Interview with Dr. Robert Parker

Director, New Business Development, Care Chemicals
BASF

Dr. Parker, BASF recently launched D`lite. The motto is: Market Understanding Meets Science.

Can you explain the idea behind it?

The customer is key. That is the essence of the D’lite approach. D’lite is about allowing customers in the personal care industry access to the information they need to be even more successful: for example, market know-how, formulation, knowledge and certificates.

D’lite is BASF’s new digital service for the personal care industry helping customers to identify the perfect cosmetic product offering. The right ingredients are defined by considering a huge amount of data while taking into account fast-changing market dynamics. BASF supports the customer in the complete product development process: from consumer understanding, market understanding, concept creation, market strategy development, formulation development up to the launch of the product via this service.

How do you recruit the data for D`lite?

The offering combines the integration of multiple internal data sources, knowledge about the industry and data from leading external partners regarding market- and consumer intelligence. 

Without our partners it would not have been possible to offer this digital innovation that combines market understanding and science. We are very pleased that we enlarged our cross-company collaboration with leading market intelligence and consumer intelligence partners.

What is the benefit for the formulators (customers)?

We have an agile service catering the different needs of our customers from R&D to Marketing. We support the formulators in understanding consumer needs in real time on a global and regional level. The new platform D’lite can process countless data on existing consumer products and personal care brands, as well as offer market analysis and consumer insights in real time by analyzing multiple social media pages, blogs, forums, and review sites.

D'lite is designed as an easy-to-use, convenient 24/7 solution for our customers to speed up their innovation process. 

We differentiate from other service providers by ensuring that we cover everything from consumer to the chemistry in one integrated service.

Will you extend this digital service into other categories, e.g. Home Care?

D’lite is our digital service for the personal care industry and especially designed for it. Subscribers to the service have access to all of this and more, as the digital service evolves with additional functionalities and service modules in the coming months. 

For other categories such as home care we have different digital service solutions based on customer feedback and needs.

Free trial can be requested via the following link or BASF sales contacts.