TIVO --- CONSUMER PRESENTED BY:

Syed Intisar Haider

BEHAVIOR
Q1

According to Keast, “there is a mystery in the sharp contrast between the inertia of prospects and the
evangelical zeal of TiVo users.” As an emerging expert in consumer behavior how would you tackle that
mystery? What do you think could be going on? Beyond your pet hypothesis, try to be creative and list a
large number of conflicting hypotheses by taking multiple points of view. What might “evangelists”
mention as a cause of their failure to sell TiVo to their friends? What might a “couch potato” say about his
reluctance to buy TiVo? What would you expect a top executive at NBC to say about the situation? What
explanation would the founder of TiVo love to hear? Hate to hear?

Hypothesis

 Resistance to technology
 Fear of technology
 Though people have tendency to buy but willingness and ability to buy are different
 Pricing
 Survey questionnaire was not up to the mark that addresses the exact demand of people
 Survey was not surveyed in the proper sample population
 Didn’t addressed the target market
 Market Segmentation.
 Underestimated the audience.
 Existing Cable industry DVR and TiVo seems to be equivalent
 Word of mouth—plays a vital role in making good or bad perception
 External Costs and external Benefits Relationship (Negative - Externalities)
 In balance of knowledge between the buyer and a seller
 Poor timing of distribution.
 Key channel partners not involved effectively.
What might “evangelists” mention as a cause of their failure to sell TiVo to their friends?

 TiVo underestimated its audience and they didn’t take the advantage of their loyalty although
they knew the loyalty and TiVo converts are deeply passionate they would have offer them a
dollar reward or one month off or another TiVo or offer discount in return

 If they would have said to share your passion to your friends, friend of friend and get
incentive

 Trade in concept should be introduced.

 They should leave the greedy concept of just selling and giving to advantage in return of
loyalty

What might a “couch potato” say about his reluctance to buy TiVo? What would you expect a top
executive at NBC to say about the situation? What explanation would the founder of TiVo love to hear?
Hate to hear?

Couch potato is a person who spends much time sitting and lying down mostly watching TV

But he is not initiative although the TiVo is offering many options and accessibilities to their customer
but a couch person has nothing to do with it he is a lazy person he just want to see the old traditional
TV

NBC executive would say in this situation to draw the Root cause analysis why the strategy is not
working or they are working on a wrong marketing strategy as he has just to suggest not to dig out
the problem , or he might have say to replace Keast.

TiVo founder would love to hear that marketing team has identified the problems and they will
certainly address the problems and change the marketing plan and the TiVo has developed so loyal
and passionate customers

And hate to hear that in order to penetrate into the market they have to decrease their prices.
 Now look at the data in the case exhibits. What hypotheses get supported, what hypotheses get
discounted? What other insight(s) do you directly derive from the data summarized in the text
and presented in the exhibits that might help to guide the growth of TiVo?

The main hypothesis regarding the failure is the price and fear of technology, although the
awareness, product understanding and intention to buy are moving up

Supported hypothesis

Pricing ---Exhibit 5

Encourage people to watch recorded programs--- exhibit 7

Unsupported

Lack of understanding towards technology

Fear of technology must be there

Data Summary

Based on case study facts and exhibits I would suggest them

 Now they have Post purchase survey and usability survey and this is big point that their
customers are happy and they don’t have any single unhappy user based on this they should
adopt the following strategy
 Use the passion and loyalty of customer and offering them reward to be the part of their trade
and convince their friends and family and relatives to buy TiVo and in return they will get the
rewards and discount offer
 They must evaluate their distribution chain, although they have clear on their part they have
made a remarkable product for which the people really wanted but they need to educated the
distributors as well may they they are not aware how to sell the product
 They should conduct the survey among those who do not want to buy what is the reason that
despite they are aware of the fact but they should prepare a questionnaire addressing those
points.
 Distribution and accessibility should be addressed properly
 Q no 3 TiVo is a new technological company and the management’s approach to research and
insight has gradually evolved over time. What have been the different stages in their exploratory
journey? What conclusion is this journey converging to? If you could time-travel to the early hours
of the company, what would your advice to Keast be in terms of the research they should be
conducting (the type of insight they should be looking for) at the outset for a more effective
launch?

RESEARCH APPROACH

 It was not focused how to break through the resistance in consumer behavior
 Concept of Myopia deems to be the problem
 Only addressed to innovators but put less emphasis on rest of consumers i.e early majority, late
majority and laggards
 They put more focus on product and less focused how the customer would behave

Exploratory Journey

 Survey were performed focusing how the consumer are using the product
 To evaluate their level of satisfaction
 After that Attitude survey were performed to knowing their customers
 But any survey was not able to find the gap between the intention to buy and action to buy

Advice

After studying the case facts and the detailed analysis of Surveys I would suggest Keast;

 To conduct the survey that help in bridging the gap between the customers intention and actions
to buy the TiVo
 Should address the reasons for slow penetration in the market.
 Should utilize the customer satisfaction and loyalty and offering incentive and rewards to the
customers who not only convince and they actually buy
 Price analysis should be done again so that it can be in reach of every one
 Must adopt some strategy to break the resistance of customers towards the new product
 Pre-launch survey should have been done because it has been observed that the people show
some reluctance in adopting the new technology no matter how good the technology is, so some
efforts must be done to minimize this resistance