Sunday, June 18, 2006 | 7:39 a.m.
.
1987 Caesars Palace installs four $1 slot machines with instructions in Spanish as a test market for Hispanic gamblers.
1990 Centel Cellular tests (in Las Vegas and Arlington Heights, Ill.) a system by Motorola that increases network capacity by 50 percent. At the time, cellular users complained that calls were not going through because networks were overloaded.
Early 1990s Slot-machine giant International Game Technology begins to test market its "Easy Pay" technology, by which machines pay out ticket vouchers instead of coins. The test quickly grows from a couple dozen machines to more than 300. User surveys find them to be 85 percent favorable.
April 1991 Anheuser-Busch tests a full-calorie Natural Pilsner beer.
May 1992 Burger King test markets (in Las Vegas and five other cities) a dinner table service concept. Thirteen local Burger Kings offer waiter-waitress table service from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. daily for three months. As part of the test, free popcorn is served.
1993 Pizza Hut's 21-slice Big Foot pizza is test marketed here; Acuevue's 1-Day contact lenses, the first daily disposable s, are tested in Las Vegas and Omaha, Neb.
June 1993 Sprint Cellular of Nevada test markets digital imaging . The service turns a cell phone into a pager that receives text messages.
1994 Black Hawk Gaming tests a table game called Maverick Poker at the Riviera in Las Vegas and Harvey's in Lake Tahoe.
1996 Hallmark greeting card company test markets several new products as well as advertising methods and store designs. As part of that project, Hallmark, for the first time, hires a local advertising firm to market local stores.
1990s McDonald's tests the environmentally friendly EarthShell, a hinged container made from potato starch, calcium carbonate, water and wood pulp.
April 2000 Washington Mutual tests "teller towers," the pods at which customers stand beside tellers to do their banking. Each tower includes a safe into which deposits are dropped and a machine that distributes withdrawals to customers - features the company says are not only convenient but also far more secure than traditional walk-up teller windows .
August 2000 Home Depot test markets its first Internet retailing concept in six stores, offering 41,000 products on its Web site.
2000s CBS leases space at the MGM Grand for Television City, a studio where new TV shows are test-marketed to audiences.
April 2006 General Motors opens The Drive, where, for $10, locals and tourists can test-drive GM sports cars on either a performance course or an off-road course.
From McDonald's onions to Wamu's Teller Towers, we're a good test market
Last year a local McDonald's franchise owner experimented by serving hamburgers without diced onions. Soon after, they were back on the bun with the pickles, swimming in ketchup and mustard.
The test was not necessarily a failure. It merely reaffirmed that customers wanted onions on their burgers.
Six years ago Washington Mutual bank chose Las Vegas to test a concept in which customers could cozy up to tellers at pods instead of going to the more traditional windows to do their banking. The "teller towers" are now an integral part of the 117-year-old bank's 2,600 locations.
While Las Vegas indeed is dynamic, more diverse and different than many places, corporate America has found that the area's 1.7 million residents - and to some degree its extended population of about 300,000 tourists daily - are not all that special.
In fact, when it comes to product testing, Las Vegans are a bunch of ordinary Joes, Joses, Isaiahs and Hus.
Steve Bottfeld, executive vice president of Marketing Solutions of Las Vegas, said the area's housing sales reflect how the city has changed drastically in 10 years, making it more diverse and better for test marketing:
"In 1993, 90-92 percent of all new home sales here were to whites, but in the first quarter of 2006, just 55 percent of home purchases in Southern Nevada were by whites.
"Asian, African-American and Hispanic groups are becoming economically stronger, and that attracts businesses looking for a broad cross-section of people who have money to spend."
In the last 20 years, companies offering everything from pizzas to beer, cell phones to slot machines, contact lenses to houses and greeting cards to sports cars have dipped their toes into the economic waters here to test what will sink or swim.
Analysts say businesses testing products and services also find it a plus that Las Vegas is an isolated, self-contained market located near trend-setting West Coast cities.
"Las Vegas is a great sociological lab to test things," UNLV sociologist Simon Gottschalk said.
