Don't Ignore Inertia

I remember doing a concept test on a new product that eventually ended up on shelves in the cleaning aisle. The concept test came back with incredibly strong top box numbers on purchase intent, uniqueness, and appeal. This concept, by all measures, should fly off the store shelves. 

Then, once it was on store shelves, sales were disappointing to say the least. It hardly sold at all. 

Another arrow in the quiver of anti-researchers?

Another arrow in the quiver of anti-researchers? I don’t think so. In a postmortem analysis of what went wrong in picking success there were some things that I determined were missed.

• The impact of competitive choices was understated in the research leading to a false choice scenario. 
• This product depended on a rational return-on-investment decision. Even though it cost twice as much as other products in its category, its efficacy and long lasting effects saved consumers several times the cost. The math was clear and convincing. In the research, this worked--because consumers will often make the rational choice in a more clinical research context. But when faced with the actual product on a store shelf, as is more often the case, decision-making was not rational at all.
• This product was very different and using it forced consumers to think about laundry in a very different way than they had before. We never measured the strength of inertia in this category in the research because, well, before this time we had never considered that inertia plays a role in product adoption.

It is that third problem I want to talk about here. Inertia.

In the Oxford dictionary, there are two definitions of inertia.  

1. a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.
2. a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.

Both definitions apply to research and new products. 

It takes more energy to change the state of an object than to maintain that state. 

If you remember inertia from your physics class in high school or college (that is about the extend of what I understood around physics at the time), then you might remember that it takes more energy to change the state of an object than to maintain that state. 

Translated into consumer behavior, I have seen two situations where inertia is a strong barrier to actual adoption of a new product.

1. When a new product changes how people think or behave in the product category. For instance, when cake mixes first came out, consumers had been baking cakes from scratch and this completely changed the cake baking paradigm. (Yes, the challenge was to use the word paradigm in my post.) I can’t tell you how many new product concepts try to do this--it’s a good way to stand out in the crowd. 
2. When a new product fits the product category, hopefully positioned in a unique way that matters to the consumer.

In either case, the inertial barrier is a natural resistance to change that most people have. It’s not easy to change--how you do things or what brand you buy.  

A couple years ago, I was doing store intercepts near the deli section of a Whole Foods. I watched as people picked out their lunch drink from the shelf, often without even looking at the shelf. Literally, behind-the-back grabbing of the bottle of juice or smoothie. (This was a Whole Foods, so no Diet Mountain Dews on the shelf.) I was sort of in awe of their athletic ability at selecting their beverage. 

I watched as people picked out their lunch drink from the shelf, often without even looking at the shelf. Literally, behind-the-back grabbing of the bottle of juice or smoothie.

Imagine that you have a concept for a new beverage for that near the deli shelf. Consumers may logically share a strong interest in your idea--because, of course, you have great ideas. But when it comes to the reality of selecting their lunchtime beverage in a crowded, fast-paced environment, can your idea rise above habits so refined that people don’t even have to look at the shelf to grab their beverage? 

That is why when I work on concept tests or innovation teams, I now push for a good understanding of the power of the incumbent--of how inertia holds sway in the product category.

That adds an important metric to concept tests. How you measure it depends on the product category, but it should get at what it would take to change--brands or habits.

Sometimes we can’t get that from a standard survey or articulated in qualitative. Sometimes you need to move into the behavioral economics realm to really understand the power of inertia and what it takes to change the state of consumer motion.

Regardless of how you do it, keep in mind the impact of inertia on your results and applying them to real life.