A market leader in the dressing and seasoning category obtained an unprecedented level of consumer insights – a holistic understanding of consumer behavior including when and how much the product was used. Here’s the story.
Business Goal
After the launch of a new product (a seasoning mix in a shaker packaging format), the brand team of a dressing and seasoning giant wanted to gain deeper insights on how to increase the cross-purchase potential of the new product.
Of course, one option was the traditional survey-driven method – the status quo in market research that relies solely on self-reported behaviors. However, what the team really wanted to know is how consumers are actually using their product - not just how they say they are. In order to capture this, the team engaged Adrich to conduct a test that could identify the opportunities for the new product by monitoring consumer’s true behaviors real-time.
Solution
The overall goal of the study was to identify and measure potential opportunities of the new product among the two user groups of existing products – the bottle and packet users. Therefore, we worked with the team to design and implement a 4-week, 150-consumer In-Home Use Test to gain consumer usage understanding of habits of the brand portfolio. Our Smart Consumer Platform™ technology was able to track product usage behavior in real-time, visualize data through the dashboard for constant learning, send timely communications based on demonstrated behavior, and receive responses from consumers.
The brand was provided with the capability to capture and track the below consumer behavior data from the shaker product:
When the product is used – time of the day, day of the week.
Which side of the shaker’s opening was being used (a smaller and more traditional seasoning shaker side vs. a wider side designed to allow a spoon to scoop product) .
How much product was being used – including usage quantity/amount and frequency.
Results
Through this effort, the brand team was able to identify the drivers of consumption and measure the cross-purchase and trade-up opportunity for the new product by user group. The study resulted in a significantly higher completion rate among the study participants vs traditional market research, resulting in a higher ROI on the research - 136 of 150 recruited users (91%) completed study, with a total of nearly 2000 individual product uses recorded over a four-week period.
Additional takeaways from the study include:
Discovered a critical packaging redesign opportunity based on consumer behavior that demonstrated that it was not optimized to drive consumption.
Identified the most effective advertising messaging that boosted product usage with long-lasting effect.
Gained insights on usage frequency and consumption rate by occasion by combining the Adrich behavior data and the survey responses.
Saw that the new product increased the fandom for the brand across both participant groups.
Overall, the learnings from the study included insights on how to drive consumer satisfaction, trust and loyalty beyond the first purchase. These insights continue to inform the brand strategy and investment to this day. According to the Associate Director, Global Insights of the Seasoning Category, “Every penny paid for this research was worth it.”