CASE STUDIES
THE CHALLENGE
Bosch wanted to develop a premium brand circular saw that would allow them to compete against the likes of DeWalt and Makita. The goal was to create an offering that:
Bosch’s success would depend on their ability to uncover and address opportunities that the other established brands had missed. It was time to be innovative.
THE SOLUTION
The first step was to define their market around the job-to-be-done and the people executing that job. For Bosch, this was tradesmen cutting wood in a straight line.
The team interviewed 30 saw users to create an exhaustive list of their needs – called desired outcomes – while cutting wood in a straight line. They uncovered 85 of them.
Bosch then surveyed 270 circular saw users to quantify the degree to which each outcome was under- or overserved by existing products in the market.
Unsurprisingly, the obvious customer needs were already covered in this mature market. Segmenting the market around trade or years of experience failed to yield any unique opportunities—but segmenting around unmet needs did. Outcome-based segmentation helped Bosch to uncover the perfect target segment, comprised mostly of finish and advanced carpenters. This segment represented over 30% of all users and was underserved on 14 desired outcomes, including minimizing the likelihood that the blade guard snags material.
With insights from the first four steps, Bosch was able to design their product strategy around a specific audience with very specific needs that were unmet by existing marketing solutions.
THE RESULTS
Bosch’s innovations resulted in a hugely successful product launch and dramatic improvements in customer satisfaction.
Upon introduction, Popular Science voted the CS20 circular saw one of the top 100 innovative products of 2004.
Today, Bosch is successfully competing with DeWalt and others in this market and has expanded its offering to address other unique market segments.