To kick things off on this, the first day of the Los Angeles Auto Show, DaimlerChrysler has published a number of press releases which provide a unique look at the development and technology that goes into every Mercedes-Benz vehicle.

Due to the sheer number of press releases I'm not going to comment on each one; but I will publish all of them and let you browse any that may be of interest to you.

So stay tuned... I'll get them out as quickly as possible, starting with a press release that describes what techniques Mercedes and their design team utilize to plan for the future.

Enjoy.


OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE


Eyes on the Future


Stuttgart, Nov 30, 2006
Which designs will Mercedes-Benz customers prefer a few years from now? What equipment will they want for their vehicles, and to what extent will the desire for things like environmentally friendly drive technology influence their purchasing decisions? Researchers at DaimlerChrysler don’t have a crystal ball, but their investigations are telling us a great deal about tomorrow’s customers.

We don’t know what the future will bring, but we’re trying to get a better idea of what it will look like.” Marianne Reeb certainly doesn’t fit the image of a trend scout who’s always on the go — the type who has just experienced the birth of a new musical style in a popular club on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is about to check out the London Docklands to find out how people in their mid-20s look at life, and can tell you what’s going to be in style tomorrow and out of fashion next week.

But she’s a trend researcher all the same, part of a team of approximately 30 colleagues at the Society and Technology research group at DaimlerChrysler. The mission of the Future Watch project team is to provide the developers, designers, marketing specialists and service experts at the Mercedes Car Group with projections of future developments that could play a major role in the market success of a model that won’t be rolling off the assembly line for another five or seven years. In other words, Future Watch is a kind of “early warning system” that draws the attention of the Group’s strategic planners to social changes before these changes become impossible to ignore.

Of course, the team focuses on changes or social trends that are directly related to automobiles or, in a larger sense, to mobility. However, it doesn’t concern itself with fashions that have a life expectancy of one or two years at best; instead, it looks for trends that will have an impact on society over the middle or long term. An automaker can react only to “long-distance” trends of this kind, because the start-up phase of a new model, from the initial planning to the market launch, is relatively long. Accordingly, one of the tasks of the research team in Berlin is to make clear distinctions between long-term trends and short-term fashions. The issue that’s currently occupying the trend researchers has to do with automotive design. “The functional and rather cool design language of classic modernism will remain popular in the future, but parallel to it we’re observing a trend toward more opulent and playful forms and softer materials in clothing and furniture design,” says Reeb. “At the moment we’re trying to determine whether this is only a flash in the pan or is already worthy of being called a trend.”

But even if it turns out to be a trend, there will never be flower-patterned upholstery in the new S-Class, she adds jokingly. All the same, the designers responsible for automotive interiors have to react to changes in customer preferences. They have to use materials and shapes that create the “warmer” environment that future customers will want.

The “images of the future” that Reeb refers to don’t simply spring from the overheated brain of a science-fiction author. Over the years, the researchers have worked out a process for describing trends that allows them to make reliable statements about the direction and dynamics of new developments.

The starting point for the group in Berlin is a set of 40 to 50 trends that have already crystallized in recent years. These include “slow” but long-lasting trends, such as the increasing individualization of society. Some of the developments here have been evident for decades and are changing only gradually. Other developments have more momentum and the researchers thus refer to them as “evolutionary trends.” Finally, there are trends that practically overwhelm society. One example of such a trend is the way in which the Internet has changed our use of the media.

The more dynamically a trend develops, the more closely the researchers have to observe it. Trends in this category are examined every year as part of the Future Watch project. By contrast, observations about the more gradual trends are updated at intervals of several years. When describing trends, it’s also important to indicate which phase the particular trend is currently going through. Is is just starting, moving toward a climax or already entering a period of decline? These are the kinds of questions the team tries to answer.

> Future Watch: A testing ground for trends

Some magazines make up for the lack of exciting news stories during the summer by publishing forecasts of future trends. By contrast, the researchers in Berlin engage in careful testing of developments that others have identified as new trends, or that they themselves regard as potential trends. “In every individual case, we establish indicators that will enable us to define a trend. If we believe that changes are taking place, these changes have to be demonstrable in terms of changes in these indicators.” Reeb illustrates this by pointing to the changing purchasing behavior of consumers. “All of the market research on this subject that we know of indicates that the ‘save at all costs’ mentality is losing ground. Today, fewer purchasing decisions are based purely on price. Probably one reason for this is that people have realized that many low-priced goods are poor in quality. Correspondingly the number of people who look for quality in the things they buy is increasing.”

