Is There Still Room to Innovate When Consumer Needs Are Largely Met?

A critical role of marketing research is to identify unmet needs and determine innovation opportunities to fill the void, profitably.

However, mature markets and the most crowded product categories, such as fast moving consumer goods, increasingly find fewer opportunities because consumer needs are largely already fulfilled.

But does this mean there’s no room for innovation even when there’s seemingly so little latitude? Let’s think about this from a different perspective.

1- Zoom-out

If all large white spaces have been covered within a product category it might not prove fruitful to keep digging for deeper insights as this may ultimately lead to anecdotic concepts and niche markets.

Conversely there may be more potential to zoom out and look for broader insights. Zooming out can help identify new spaces outside the category which could be bridged to the category. As an example, in the late 90’s, the cellphone market was already rather mature. Obvious needs had already been covered and the consumers’ direct expectations turned around minor improvements on weight and usability. But in 2000, Sharp and Samsung launched an innovation that would never spontaneously appear in a focus group discussion if not conducted in a “zoom-out” approach: a cellphone with an embedded camera. At the time a camera function was not considered a direct “need” related to cellphones but rather a broader aspiration related to a modern lifestyle. Within a few years, however, no cell phone would be launched without this feature.

2- Listen to cultural changes

First movers to cultural changes are able to adapt their offer before they become established needs. They can corner the market, while others are left behind.

For this reason it’s important to understand that innovation can lie in ‘weak signals’. Here’s another area where attuned research practitioners can make a commercial difference.

For example, the green trend prompts companies to reduce packaging and consequently, their impact on the waste stream. Some have understood it well : Unilever has pledged to reduce its packaging by a third by 2020. Dell is cushioning computers and server parts with wheat straw and a compostable, mushroom-based material, instead of Styrofoam. Is this a consumer need? Not really, but a cultural shift that can a have major influence on brand choices.