How it started

MTD Products AG (currently part of SBD) is active in Outdoor Power Equipment (OPE). Based on a segmentation study conducted in the US, MTD Products AG needed to understand and assess the size of the defined segments in Europe.

The insights derived from the study needed to fuel into product development and marketing communication adapted for the European gardening market, which is known to be very different from the US gardening market.

How we inspired change

We approached this challenge in four steps:

1. A full-day kick-off workshop to identify the European team’s questions, hypotheses, hopes and fears. Thereby, we also defined the degrees of freedom for the segmentation.
2. A qualitative study in three markets (France, Germany, Poland) to define all potential answer categories for the quantitative segmentation questionnaire and understand cultural differences in gardening across Europe. We invited a minimum of 30 participants per country to participate in our one-week insight community.
3. The quantitative segmentation study was conducted in five countries (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the UK), using the US study’s pre-defined typing tool.
4. Central deployment for  MTD Products AG as well as local deployment for all five countries involved. All teams received a tailor-made presentation of the results.

How it lives on

We fuelled the decentralised European team with insights on European gardening behaviour, the role of the lawn, and how European consumers take care of their lawn. The identified size of the target groups helped shape the European innovation strategy as well as the communication and activation of the MTD brands. By immersing the global US team into the European gardening world, they developed a better understanding on how it differs from the US.