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It’s Only Common Sense: Burgers, Root Beer, and a Mini-Van—Hard Lessons on Knowing Your Customers

Here’s a famous and telling story. It’s the 1970s, and the fast-food giants are battling it out in the Great Burger War, trying to prove that size matters. Burger King and McDonald’s claim bragging rights to the biggest quarter-pound beef hamburger—the Quarter Pounder vs. the Whopper. A&W is king of root beer and wants in on the action. They spend enough money to promote their Giant Burger that it could fund a small country.

But it’s all for nothing. A&W sees zero increase in sales. It seems that nobody cares. So, like all good fast-food companies, they throw good money after bad, forging ahead to find out what-in-the-name-of-Papa-Burger happened. Why doesn’t anyone want the biggest burger in the land, especially when it comes with the iciest, most delicious mug of root beer?

Here’s what they discover—and you won’t believe it—most burger-eating, bargain-chasing fans actually believe a one-third pounder burger is less than a quarter-pound. You can only conclude that beyond knowing what your customer wants, is what they actually know.

Here’s another story from the archives: It’s the height of the 1980s family van wars, and Chrysler is winning the market with its first “modern” family van—the Dodge Caravan, Plymouth Voyager, and the luxurious Town and Country. Volkswagen begs to differ with who’s winning, and Ford has little to offer. Nothing can compete with the Chrysler vans.

By the early 1990s, Ford wants more than a small piece of the pie; the company will design a van-to-end-all-vans, getting design help directly from those who drive it most—soccer moms. They travel around the country, conducting focus groups with soccer moms. Many whiteboards-full-of-ideas later, they think they have the ideal design. But when the Ford Windstar rolls off the production line and onto sales lots, Ford realizes their grand idea is a miserable failure. Lee Iacocca has beaten them again; Chrysler’s vans leave the Ford Windstar in the dust. What happened?

The reason is so simple: Chrysler vans feature sliding doors on both sides of the van. Their surveys had shown that the most hated feature in vans was only one door for the backseat, passenger row. It was too inconvenient. The Caravan vs. Windstar was a classic case of engineers not taking human likes and dislikes into consideration. Chrysler changed the world by adding doors on both sides. Why did Ford engineers think their car owners would be happy with just a three-door car?

Who was Ford angry with? Not themselves, but the soccer moms in their focus groups. “Why in the world didn’t you tell us you wanted a fourth door?” they demanded. The moms: “Because you never asked. We didn’t think it was an option.”

The lesson is to know your customers. No matter what you do, build, or sell, know your customers even better than they know themselves.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.