Helping a Heavy Equipment Manufacturer Quantify Global Competitive Value

A leading heavy equipment manufacturer believed the quality of their product line was far superior to their competition. However, they struggled to quantify the value associated with this quality differential from their customer’s perspective. See how we helped uncover how quality impacts overall product perception for multiple product types across global markets.
5,000 interviews conducted

Situation:

A leading heavy equipment manufacturer believes that it offers a line of products with quality that is far superior to that of its competition. However, it was struggling to quantify the value associated with this quality differential from a customer’s perspective. This client was interested in understanding how quality impacts overall product perception for a wide range of product types. Further, this client is a global competitor and hypothesized that quality would have varying degrees of impact in each geographic market served including North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific.

Objectives:

  • Measure current satisfaction on a product and component level
  • Identify the number of failures that occurred during the first 12 months of ownership for a specific machine serial number
  • Determine likelihood of repurchase and recommendation
  • Identify perceived market leaders with details regarding differentiation factors

Ducker’s Approach:

  • Conduct 5,000 interviews annually with end users of target machine models that purchased new machines within a given time range
  • Include client’s customers as well as end users of competitive brands
  • Collect detailed information regarding specific failures that occurred within the first 12 months of ownership
  • Regression modeling to understand the impact of specific types of failures on product satisfaction and brand loyalty

Outcome:

Ducker Worldwide prioritized product improvement initiatives based on satisfaction and loyalty impact and targeted market campaigns which leveraged competitive advantages over competitors. Ducker determined that through parts inventory planning – frequent problems with significant impact on satisfaction may require inventory increases to decrease downtime. In addition, Ducker identified that supplier performance indicator – components failing frequently may require supplier development initiatives. This lead to Dealer training initiatives developed to support dealers in quickly correcting high-risk failures.