In February, Kraft foods and JetBlue airways entered into a pact to allow Kraft to provide free offerings to travelers on a number of routes. Additionally, Kraft would send two employees to
promote the offering and obtain some feedback. In a separate occurrence, Peter Boatwright, a marketing professor at CMU, suggested the possibility of looking at air travelers as a captive audience for market research activities. The thought provides interesting insight into the possibilities. Now consider Kraft paying JetBlue a fee to have exclusive rights to the research activities in which travelers could participate. Might JetBlue give away air travel for free to ensure that it had enough of a captive audience for market research activities? Alex Slawsby of Innosight provides more details in his article - VA
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On Monday, February 4, Kraft Foods and JetBlue Airways Corporation announced that Kraft would provide free bagels and servings of its new Philadelphia 1/3 Less Fat Soft Cream Cheese to travelers on a number of Jet Blue’s routes during the month of February. In addition to free breakfast, Kraft also announced that it would send along two tuxedo-clad employees to distribute the products and also to talk up the promotion. In an article on the promotion, Peter Boatwright, a marketing professor at Carnegie Mellon University, supported the value of a captive set of fliers as an audience for in-flight market research. Boatwright did suggest, however, that if the concept were to lose its novelty due to market research experiments being performed on every flight, fliers would most likely tune out the researchers. In the meantime, however, could Kraft and Jet Blue be on to something?From a ‘jobs to be done’ perspective, this Kraft/JetBlue market research strategy should offer up some value to the researchers, but could be greatly improved. Today, many travelers thinking ahead to a multi-hour journey with limited or no connectivity to the outside world and limited or no ability to move, pack solutions to address jobs such as ‘reduce my boredom’ or ‘make the trip go by more quickly’. From game devices and music players to books and magazines to laptops, these solutions are often out in full force before the door is closed. Be it airplane, train, or bus travel, few individuals choose to sit in silence, staring out the window or contemplating their existence for the duration of the journey.
Leisure travelers visiting family or going on vacation are often extremely price sensitive. Before preparing solutions to address their ‘jobs to be done’ en route, leisure travelers often conduct extensive research to identify the mode of transportation that will satisfy their trip duration and cost objectives. In most cases, cost is the paramount concern – consider the legions of folks who travel through the Boston, New York, Washington D.C. corridor via bus service, enduring traffic jams and multi-hour journeys to avoid the air travel premium. Now consider the intersection of market research and the captive traveling audience, especially those folks highly sensitive to price. Research has proven time and time again that input from customers and noncustomers is essential to product development and positioning. As is the case, product and service companies often pay thousands of dollars to convene focus groups against which to test their offerings. It seems reasonable to assume that product or service companies would find the travelers occupying the 49 seats on a Greyhound Bus or the 150 seats or 100 seats on JetBlue’s Airbus A320 or Embraer ERJ-190 aircraft to be valuable market research participants. Might the Kraft/JetBlue partnership be headed in this direction?But back to leisure traveler desire to ‘minimize the cost of travel’ – the Kraft/JetBlue partnership assumes that flyers will be willing to taste Kraft’s product and offer their feedback to the representatives free of charge. What might happen if the market research process were automated through a slightly upgraded version of the back seat entertainment systems on JetBlue aircraft and if flyers could make money from participating? Imagine settling into your seat with an option to take part in several market research activities during the course of your flight. After inputting basic personal information into the system, you could agree to watch short advertisements or product promotions before answering simple yes/no or ‘rank your response between 1 and 5’ questions.
