When you hear the word ‘Volvo’, it’s likely that a particular word – perhaps even two words – beginning with ‘s’ comes to mind. 

The car manufacturer is one of the most clearly positioned brands in the automotive industry – or any industry, for that matter – with an almost universally recognised association with safety (and Sweden). 

And, says Andreas Strasser, head of research and automotive strategy at Volvo, the brand is not looking to stray too far from that core label: Volvo’s ‘Vision 2020’ is that no-one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo car by 2020.

But the brand is looking to build and add to that, says Strasser. “We can be very proud of having this legacy of being a leader in safety and we’re delivering on that front with our Vision 2020,” he says.

“That’s very important, and a very good statement, because it also says that we understand our customers and we make them feel special. We’re adding the premium. 

“A Volvo can be much more than just a safe box,” he says. 

Strasser’s role within Volvo’s market intelligence team is focused on competitive intelligence, customer trends, and setting the research agenda for the next couple of years. Given that one of Volvo’s central claims is ‘designed around you’, he says, understanding the customer is vital.

“That means understanding their needs, even if they can’t articulate them properly – that’s key to us delivering a product that is more than competitive,” he says.

Strasser, whose research career has been entirely focused on the automotive sector, says that the way Volvo conducts its research is, on the whole, similar to that of other car makers: the development process prescribes certain research projects at certain times to make sure that promises are being delivered upon. 

The key difference, he believes, is that Volvo’s process tends to start a lot earlier. Once an opportunity for a new car has been identified (and the decision has been made to grasp it), then his team, alongside the product definition team, starts defining that car and understanding what customers would want from it. 

This starts with extensive desk research; Volvo has a database of studies with information on customer wants and needs, as well as sales and other information. What follows is extensive exploratory research, Strasser says. 

This involves an ethnographic approach that sees his team travel around the world, with colleagues from across Volvo. The teams visit customers, look at their lives, talk about what’s important to them, their relationship with their car, visit them in their home, and drive around with them. And it’s not just researchers that get involved in this stage, but anyone involved in the project, including engineers. 

“What we stress is that we take a long look at our customers’ lives and get as many colleagues as possible involved, so that they have a personal relationship with the customers that they will later deliver a car to,” says Strasser.

Of course, there are limits to how many Volvo representatives can attend an in-home interview, but Strasser likes to have two or three engineers as a minimum. “After all, these are the people who will live in that project for the next four years,” he says. 

This ethnographic immersion has only been in practice for just over three years. The first car designed using this approach is still under development, but Strasser believes the company has already learned a great deal. 

He can’t go into detail, as the resulting car has yet to be released, but, he says, the team has managed to flag and avoid a number of design errors that would almost definitely have been made if they had relied on data alone. 

“We had certain preconceptions of what was important to consumers, which were ultimately disproved,” Strasser says. “When we talked to people in the real world we realised that, yes, the data was correct in identifying problems, and yes, they complain about this particular thing, but it’s not an important issue. They worry about other things, which need to be prioritised. 

“If we hadn’t picked up on that, we would have started a completely different project. We wouldn’t have noticed until the first customer clinic, 18 months in, that we were delivering the wrong car.”

The ethnographic customer interviews themselves are always led by local moderators, Strasser explains, but are structured so that there are specific times at which engineers can interact with the customers, by asking questions or clarifying points that have been made. So is it ever useful to have the engineers there to manage customer expectations as to what’s feasible? That is not their role, says Strasser.

“We are very much not looking at limitations, but taking customers at their word. If they want something, we assume they can get it. If they want a microwave in their car, we ask about the wattage.” 

Strasser also highlights differences between Volvo and other car makers at the other end of the product journey. Where post-purchase research would usually involve a customer receiving a survey asking them to rate their satisfaction across various scales, he says, Volvo also concludes its car projects with yet more ethnography. 

To supplement quantitative data from surveys, Strasser’s team carries out early-buyer surveys, where people who have purchased a vehicle are visited in their homes, with their cars, and asked extensively about their experience of buying the car, their first drive, their impressions after two or three months owning it, and so on. Again, engineers accompany researchers on these visits. 

This resulted in insights around features that people either weren’t using, or didn’t understand how to use properly, Strasser says. 

“It’s a case of coming together and seeing if we’ve delivered on our promise and what can we learn from that for the next project. It’s very human-centric.” 

Two areas that are currently much talked about in the automotive industry are those of connected cars and autonomous driving. These are two of the three ‘megatrends’ – along with electrification – that Volvo is currently working with. The focus on autonomous driving and connectivity are in keeping with Volvo’s aim of adding premium to its existing safety offer. The former, Strasser says, allows customers to spend their time more productively, and to arrive at their destination feeling more relaxed; while the latter helps to simplify people’s lives and allows them to use their car in new ways. 

Automated Driving

Strasser’s team has done a number of studies over the past year to understand what customers’ wishes and needs are in terms of those trends, and how the company can offer better products. But it can be hard, he says, to overcome incredulity and discuss with customers the finer points of something like automated driving –something that wouldn’t have seemed possible even a few years ago. 

“To get it right and say: ‘Imagine it’s 2025 and you have autonomous driving, how will your life change?’ It’s difficult,” he says. “It’s hard for customers to envision something they haven’t seen before. 

“This is one of the limitations that we come across when doing research. You’re talking about something that either they don’t believe, in some senses, or that at least requires a lot of imagination. We have struggled to get the message across and, when discussing people’s needs and wants, not to over- or underestimate the change that will happen.

“You’ll have everything from people expecting cars to come with a Jacuzzi or that they’ll be able to sleep on their way to work, to people being very sceptical and saying they don’t trust the technology.”

But Strasser is working actively on a number of projects involving these megatrends, including Drive Me, a large-scale test of cars with autonomous capabilities that will take place in Sweden next year. 

While Drive Me was initiated and is being led from the product definition side, his team has been heavily involved from the beginning, looking at customer research, delivering data and gaining insight to inform and shape the project, and helping to recruit the ‘real people’ who will test the cars. Strasser’s team will also carry out research with the test drivers to see how they react to the experiences, how their perceptions have changed and what they expect from the future of autonomous driving.

The heavy involvement of the market intelligence team in large projects such as Drive Me is just one indicator of the importance of insight to the company. Another is the twice-yearly, fully-booked events, that the market intelligence team holds in a purpose-built arena, to educate the rest of the company on what it can do, and has already delivered. 

Voice of the customer

Apart from these events, and the weekly newsletters that his teams send out, alongside the videos produced to summarise research projects and competitive intelligence from motor shows, the market intelligence team is treated as the voice of the customer within the business. 

“We have embedded consultants throughout the company who speak with our main stakeholders on an almost daily basis. We have a consultant for every car line – the 40/60/90 cluster – we have consultants for R&D and one that talks to design. 

“They know about the needs of the stakeholders and what’s going on with upcoming projects. We are the guardians of the customer information, but we try to be as open as possible.”