"It is constantly reinventing itself, and corporate America sees that as being important when it tests its products and services. Las Vegas serves to forewarn America of what is to come, and many American cities have and will continue to follow suit."
Keith Schwer, an economist and director of UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research, says Las Vegas is favorable for surveyors who are looking for an audience with varying demographics.
"Mostly everybody here is from somewhere else," he said, noting that only 20 percent of Nevadans today are natives, the lowest rate in the country.
"You have a mix of people. It's like you are not going to do a survey in Vermont to get the Southern perspective, but you can do it in Las Vegas and likely find a lot of people who moved here from the South."
Those and other factors led Washington Mutual to test its new, friendly "Occasio" - Latin for "favorable opportunity" - banking system here in April 2000.
"We saw that Southern Nevada had an impressive growth rate and proximity to our existing business," Washington Mutual West Coast spokesman Gary Kishner said.
"We looked closely at several markets, and Southern Nevada's bustling economy, supportive business environment and vibrant community were exactly what we were looking for."
On top of that, the company's research also had found Southern Nevadans had "a high dissatisfaction rate with their current bank," he said.
"According to our research, Las Vegas was ready for the kind of banking Washington Mutual offered - free checking along with friendly service and a welcoming retail environment. Our tellers focus on building good customer relationships."
The teller tower concept has won several accolades and national awards, including being rated No. 1 in the innovation category of Fortune Magazine's 2004 Most Admired Companies.
Steve Tihanyi, director of marketing for General Motors, said his company long kicked around the idea of a business that would let consumers test drive sports cars before opening The Drive two months ago, a test market for GM vehicles, behind the Sahara hotel.
"We picked Las Vegas because of its high volume of people from other parts of the world," he said, adding that the company sought a spot close to the Strip and near a monorail station.
"So far, we've found that the average age of those test driving the vehicles is 32, which is within the mainstream of earning power, and they have an average income of $65,000 to $75,000 a year, with some of that being disposable income."
Some products tested here, however, are meant to determine their viability in the Las Vegas market, even by companies that market to the world.
"We test in each market that we are in because what might work in Las Vegas might not be popular in Mississippi," said Ed Rogich, vice president of marketing for International Game Technology, a major slot machine manufacturer.
"But the true test of whether one of our products is a hit is whether people will put money in it and how long they will play it."
Acxiom, an Arkansas-based company that looks to solve companies' customer relations issues, ranks Nevada as the nation's 56th best test market out of 150 U.S. cities.
Albany and Rochester, N.Y., topped the list, while New York City and San Francisco were at the bottom. Larger cities are too big for test marketing, Marketing Solutions' Bottfeld said.
"We were more of a test market in the 1980s and '90s than we are now because ideal test markets generally have a population of about 500,000," he said. "In five to seven years it is unlikely Las Vegas will be a test market for a number of products."
If Las Vegas remains a test market at all, he said, it most likely will be for high-end items, particularly housing. The city already is a leader in "e-star" and "urban village" concepts that combine residential units with entertainment and retail venues.
And, Bottfeld said, developers will look to Las Vegas to test the newest concepts in luxury housing:
"In 1995 there were just two homes in Las Vegas valued at $1 million or more, while today there are 1,024. Estimates are that by 2007, there will be 3,000 such homes locally."
Bottfeld predicts that Las Vegas also will remain a test market for new furniture (because of the World Market Center), hotel/casino concepts and other entertainment venues such as nightclub prototypes.
Even more, he said, Las Vegas should be a leader in testing and development of large retail concepts - shopping venues with expensive toys targeting a wealthier customer base.
"Four of the five largest shopping centers in Southern Nevada have not yet been built," Bottfeld said
He bases that statement on the size of existing malls compared to those on the drawing board, including a 1.2 million-square-foot project for Summerlin.
"We'll be innovating like crazy with new types of retail (outlets)."
Las Vegas has been a test market over the years for a variety of products and services. Some are familiar and popular, while others are long-forgotten.
archive
