Anthony W. Ulwick

HUSSMANN

Discovering hidden growth opportunities
Hussmann decided to reexamine its LED product line. Used to illuminate refrigeration cases for cold beverages and perishable and frozen foods, the product line offered reduced operating costs—especially when compared with fluorescent lighting. But in the four years following the launch of the product line, Hussmann had seen little reaction from customers. Convenience stores, supermarkets, and warehouse stores simply didn’t warm up to the idea.

“LEDs showed minimal volume and little impact on the lighting business,” remarks Clay Rohrer, an innovation and business development manager at Hussmann. “We tried to penetrate the business for four years, and we were missing the boat.”

Anshuman Bhargava, a Hussmann LED product manager and also an innovation and business development manager, notes, “We were going out and searching the globe for new

technologies that seemed to make sense. They were always focused on energy or controls, which were trends in the market. We weren’t tied to needs of the customer. We were tied to technologies.”

LEDs, which offer energy efficiency, represented a potentially billion-dollar market, but customers were skeptical about the up-front costs and overall value of the technology. Hussmann knew that success would depend on the company’s ability to uncover and inexpensively address specific customer needs so that Hussmann’s LED product would stand out on performance dimensions that mattered to customers.

To find and exploit opportunities for competitive differentiation, Hussmann applied Strategyn’s ODI methodology. Drawing on the responses of shoppers, store merchandisers, and executive merchandisers, Hussmann dissected the complementary jobs of those key groups.

“We had been selling refrigerated boxes, not merchandising solutions,” Rohrer remarks. “Historically, we had left the merchandisers alone and focused more on the product procurement people. Now, we went to different levels of merchandisers and to the shoppers, and we combined insights from all these audiences.”

This extensive, multi-audience effort resulted in the capture of over 300 desired outcome statements. Next, using ODI-

based quantitative research techniques, Hussmann had 1,500 shoppers, 200 store merchandisers, and 50 executive merchandisers prioritize those outcomes.

Among the outcomes prioritized by executive merchandisers, many were underserved, as highlighted in the opportunity landscape. Of these unmet outcomes, eight related to display case lighting: for example, executive merchandisers wanted to increase the likelihood that the lighting would display the true product color and the likelihood that the lighting would be uniform.

These needs became the foundation for Hussmann’s LED innovation and differentiation efforts.