SALES GROWTH RESEARCH

Insights about the possible ways of product activation at the point of purchase.

The Challenge:
Our client wanted to get insights about the possible ways of product activation at the point of purchase through:

understanding the end consumers;
decision makers and shoppers needs;
motivation and purchase behavior.

The key question was: how to achieve sales growth?

The Approach:
We designed and ran a three stage survey:

Stage I: qualitative shopper-centric exploration (Focus Group Discussions) to reveal the category habits, consumption occasions, actual purchase decision makers, planning, drivers for selection, brands positioning and perceptions (both emotional and functional). The findings from this qualitative phase served as a base for designing the research instruments for the next research stages;

Stage II: quantitative survey at the point of sale (Shopper Insights) to get information about the place of category purchase, main shopping mission, purchase decision tree (planned vs. impulse purchases), key purchase drivers and barriers and in-store communication effectiveness in both modern and traditional trade;

Stage III: quantitative survey (U&A) to quantify the attitudes towards the category and brands, the needs, the decision making, product switching and loyalty behaviour as well as to describe in detail the specific occasions of product consumption;

The Outcome:
The qualitative exploration proved the product to be cool and trendy, consumed at party, at night and in the morning.

The results from the shopper quantitative survey revealed the leading need of a “cooled” product offer and showed the decision for category purchase to be mostly spontaneous, taken at POS.

The high price of the brand (observed also in the qualitative stage) appeared the key barrier. The U&A phase of the research exposed the product as highly “functional” and strongly related to very specific drinking occasions, which could be easily addressed to trigger higher consumption.

Following the research findings and recommendations, our client linked better the brand consumption with the most typical drinking situations, invested in events and activities triggering these situations and actively promoted the category consumption during such events. In addition, the better positioning in in-store coolers, the different types of price promotions and the cross-selling with other related categories increased the brand value share by 11%.