It seems likely that few flyers would participate in such activities for free, but given how much money companies spend on focus groups, might sponsoring companies be willing to reduce flyer airfare by $5 or $10 for each activity completed? Perhaps the number of activities or maximum reduction would be capped, but what if a large number of activities were available – could flyers reduce their airfare cost to zero or even make money? Might flyers be willing to select between different durations of activities with fare reductions consummate with length or complexity? Might flyers receive greater fare reductions if they are willing to share greater amounts of personal information? Consider that such a market research scenario could play out in busses and trains in addition to aircraft. If the interface, activities, and benefits are carefully thought out, it seems reasonable that many leisure travelers might choose to spend a significant amount of their journeys ‘working down’ the cost of those journeys and even potentially completing their journey having made a profit or received free product.In June 2006, Clayton Christensen and the Innosight Team authored an Innovators’ Insight analyzing the ‘Southwest Approach’. Many companies suggest that they are following a low-cost, low-price model similar to Southwest, but many also fail to create a model that leads to sustainable profit streams and competitive advantages while delivering on a low price promise. In that Insight, we suggested the notion of indentifying novel revenue streams and proposed a tact similar to the one discussed here – corporations could pay fees for the right to ‘sit next to a passive consumer, or a group of passive consumers.’ Now consider Kraft paying JetBlue a fee to have exclusive rights to the research activities in which travelers could participate. Given the cost of organizing and executing market research, might it actually be more profitable for JetBlue to have travelers in their seats than to have those seats empty? One day, might JetBlue give away air travel for free to ensure that it had enough of a captive audience for market research activities?
Leisure travelers visiting family or going on vacation are often extremely price sensitive. Before preparing solutions to address their ‘jobs to be done’ en route, leisure travelers often conduct extensive research to identify the mode of transportation that will satisfy their trip duration and cost objectives. In most cases, cost is the paramount concern – consider the legions of folks who travel through the Boston, New York, Washington D.C. corridor via bus service, enduring traffic jams and multi-hour journeys to avoid the air travel premium. Now consider the intersection of market research and the captive traveling audience, especially those folks highly sensitive to price. Research has proven time and time again that input from customers and noncustomers is essential to product development and positioning. As is the case, product and service companies often pay thousands of dollars to convene focus groups against which to test their offerings. It seems reasonable to assume that product or service companies would find the travelers occupying the 49 seats on a Greyhound Bus or the 150 seats or 100 seats on JetBlue’s Airbus A320 or Embraer ERJ-190 aircraft to be valuable market research participants. Might the Kraft/JetBlue partnership be headed in this direction?But back to leisure traveler desire to ‘minimize the cost of travel’ – the Kraft/JetBlue partnership assumes that flyers will be willing to taste Kraft’s product and offer their feedback to the representatives free of charge. What might happen if the market research process were automated through a slightly upgraded version of the back seat entertainment systems on JetBlue aircraft and if flyers could make money from participating? Imagine settling into your seat with an option to take part in several market research activities during the course of your flight. After inputting basic personal information into the system, you could agree to watch short advertisements or product promotions before answering simple yes/no or ‘rank your response between 1 and 5’ questions.
It seems likely that few flyers would participate in such activities for free, but given how much money companies spend on focus groups, might sponsoring companies be willing to reduce flyer airfare by $5 or $10 for each activity completed? Perhaps the number of activities or maximum reduction would be capped, but what if a large number of activities were available – could flyers reduce their airfare cost to zero or even make money? Might flyers be willing to select between different durations of activities with fare reductions consummate with length or complexity? Might flyers receive greater fare reductions if they are willing to share greater amounts of personal information? Consider that such a market research scenario could play out in busses and trains in addition to aircraft. If the interface, activities, and benefits are carefully thought out, it seems reasonable that many leisure travelers might choose to spend a significant amount of their journeys ‘working down’ the cost of those journeys and even potentially completing their journey having made a profit or received free product.In June 2006, Clayton Christensen and the Innosight Team authored an Innovators’ Insight analyzing the ‘Southwest Approach’. Many companies suggest that they are following a low-cost, low-price model similar to Southwest, but many also fail to create a model that leads to sustainable profit streams and competitive advantages while delivering on a low price promise. In that Insight, we suggested the notion of indentifying novel revenue streams and proposed a tact similar to the one discussed here – corporations could pay fees for the right to ‘sit next to a passive consumer, or a group of passive consumers.’ Now consider Kraft paying JetBlue a fee to have exclusive rights to the research activities in which travelers could participate. Given the cost of organizing and executing market research, might it actually be more profitable for JetBlue to have travelers in their seats than to have those seats empty? One day, might JetBlue give away air travel for free to ensure that it had enough of a captive audience for market research activities?
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