A cup is a cup
-- or is it really a cup?
December
20, 2004 - by
Robert E. Stevens, GENESIS II
(The
Second Beginning) E-Mail: views@aol.com
Rush to Judgment,
Rush to Failure.
Since 1997, I have written three Views on the topic of
Confirmatory
Research. Actually, the last Views written on
the topic was titled
"Confirm, Confirm & Re-Confirm." It never ceases to amaze me how
often someone will observe an unusual result and rush off exploiting
the new
knowledge without ever confirming the result. My first impulse upon
discovering
something new is to go back and find out where I made a mistake. In
other
words, confirm my finding. Walk around the mountain of knowledge and
approach
the subject from a different perspective and see if you end up with the
same
conclusion.
The topic of confirmation reminds me
of a problem we had at P&G in the early 1970s. Our laundry
detergent
packages
recommended that 1¼ cups of detergent be used for each load of
wash.
We
knew, however, that most homemakers told us that they used 1 cup per
load. In
an effort to understand how much detergent they really used and what
effects it
had on the end results, we designed a 1200 base, six-month Habits &
Practices Usage Study aimed at what they did, how they did it and the
end
results, including whiteness, cleaning and stain removal. The results
would not
only show the relative effectiveness of the leading detergents but also
establish
the conditions under which our laboratory tests would be conducted. It
was a
very expensive study. The results of this study resulted in over 40
separate
research papers.
In an
effort to determine product
concentration, we added a Lithium tracer to the detergent. The
instructions on
the detergents called for 1¼ cups usage. However, the Lithium
tracer
showed
usage to be significantly less than one cup. When we asked the
participants how
much product they used per load of wash, a majority stated that they
used one
cup of detergent. What was causing the disconnect? We asked all those
who
stated that they measured their detergent to bring in their measuring
cup. To
this day I can still see the 1,000 cup display set up in the meeting
room at
ITC. We had the homemakers' measuring cups all on display. The display
included
tuna cans, coffee cups, paper Dixie cups, soup cans -- you name it, we
had it. We
even had some measuring cups. This study, while expensive, answered a
lot of
lingering questions about detergent usage.
What would you
do, if you were just
made the president of a soap company that had two brands of bar soap
that in
consumer tests were 70/30 winners vs. competition but in sales were
last and
second last (prices of the competitive bars were the same as our
bars)?
The
70/30 test results were achieved with freshly made bars. Mr.
Louis
Pritchett
decided to use market available bars. He did not even need to
conduct
the test.
The bars purchased from the local stores were a mess. As a result of an
aggressive sales force, the ages of the bars on the store shelves were
between
22 and 30 weeks old. The target for shelf age is 4 weeks. Warehouses
where these were stored [in
the
Philippines] had temperatures ranging from 120 to 140° F. The long
term
heat brought the coconut oil out of the bar resulting in the soap
having the
characteristics of
a slick rock. Lou's action steps involved the clearing of the stock and
controlling shelf age of our brands. In a little over a year Camay and
Safeguard sales moved from last and second last to first and second in
the market.
Confirm those
unusual/conflicting results.
Sponsor: Sorensen Associates Inc
Portland, OR: 800.542.0123
Minneapolis, MN: 888.616.0123
the
in-store research company™ -- Dedicated to the
relentless pursuit of WHY?
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