Written by Maarten Schellekens,
Global Consumer Insights Manager at Acer

Acer, the 2nd largest notebook provider in the world, faces the challenge of staying ahead of competition in refreshing its product range in an industry known for its high pace changes. In order to quickly scan which innovations resonate with consumers, Acer asked SKIM to do research that would give clear indications. Maarten Schellekens, responsible for the global consumer insights for Acer, explains how SKIM's conjoint expertise helped in achieving this.

Maarten Schellekens, Acer:
"SKIM clearly has helped us to improve the conjoint methodology we used"

"Practitioners who work in the area of innovation know how tricky it is to ask consumers about consumer features they have not seen or used yet. Therefore, Acer had to be very careful in selecting an approach that would take into account the unfamiliarity with some of the innovations."

Conjoint: why & how

"Conjoint methodology was selected as the best approach to understand the preference for new consumer features or for increased functionality of the computer. In the questionnaire an educational section preceded the actual conjoint section, in which we tried to mimic the type of information Acer would be able to get through to consumers in their communication. As a result, in the trade-offs consumers had to make in the conjoint exercise, consumers had been exposed to the new features in more detail than a regular conjoint task allows, which avoids confusing or misunderstanding the innovations we exposed them to."

Conjoint with SKIM

"SKIM has clearly helped us to improve the conjoint methodology we used. For example, it is well known that the None-option is not a reliable indicator of the absence of choice. Therefore, we used the methodology that asked for two responses instead of one: the first response indicated the most preferred computer, whereas the second response indicated if the respondents would actually purchase this computer in case only the three computers shown would be available. By taking both ratings into account when analyzing the data, we better corrected for respondents who were not keen to buy any of the computers shown."

Consumer focus

"A second improvement of the design suggested by SKIM was the addition of a non-compensatory section in the beginning of the survey. We wanted to test more consumer features than what can be done in a survey. In order to focus on the features that mattered to the respondents, we asked them to indicate this in the first section of the survey. During the conjoint exercise that followed, they only saw the features in the choice tasks with relatively high relevance to them. This made the conjoint not only more relevant to us, but also more interesting to the respondents."

Actionable results

"This conjoint approach has helped Acer a lot to focus on innovations that really matter to consumers. Based on the research in 2008, also conducted by SKIM, Acer prioritized battery life as a key area to improve. As a result, Acer launched the Timeline product earlier this year, a revolutionary product with a battery life of more than 8 hours.

Based on the research of this year, again, clear focus areas have been identified, which will be visible in the PC products Acer will bring to the market in 2010. Of course, I can not disclose these areas, so look out for what Acer will have to offer this year, and you'll know that this was largely based on what we found out from the consumer directly."

February 2010

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