According to the market studies, there’s been an increase in the number of “smart shoppers” who look for high quality at the lowest possible price, and “savvy consumers,” who are well-informed, critical, rational and self-assured. “Purchasing decisions are still motivated by emotions, but the consumers in this group are aware of this factor,” explains Reeb.

> Analyzing the importance of trends for the Group brands

Developments that may have an impact on the Group brands are described in the studies of consumer attitudes conducted by market research firms. “But we would never rely on these studies as the sole indicators of future trends. After all, consumer attitudes can change very rapidly,” says Reeb. The team in Berlin therefore looks for additional indicators, which in some cases may even contradict one another. It also tries to find out, for example, whether price-conscious customers are motivated by the need to save money or, alternatively, whether the boom in discount retail outlets is being fueled by the pure pleasure of bargain-hunting. “We also try to discover the driving forces behind a given development,” says Reeb. A third testing method involves comparing previous forecasts about the future with the actual present. Because the team has been monitoring trends for many years, it can use hindsight to see whether it has correctly evaluated developments in the past. If not, it may have to correct its methods of describing trends or even rethink its choice of indicators.

A standard element of the Future Watch process is the close networking of the Berlin trend researchers’ work with the needs and expectations of their customers at the Mercedes Car Group and the Chrysler Group. The researchers begin by compiling a list of the developments and trends they would like to examine more closely in the coming year. This “agenda” is now discussed in depth with the strategic planners at MCG and, if necessary, supplemented with additional topics that this committee believes are worth observing at the moment. That completes the current set of trends, which will now be fixed according to an established pattern of indicators, facts and figures. The current relevant studies and research on the Internet provide only part of the information that is used in the evaluation process. “Another source that’s very important for us is our interviews with experts, which we analyze using an interdisciplinary approach to gain information on a given development,” says Reeb. Each of the approximately 30 members of the research group in Berlin has between one and two dozen personal contacts who are experts in a broad range of disciplines and are located in all parts of the world. The result is a comprehensive network that the researchers can use for their work. “Of course we always conduct our interviews with the experts in areas where we believe the trend is most advanced,” adds Reeb by way of explaining this strategy.

The end result is a set of evaluations of all the trends that are being observed. The team in Berlin also examines the trends very closely to determine how significant they are for the Group. The “filters” they use include questions such as:

• What impact will a given development have on the Group brands?
  
  
• What effects will it have on advertising and communication measures?
  
  
• What effects will it have on the target groups of the Group brands?

“We discuss such implications in great depth with our colleagues in Stuttgart, thus making sure that our findings are broadly disseminated,” says Reeb. The trend researcher illustrates her comments with an example that involves the significance of the driving experience for the Mercedes-Benz target groups. For years, the target group wanted increasingly powerful engines. But according to the Berlin researchers’ observations, there is now a countertrend: “Dynamic performance and a great driving experience are still considered desirable, but customers are no longer interested in getting off to a faster start at intersections than the car next to them. They’re looking for a great driving experience and dynamic performance for themselves. That’s why we say that a new quality, or a new expression of these values, is coming into being.”

> Staying immune to the hype around a trend

But even the trend researchers in Berlin are sometimes surprised by what the future brings. Reeb cites an example: “During a very early phase of the Internet, in the era of the BTX services, we didn’t think this development would last very long. It’s clear that we had to redefine this trend quite some time ago.” However, she can also name many cases when trend analysis has immunized the researchers and their customers against the overheated hype surrounding new trends such as electronic markets or eCommerce: “Eight years ago, when we took a closer look at this development, almost all of the experts were expecting a boom in the market. If the forecasts had proved accurate, today we would be buying not only airline tickets and books online but also automobiles online,” she says.

But as the trend researchers continued their analysis, they quickly arrived at what they term “barriers to implementation.” Reeb describes these as follows: “Among other things, shopping is a social occasion, and that applies in particular to the purchase of a car. The customer would like to sit down in the new model, see how it feels and enjoy that new-car smell. And before customers can decide to buy a car, they need people they can talk to about the model they have in mind.”

The team in Berlin quickly realized that the experience of buying a car in the pleasant atmosphere of a “Mercedes World” won’t be replaced by a couple of purchasing portals and mouseclicks anytime soon.

Copyright © 2006, DaimlerChrysler AG