Robotic vacuum cleaners entered homes in the West in the 1990s. In India, these robots were launched in 2015 through online portals as well as walk-in stores in high-street malls. Amazon.in offers over 100 products and accessories from over 20 brands under the ‘robotic home cleaners’ category. 4 years on, however, the adoption is still very very low.
Through this study, we gained an understanding of the user mindsets regarding home cleaning, their perceptions of robotic home cleaners and the roadblocks leading to slow adoption of the product. In addition, we also deconstructed mindsets of the niche, the 0.5% that have taken the leap to purchase the product, to identify themes for communication strategies.
The study resulted in:
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recommendations for the product design and development
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product pricing, placement and feature differentiation strategy
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psychographic analysis and segmentation of users, leading to communication strategies
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new considerations and opportunities that would give the client an edge over the current market players.
Year
2019
Project Duration
3 months
Role
Project Lead
Teammate
Devi Gophan
HORIZON SCAN
Competitor Research
We began by identifying the major entrants in Indian Market in the 'home cleaning robots' category.
product line up | pricing | features | communication
Market Research
Next we gathered data on the market scenario from 2015-2019 and the forecast for the period 2020-2025.
market size | growth rate | market volume | demand in residential and commercial sector
Market Enablers
We also studied consumer trends and shifts in spending patterns to identify enablers that are driving a shift in mindsets towards home automation and new technology.
DEEP DIVE
We interacted with users from 3 mega cities of India - New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. For these interactions, we selected users who are in their prime working-age (30-50 years) and belong to the high-income group (SEC A+). As the study was for a robotic product, we also ensured that the respondents own smart home appliances such as dishwasher, air purifiers, smart tv, google home/ alexa, home automation, smart lights or other IoT appliances. We met both niche current users of the product as well as potential users.
To gain a wide view of the Indian home cleaning routines and practices, cultural influences and mindsets, we also considered various other factors -
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equal representation of men and women
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representation of working women as well as housewives
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representation of various family structures such as nuclear families, joint families, DINKs, DIWKs, pet parents etc.
Visual aids and a card sorting exercise were woven into the discussions to help dig deeper into topics such as comfort with new technology, convenience and establish an understanding of users' mindsets.
Outputs of the research were insight packs that included psychographic segmentation of the users, identification of the target user segment, communication strategies for the target customer, product price and feature differentiation strategy basis user segmentation.
PSYCHOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION
We produced four personas, representative of the user's mindset in context to investing in new technology. We also created a relative technology adoption curve for the 4 personas through time.
INSIGHTS BOOK
Fundamental human truths about Indian cleaning habits and mental models surrounding house-help. These hold true across personas and act as guiding holistic principles for the business.
PRODUCT STRATEGY
A strategic vision that details the product line, pricing, feature differentiation across the product line, value proposition and anticipated challenges.