Story
Cross Cultural Ethnography & Competitive Analysis
Challenge
Roche needed to benchmark its new product against the competition in a new market. Were its features correct? Was the messaging on the mark?
Solution
A nationally fielded ethnographic study on customer practices and their perceptions of the competition informed new feature recommendations and revised messaging.

Roche

Innovation Through Human Insight

Roche needed to understand how a product developed in the EU would perform if marketed ‘As-is’ in the United States. And if changes were needed, what were they, and how could they be implemented.

CharlesGroup designed a study to take place in key markets across the US, using our network to gain access to hospitals in each city. This allowed us to observe workflow in multiple environments including both ICU and step-down and to conduct interviews with nurses, technicians, and department heads.

We studied workflow, product utility (and misuse) and observed how competitors’ products were being used in relation to the client’s product. The resulting observations (recorded on video) produced tremendous insight into the current practices surrounding tight glycemic control and informed the client marketing group in their thinking about new product development and positioning against competitors.

The project culminated with CharlesGroup recommending modifications and ‘areas of strength’ of the existing product, and specifying key features and attributes to be considered for the next generation device.