“Betray Customers” Says Japanese Economic Magazine

“One person’s conviction makes a hit product, not the voices of 100 million people,” wrote the Japanese weekly economic magazine Nikkei Business in a special report recently after analyzing the current trend in product development and the birth of hit products.

The magazine pointed out, Electronics companies are entangled in cutthroat competition because they are obsessed with figures that catch the eyes of consumers.”

One example is ‘response time’ in flat TV screens indicating how fast images change. Although electronic companies boast that they brought down the time to 0.008 and even 0.006 seconds, human eyes can barely see the difference below 0.016 seconds.

Nikkei Business urged companies to drop their blind trust in consumer surveys, saying, “Companies cannot give deep impressions to customers if they only respond to consumer surveys.” It introduced some successful cases of companies that went beyond consumer sentiment, emphasizing the need to “betray” consumers in making a hit product.

The pen and pencil maker Pilot made a hit in Japanese as well as European markets with the “Free Cushion Ball” ball-tip pen introduced in March. The pen can be erased like a pencil.

Sanyo’s washing machine that uses air instead of water, and Sharp’s new refrigerator equipped with a device to keep food warm are some other successful products that challenged consumers’ stereotypes on electronic goods.

The magazine used a new electronic rice cooker from Sharp as an example to show that one person’s conviction can be the momentum for creating a hit product. After two years of endless research on a technology long considered impossible, the new rice cooker was born with coals inside. Although the price is five times higher than traditional ones, sales were much better than expected.

iam@donga.com