If you were trying to gain market share in the competitive market for laptop computers, what would you do?
Hopefully you would go into the market and ask potential customers, who could be using laptops but weren’t, what their problems were. And then ask people who were currently evaluating laptops but have not purchased one yet, and finally you would speak with your current customers…..right?
On Tuesday, Taiwan-based manufacturer ASUS released four laptops that have a scent embedded in them including “Musky Black, “Aqua Ocean” and “Morning Dew”.
Their goal, as stated by the product manager Jessie Ku, is “We want to create a more intimate feeling with our laptops-to influence people’s moods, memories and emotions through the five senses.” Huh? Sounds like company gobbledygook to me, not the voice of the market.
Apparently, this project was a carefully guarded secret with a goal to create a laptop for young people that the research team “toiled on for over a year.”
This smells of a product designed from the inside out to me. A product designed because you could do it and not because you should, or because anyone other than the developers would think it’s “cool”. You know the products…R&D says we need to make a laptop for young adults. So you study young adults, never actually asking them their problems, and come up with “opinions.” Wow, they like skateboards and surfing, young adults like to stand out. Wouldn’t they like it if their laptop smelled…
The idea starts with a good thought; let’s design a laptop for young adults. Smart if you can identify their unresolved problems and solve them in a breakthrough way. Stupid if you take the goal then sequester your development team for a year not talking with the market they are designing products for.
There are many companies that make laptops that stink. This is the first one that’s done it on purpose.
Some obvious questions...what happens when the scent wears off? According to a company spokesperson “Once the perfume dissipates, it’s gone. Asus has no plans to sell replacements or refreshers. The bonus is you won’t get bored of smelling it.” So it’s a bonus when it stops smelling? I thought it was identified that young adults value the idea of a laptop with a scent?
This product reminds me of the process many companies take when designing new products or changes to existing products. They jump to a solution without first finding unresolved market problems, truly understanding buyer personas, nor quantifying the impact of their idea.
This product is destined to join the 2/3 of all new products that fail after 18 months. Which is unfortunate... and very expensive.
There were obviously significant costs incurred to embed a scent into the laptop. However the cost of marketing these inside-out products often exceeds the planned budget when they fail to meet targeted sales goals.
There is also the cost impact on morale. Researchers and developers are creative problem solvers, they like challenges. Nothing is more demoralizing than being asked to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, (except for maybe the company founder’s wife or daughter who came up with it in the first place) and not seeing it sell. Above all other costs however, is the opportunity cost.
While Asus is adding scents to computers, Dell is understanding unresolved market problems for young adults and is solving them brilliantly with products like their new ultra mobile lightweight Latitude E4200 which is lighter and smaller than Apple's MacBook Air.
Who do you think will sell more laptops to young adults, Dell or Asus?
