Sturdy Statistics Case Studies: Car Wash Soap Manufacturer

Takeaway:  Our model has the unique capability to surface unknown unknowns: the insights that you didn't even know to look for. Schedule a demo to unlock your unstructured data today.

Another of our active users is a car wash soap manufacturer which is struggling to gain traction in the consumer segment of the market. The company’s products have grown steadily among professional detailers and car show entrants: the product’s enthusiastic acceptance by experts should be an indication of its quality. The company wants to broaden its revenue base by selling its product to consumers as well as to professionals. However, the company found that they had very few repeat customers in the consumer market. They were spending money on advertising campaigns, and getting conversions, but the customers from these campaigns were seldom repurchasing the product.

The reviews indicated that these customers did not feel the product was as effective as their competitors’ products (a verdict not shared by the professional detailers). Even after manually reviewing samples of product reviews, the manufacturer was at a loss to explain this effect: why did the professional and consumer markets perceive the same product so differently?

Sturdy Statistics ingested all of the client's product reviews, along with all the product reviews of their competitors. After automatically structuring each conversation into a discrete set of topics, a very simple quantitative analysis revealed remarkable insights. The most significant finding was not the presence of any one topic in our client’s reviews but rather its absence: among the highly rated reviews of every competitor except our client, a predominant theme related to suds and foam. Customers liked observing the action of foam and expressed satisfaction in washing the suds from the car. Moreover, consumers expressed a very widespread belief that the thickness and density of the foam indicated the cleaning power of the soap. The reviews pointed to a mistaken belief that the action of bubbles is what separates dirt from the car paint.

By design, our client’s car wash soap did not foam at all — the company’s scientists saw foam as an unnecessary nuisance which necessitated a rinse step and made cleanup more difficult. This choice apparently did not concern professionals, but for an average consumer, the lack of foam signaled an issue with the product. Ironically, our client had viewed their lack of foam as a competitive advantage; if not for the quantitative proof Sturdy Statistics brought to them, they would never have thought to change it. Our client created a new product line of foaming car washes, and is seeing significantly more retention in this product line than they had previously in the consumer segment.