Research & Strategy Project (M6/12)

Langfristig erfolgreich sind die Unternehmen, die die Probleme, Sorgen, Wünsche und Bedürfnisse ihrer Kunden verstehen und ihr Angebot darauf abstimmen. Die Kunden verstehen! Das ist Ziel und Inhalt dieses Seminars. Dazu erarbeiten sich die Studierenden Methoden aus dem Bereich der empirischen Sozialforschung und der Designforschung und planen eigenständig eine Studie.
Das Seminar wird in Kooperation mit dem Modul M6 Research & Strategy Project durchgeführt – 2015 gemeinsam mit dem Unternehmen Johnson and Johnson.

From the Preface of the final publication:

„J&J is market leader in Germany for female hygiene products – o.b. tampons. Women, which are experienced with their menstruation, rely on o.b. tampons. But it is different with the young girls between 11 and 19 years. They are very often not familiar with the use of tampons. The big challenge of this cooperation project was to figure out, how J&J can reach this young target group in the German market and achieve their confidence. There was also a group of Chinese students joining the project. In China the use of tampons is not common. The Chinese students wanted to use the opportunity to think about how to introduce o.b. tampons to the Chinese market. It was decided to build two project teams: One team dealing with the young German target group and one team, dealing with Chinese girls and women.

Most important was to get a deep customer insight in both cultures in order to understand the problems, pains and concerns of the specific target groups and to get to know what they need, what they want and what they are missing. The project started with an intense user research. Qualitative interviews were done in both cultures, in Germany with young girls, mothers of teenager girls, gynecologists, teachers and sellers in drug stores. The Chinese group interviewed girls, teenagers’ mothers, gynecologists and a doctor practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine. Parallel the brand values of J&J were analyzed and experts of J&J were interviewed in order to understand the values J&J stands for and the J&J perspectives and future plans. The presentation of the brand values has to be attractive for the favored target group and to coincide with their lifestyle. The challenge was to develop an authentic and concise strategy to please the target group in a way that they cannot deny the offered products and services. To stand out of the crowd it is important to know the market of female hygiene in total. Profound knowledge of the whole market and deep understanding of the target group allowed both teams to develop a strategy that makes J&J different from the competitors by presenting products and services that do not only relieve the pains of the costumers and satisfy their needs but go beyond and fulfill desires they have not been aware of.“

Author: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Wolf

Projekt- und Seminarleitung:
Prof. Dr. Brigitte Wolf
Prof. Gert Trauernicht

weitere Lehrende:
Dipl. Des. Marcel Befort
Dr. Mitra Kahzaei (Advanced Research Methods)

Studierende:
Benedict Hartmann
Claus Gronau
Philipp Mies
Lisa Hausmann
Robin Wallmeroth
Zhi Qiao
Ye Tian
Benedikt Neuhäuser
Katharina Preuss
Carolin Vogler
Devran Albay
Iwo Wawer
Marco Mieschwitz
Weilin Li
Muhan Zhang
Martin Grützner
Tingqiao Zhou