There are certain cars whose names will forever live in infamy. For example, Ford’s Edsel is a byword for commercial failure that goes well beyond the automotive industry and is often mentioned alongside ‘New Coke’ as one of the greatest product failures. Meanwhile, the Pontiac Aztek was most charitably described as an “angry kitchen appliance.” It is one of the cars that brought down Pontiac and is widely considered to be one of the least aesthetically pleasing cars of all time.
To avoid making such mistakes, automakers conduct car clinics and in-depth market research. The goal is to accumulate the data needed to develop a successful vehicle. The unstated secondary goal is to avoid producing a flop. It doesn’t always work; the two infamous cars above both were developed with extensive marketing research. However, by taking a closer look at the flaws in the process, we can better understand how modern technology can help automakers avoid the mistakes of the past. With cutting-edge data collection tools like virtual reality car clinics, today’s car manufacturers have unprecedented opportunities to learn more, respond better, and, ultimately, make better vehicles.
When Market Research Goes Wrong
When Ford was developing the Edsel, they put a then unheard-of $250 million into market research and product development. In fact, the car was created “with the intent of creating an automobile tailored to the desires of the American people, as determined through seemingly endless polling.” But, ultimately, Ford ignored the polls. The public wanted “an irresistible car of the future,” but they got an unattractive, conventional vehicle that cost too much money and used too much gas. Additionally, Ford executives declined to use any of the 18,000 names presented to them by their marketing company, choosing instead to name the new vehicle in honor of the company’s second president. “[T]he general public just didn’t like the name,” writes Arlena Sawyers in Automotive News. “Outside Detroit, the name meant nothing—it just sounded funny.”
While the Edsel fiasco served as a cautionary tale for automakers around the world, not everyone took its lessons to heart. According to Bob Lutz of Road & Track, the design and development of the Pontiac Aztek took place specifically with an eye towards defying all marketing research. And the Aztek didn’t just score low in testing, it was the last thing that people wanted according to GM’s own marketing research. The design team knew this yet remained committed to a design philosophy that seemed to stand not just in opposition to their customers’ preferences, but one that seemed to deliberately spite them. The result was a low-selling vehicle for a brand that would vanish in less than a decade. The tragedy is that, aside from its looks, the Aztek was a solid offering in the nascent class of crossover vehicles. A less controversial-looking Aztek may very well have succeeded, and a successful crossover may have saved Pontiac.
The Benefits of VR Car Clinics and Market Research
New digital market research working in conjunction with virtual car clinics can give automakers more confidence in the research process and better direct the will to defy convention. Virtual car clinics use stereoscopic images and 3D digital assets to give customers a realistic, interactive experience without the need for a physical vehicle. This allows manufacturers to show their models to large numbers of viewers across a wide geographic range in a short time period. The large datasets collected via virtual car clinics help to rule out aberrations and anomalies in the data and provide more reliable feedback that’s harder to ignore. They can also reveal which market segments are set to grow and give insight into how vehicles can be better marketed to different audiences.
In traditional car clinics, clinic manufacturers first have to have physical cars for customers to interact with. This means that manufacturers are typically limited to the cars they themselves make and constrained by a potentially expensive and time-consuming research process. As a result, sample sizes are often small and the feedback is limited in scope, making it very easy to misinterpret anomalies as trends or miss trends that lie beyond a manufacturer’s line-up.
It is this sort of misinterpretation of data that led to the midsized Edsel being released at the dawn of small cars. Ford could only draw upon their own sales data and their lineup was mid-sized to large. If they’d been able to solicit opinions across different makes and collect data from a larger, more diverse group, they may have spotted the trend towards smaller vehicles. Significantly, virtual car clinics can also help automakers resist the temptation to minimize the weight of opinions that conflict with their vision. In the case of the Aztec, for example, the depth, breadth, and reliability of data collected could have made public opinion harder to ignore and easier to translate into action, helping designers make more prudent choices.
Optimizing Return on Investment
The collection of data is further facilitated by the cost-cutting potential of virtual reality clinics. With VR, research can be conducted anywhere, including classrooms, malls, and other easily accessible spaces—automakers can bring the clinic to the research participants. These events also require minimal staffing, as communication can happen remotely. By eliminating the need for vehicle transportation, large display spaces, and long-distance travel by staff, better data can be gathered with fewer resources, optimizing return on investment.
Creating Better Vehicles With Better Market Research
The data collected with virtual car clinics and market research doesn’t just prevent bad design choices and cut costs. They can help a manufacturer refine successful designs into bestsellers and help turn unconventional designs into revolutionary vehicles that redefine the automotive market. In other words, this innovative research methodology gives manufacturers the means to not only keep up with the market, but to stay ahead of it and shape the future. By partnering with an automotive imaging firm that offers an extensive library of virtual reality assets, automakers can gain access to the quantity and quality of data needed to design vehicles that connect with customers.
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