faced with a steep R&D challenge and limited resources, client elected to exit product marketplace

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