Tell you what I want, what I really really want

“Our latest release at (fill in name of site) has caused considerable interest. Eager buyers have snapped up the first phase in just five days. It shows that our designs are what people want says (fill in name of housebuilders’ spokesperson).”

The words could have been written by almost any housebuilder - and why not? The market is currently good, demand is high and success breeds success.

But despite this I worry when reading this kind of press statement. Are we really giving people what they want?

Early in my career in housebuilding I was greeted by a very senior person who said: “Go and ask the customers what they want, we’ll build it and you sell it - that’s what marketing’s all about isn’t it?”

Well, perhaps it was twenty years ago, but things are different now.

If we had hung around waiting for consumers to tell us what they want then most of the product and service developments of the past ten years would not have happened. In short, consumers asked to predict their future needs will base most of their views on what they are currently experiencing.

Consumer electronics is a great example of this. The pace of change is just too fast and the technology is beyond what most consumers can understand. In an extremely competitive market manufacturers are forever dangling new carrots in front of us. More speed, more power, more colours, more functions etc.

Take the DVD player. Most consumers didn’t even know what it was just a few months ago, but today it is the hottest selling consumer product. I would guess that if we had been asked “do you want a player that has better quality than a video recorder but which cannot actually record?” the initial reaction of many of us would have been “no thanks”.

So, faced with a world of traditional house designs we are very likely to stick with the formula when asked what we would like in the future.

Even in focus groups, when shown stimulus material or mock-ups of new designs, consumers tend to be so cautious that a manufacturer may think twice about venturing into new design areas.

I am reminded of a conference speech delivered some years ago by the head of Mazda’s car research and development. He was talking about car clinics, where a prototype car is lined up alongside the latest competitor models and hand-picked consumers are asked to talk about them.

His thoughts will never leave me. He said that if consumers overwhelmingly liked the prototype then Mazda’s initial reaction was to scrap the design and start again as it was too “now” and not right for the future.

Of course the car boys don’t always get it right first time. When, in 1982, Ford launched the radical Sierra to replace the beloved Cortina there was uproar. Sales plummeted, Vauxhall’s more traditional designs began to steal market share and only Ford’s marketing muscle prevented a catastrophe. Within a couple of years however the Sierra was at the top and had spawned a whole new generation of cars.

To me the Cortina/Sierra experience marked the start of a new chapter in car design and marketing. For a time many consumers wanted to cling on to the safe three-box designs that had been around since the 1950s. But once they got used to something different they began to be influenced by new and exciting designs.

I believe this change must and will come to housebuilding.

Until just a few months ago the biggest selling car in the UK was the rather dull and traditional Ford Escort. The Escort has been replaced by the Focus, a radical new design that instantly made everything else in its class look rather boring. Interestingly Ford kept Escort in production even after the Focus launch - the memory of Sierra goes back a long way. But Ford needn’t have worried – Focus is a runaway success.

But back to houses. How can we be sure that we are giving people what they want when there is so little stimulus beyond rows and rows of traditional houses? Even if the basic designs are right I cannot believe the specification of some houses represent what people really really want.

Retro that isn’t trendy

In last month’s Building Homes David Birkbeck described a Barratt development at Abbey Meads in Swindon.

As I live on its doorstep I just had to take a look for myself at the latest versions of the much-heralded Premier Collection. The brochure promises that “It is a brand new range of individually designed homes creating new standards in specification and style”.

Sure enough there is the bathroom that looks like it was designed for a 1950s institution and there is no shower fitted as standard.

Now a shower is something that we can all comment on with confidence. This is not DVD territory.

I can honestly say that I have never ever interviewed or met with anyone who has told me that they don’t want a shower in a house. In fact there is a universal look of horror on people’s faces when you suggest that some builders of new homes don’t fit them.

I know Barratt is not the only guilty one in this so I’m not picking on it. But if this is all we are willing to supply at the bottom end of the market in the year 2000 we really have to stand in front of the mirror and ask ourselves: “Are we really giving people what they want?”

Barratt Homes is in my opinion the “Ford” of UK housebuilding (the Sunday Times Prufrock section recently called it downmarket but I don’t agree, Ford is definitely not a downmarket carmaker).

Through supply chain management, production efficiencies and big time competition, carmakers have been able to create specifications that just a few years ago would have been unheard of.

Compare for example a 1960s Ford Anglia with this year’s Ford Focus. Despite recent “Rip off Britain” claims in the press, the real price of these two cars is about the same.

If volume housebuilding had kept pace with cars then all new homes would have showers. They would also have the domestic equivalent of built-in sound systems, integrated wiring systems, power steering, central locking with alarms and air conditioning and almost without exception all the electrical and mechanical items would work perfectly from day one.