TiVo in 2002 :

Consumer Behaviour
Group- 03
Abhilasha Kale (18PGP003)
Spandana Reddy (18PGP044)
Poojitha Saranya (18PGP046)
Santha Kumar (18PGP068)
Srivatsav Kompelly (18PGP081)
 Introduction
- Launched in 1999 as a personal video recorder
- Competitors like Microsoft introduced Ultimate TV in response to TiVo
- Best Buy was the exclusive retailer of TiVo
- Initially started as stand alone product with black boxes from Sony and Philips
- Later available with satellite television receiver DirecTV
- Two Tuner System was later introduced to record the programs
- TiVo series 2 allowed consumers to control and organize not only television content but
also digital materials downloaded from internet , video cameras and audio equipment

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 “
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?

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 Reasons for contrast between inertia of prospects and
evangelical zeal of TiVo users
• TiVo majorly focused on increasing their sales and improving their cash flow rather than to
enhance the Word of Mouth for their product from their customers

• More focus on sales rather than evangelism

• Lack of awareness of their promotional activities

• Narrow profile of subscribers

• Perceived risk of purchasing

• Pricing issues

• Intention to buy was not developed in the minds of the customers

Ways to tackle the mystery
• Identifying the common characteristics of the customers
Demogra • Helps in finding the similar prospective buyers
phics

• Maintain strong relationship with current customers to promote Word of Mouth

• Improve Brand Loyalty
Customer
Relationship • Decrease the perceived risk

• Increase focus on improving customer satisfaction rather than to increase sales

• To penetrate into broader consumer market, the company needs to increase their sales even to single, low
Focus & middle income households and to the young and elderly

• Increase the awareness level to bridge the gap between intention to buy and the purchase decision
Promotio • Reduction of prices, Advertisements, Free trials, Refer a friend awards, Money back guarantee
n
 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?

• Converting the “Couch potato” from suspect to prospect is difficult despite of offering multiple
options to them
• The NBC top executive might require a deep analysis on finding the reasons for not converting
the couch potato potential customers despite of their superior marketing strategy
• The founder would love to hear if the marketing strategist devices new promotional activities to
attract the potential customer and would like to hear a comprehensive analysis of reasons
behind their purchase intentions
• The founder would absolutely hate if the “couch potato” customers find price as barrier because
the company’s objectives also include improving their financials and cash flow and decreasing
the price would not help them achieve their current objectives

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 “
Q2. 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?

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• Post purchase behaviour : Survey results show that the customers are happy with their
usage and 90.1% were satisfied with TiVo

• Customer Loyalty: 89% of the customers responded that TiVo was not frustrating and didn’t
want to switch

• Purchase Influences: TiVo.com was contributing to the highest purchase influences followed
by TV ads and Internet articles. This shows that word of mouth is not up to the significant
level – Exhibit 3

• Customers gave more preference to Recording/Season passes (37%) followed by Trick play
(28%) - Exhibit 4

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• Brand Affinity: 82.6% reported that they enjoyed television more since they got TiVo

• 78.2% of the respondents expressed that the pause and rewind option was
convenient whenever they miss any programs

• 74.8% of the respondents expressed that they enjoy programs with their spouses
because they can pause, resume, rewind, record and watch them according to their
schedules

• Parents have reported that the relationship with their kids, their choices, addressing
their needs, quality programs, managing schedules etc., became easier with TiVo

• 94.3% of the respondents reported that TiVo was more important than VCR, 88.9%
more than MP3 player, 88.6% more than Video game Console, 85.7% more than
Video Camcorder, 81.3% more than Digital Camera, 73.6% more than DVD player,
60.6% more than PDA device, 46.9% more than microwave and 40.2% more than Cell
phone
 “
Q3. 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?

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 Stages in their exploratory journey

Introduced
User experience Consumer emails TiVo units
Setup a series of New survey
group running bi and published collected
focus groups but in 2001 to
annual surveys opinions were diagnostic data
doubted their understand
to understand analysed and like functioning of
ability to capture the attitude
product large scale the unit and
“deep emotional of consumers
satisfaction since consumer surveys viewing patterns
response” towards the
1999 were made of the customers
product
Conclusion:
• They were able to find the attitude of consumers towards their product but were not able to find the root cause
behind their purchase intention not turning into action

• Their surveys were more focused on measuring the satisfaction level but not to measure if their customers are
referring it to their friends and family
Recommendations:
• Conduct large scale surveys to capture reasons for purchase decisions and not just attitude and satisfaction
levels

• Promote awareness through different communication mix

• Pricing decisions to be included as part of the surveys to gather customer insights

• Penetrate into broader consumer market by expanding their target customer segment into unmarried young
segment & elderly segments

• Identify the X-factor and advertise the product based on it to convert suspects into prospects

• Promotional offers like refer a friend rewards, complementary benefits to existing customers, Online
communities for gathering customer feedback etc., could help them position themselves better
Thank you 
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