Defining the optimal customer journey for BOSE

BOSE, the well-known high quality music product brand, had defined potential interesting target groups for future growth. In order to get to know these groups better, BOSE wanted to find out more about the current and especially the optimal customer journey. Besides numbers and figures, BOSE also wanted to dig deeper and discover unmet needs and insights behind this journey.
In Project Soundcheck our challenge was to come up with an alternative way of assessing the customer journey, mapping both general trends and needs, but also highlighting differences between potential and current customers that could lead to new marketing and communication strategies.

What did we do?

We set-up a Consumer Consulting Board (also known as online research community) in three different European countries with a total of 150 consumers planning to or having bought headphones or speakers in a time span of two months and engaged with them in total for 4 weeks. During the first weeks, observational picture tasks, discussions and evaluation topics lead us to mapping the current journey.
BOSE Soundcheck community
During an intermediate workshop the current journey was used as input for ideation on the optimal journey; this resulted in actions and ideas used as input for the final week of consumer discussions. Simultaneously, an online quantitative survey provided the necessary numbers to understand and validate consumer behavior and the full market potential.

The results

By focusing not only on the classic customer journey but also on crucial needs throughout the music product buying journey, Bose took the customer journey to a higher level. 5 needs were defined forming the base for a solid marketing & communication strategy. Each need can be fulfilled by fine-tuning current marketing or communication actions or by working on new ideas generated from the Soundcheck communities.
Project Soundcheck was presented throughout the BOSE company, combining US and European research and succeeded in creating impact cross-country and cross-department.

How did the client experience it?

“We received a lot of positive feedback on the customer journey and I’m confident we found a great model.”
Pieter Jan De Queker, Insight Analyst at BOSE Europe