If a pair of strollers fits easily into the rear of Buick's next small crossover, if both front seats have armrests, and if the ride is sporty yet comfy, you may not have General Motors engineers to thank.
Your hero may actually be public school teacher and mom Melissa Zaucha.
Zaucha is an informed consumer who knows what she likes -- and was willing to share her tastes in-depth recently with a research team from GM.
A Buick crew of four spent more than two hours hanging on her every word -- as she perched on her couch in her family room -- and capturing the interview on video for future reference.
She was one of a dozen consumers getting similar treatment over several days in Southern California, as part of the GM brand's effort to get everything right in its new vehicles.
The crew let a reporter tag along for a rare look behind the scenes into a facet of the research that will help determine how a new model takes shape. To know how to tweak the car, the team felt they needed to better understand Zaucha and others like her.
Similar research takes place regularly across the auto industry. Besides paying consumers to come to "focus group" clinics to get opinions on certain models, automakers sometimes delve deeply into details of individual lives with visits such as these.
Sometimes, the visits pay off big. Consumer research by Toyota found that contractors use their pickup cabs as offices, so engineers devised a Tundra center compartment that can hold a hanging file.
How Do You Live?
Two executives, a researcher and a camera operator came to Zaucha's home in Artesia, a Los Angeles suburb. Besides chat time, the team had Zaucha give them a tour of the family refrigerator for a literal sense of what they like and dislike. She showed off the baby bags she crafts as a sideline and took them on a short drive around the neighborhood in her current vehicle, a Mazda5 that she considers "cute."
They asked about her favorite store (Target), TV show (Bravo's Real Housewives of New York City), radio genre (NPR) and preferred place to live (she yearns for a home in nearby Orange County, which she views as cleaner than Los Angeles). They learned about her soft spot for animals: "I'll pay $4.99 for a dozen eggs if I'm helping a chicken," she says.
Perhaps best of all, they knew from Zaucha's earlier participation in a focus group that she's open-minded about car brands and already had a Buick in mind. (continued...)
© 2010 USA TODAY under contract with YellowBrix. All rights reserved.
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