Clever stuff

Featured work

How do you prefer yours?

Global consumer preference testing: hot drinks
Food & Drink Manufacture

Taking the decision to switch the key ingredient that goes into making your product taste the way it does is not one to be taken lightly. Working in close partnership with one of the biggest High Street hot drinks chains we were able to evaluate the degree of risk associated with a proposed change based on direct consumer feedback. We spoke to customers across three key markets through combined on and off-site controlled quant consumer product testing. The output generated the evidence required by the business to confidently make the ‘go/no go’ decision they needed at a global level.
A seal of approval

Getting the proposition right across the full mix
Food & Drink Manufacture

Our busy lifestyles mean that we are eating ‘on the hoof’ more and more, particularly when it comes to grabbing a relatively healthy snack to bridge the gap between meals. Our client identified a potential opportunity for one of its existing portfolio products to satisfy the snacking needs of three quite distinct target groups. To be confident in its performance prior to launch we tested all elements of the marketing mix with target consumers - from initial proposition, TV ad treatment alternatives, packaging design and format, product delivery and pricing. Using qual and quant approaches we were able to check that the proposition and desired consumption occasions were clearly communicated and delivered against across the full mix. It went down so well in the UK that launch plans are now in consideration across the Atlantic!
Not everyone's a winner

Sense checking your packaging design changes before they get past the post
Food & Drink Manufacture

We’re real advocates of making pack design changes where they lead to a genuine improvement in desired brand image, communication of benefits and ultimately purchasing. But some designs can sometimes make it through the heats to reach the final stage when they may not really qualify for a medal. We’ve been helping a leading confectionery manufacturer put some of its designs through their paces via simple quant online testing to help them avoid a false start and retain their gold standard designs.
A healthy choice?

Decision making & category opportunities for healthier sweet biscuits
Food & Drink Manufacture

On-the-go snacking takes up an increasing proportion of our daily food consumption and supermarket shelves are filling up with healthier options across all categories to offer greater choice (and less guilt) to the consumer. With this in mind, our category challenge was to explore the healthier sweet biscuits fixture – how it’s understood, how it’s shopped and what opportunities exist for maximising sales, converting browsers into purchasers in-store. Using a combined approach of accompanied shopping trips and quant at-fixture interviews we were able to identify real opportunities for our client’s brand, not just in terms of merchandising but also in terms of packaging solutions, POS and disruption at the fixture, while making the decision process easier for the slightly confused shopper.
Size matters

Getting all aspects of your product just right
Food & Drink Manufacture

Most of us love to eat sweets but we're fussier than you think when it comes to getting the size of these little treats just right. Apart from checking they had a great tasting product, our client also knew how important it was to understand how big it should be to really deliver against on indulgence among a relatively sophisticated audience. So we sent our interviewers off to give some carefully selected consumers a real treat, and they put the product through its paces across the country. A winning size was identified that not only wowed consumers' taste buds but delivered perfectly on indulgence while hitting all the right business KPIs.
A burger fit for a king

Landscaping & identifying opportunities
Food & Drink Manufacture

Our task was to gain a deep understanding of consumer attitudes and behaviours towards pre-prepared meat products to establish ‘what makes a good burger’ to the consumer. Detailed exploration of purchasing behaviour, decision making and usage in the context of the store environment took place, taking into account merchandising and POS. A number of competitor and NPD burgers were also consumer-evaluated to understand their delivery against the ‘best burger’ standard. Integration of qual discussions, diaries, online quant and central location testing generated the insights and client guidance needed to feed into their volume and loyalty strategy for a major UK grocery retailer in the pre-prepared meats sector.
Christmas presence

Achieving impact on shelf in the seasonal aisle
Food & Drink Manufacture

Standing out from the crowd on a busy seasonal fixture brimming with Christmas chocolate novelties is not easy. Our client wanted to achieve this through a change to the existing iconic pack design while ensuring that consumers still found the pack and the brand endearing. With several possible pack design routes to evaluate we used our online pack testing approach to gauge the ability of each design to generate brand reappraisal and broaden appeal. Even with relatively minor differences between some of the designs we were able to tease out the consumer-noticeable differences that led to selection of a design route with the most potential to secure priority shelf space with retailers during the festive season, leading to increased penetration and strengthened brand equity.
Sweet sixteen

Making sense of the category
Food & Drink Manufacture

Our challenge was to generate real category understanding, and make sense of the decision-making process from the shopper perspective. This was no mean feat against a backdrop of a category where retailer interest is relatively low, shelf space is limited and where a major category driver is price and deals. Unlocking ever-limited shelf space and creating a brand footprint was a key focus. The ultimate goal was to understand how to spotlight our client’s products, enabling them to take leadership in what would potentially prove to be a newly defined shopper segment, and to act as the ‘beacon’ brand for that new segment. Our staged and multi-tool approach incorporating qual, quant and predictive modelling generated a 16 segment solution and the insights necessary for our client to act as credible thought leaders in leveraging dynamic range discussions with the trade.
Opportunity knocks

Making a case for stocking in the on-trade beer channel
Food & Drink Manufacture

We needed to establish if there was any tangible consumer-led support for stocking one of the world’s leading brands of draught beer to the on-trade channel and licensees. Part of our remit was to generate a detailed and clear understanding of the profile of our brand drinkers versus other draught beers drinkers and more importantly how best to leverage this with the trade. We took on the challenge through a relatively complex survey online which took respondents through a multi-stage occasion-led interview. We were able to generate a deep understanding of detailed repertoires across outlets, occasions and party sizes, using these as a back-drop against which our client could develop a trade-led case for the brand in question.
Kneading to get the perfect product

Benchmarking a new bakery product prior to launch
Food & Drink Manufacture

Creating a product that suits the customer’s needs and expectations can be a real challenge. The aim of this project was to establish how a new bakery product would go down among potential consumers, compared with a competitor brand. Hall tests are a great way to speak to potential and existing consumers face to face and truly understand what is important to them, while being able to manage the way the product is served for controlled testing. Numerous product attributes were assessed: from appearance to texture and, of course, overall taste! Presenting respondents with unbranded products enabled us to gather an unbiased assessment of product quality. We were able to highlight which areas to improve in order to increase purchase intent before it was launched into stores.
Oh crumbs ... what a concept!

Identifying winning biscuits concepts
Food & Drink Manufacture

We love working with manufactures at every stage of the innovation process. Sorting out what ideas work and don’t work, before they get too far down the line is just one small part of what we do for our manufacturing clients. As part of a major brand relaunch we helped a major biscuits company sift through a raft of NPD to identify which ones really had some bite and were worth taking forward. By combining our pricing expertise with relatively simple concept testing we identified genuine winners and losers and how to best optimise them, keeping consumers' taste buds in mind, as well as making the most commercial sense.
Pace yourself

Understanding the customer journey and service style preferences in Casual Dining
Retail & Dining

When eating out we have different needs around how quickly we want our food to appear in front of us, often dependent on the location, occasion and circumstances. There’s an increasing appetite for a ‘fast-casual’ dining approach where customers have more control over the speed and style of service they receive, but typically they have to do a bit more of the work themselves eg. leaving the table to order as well as serve themselves for certain elements of the meal. Our client was keen to understand the relevance of a fast-casual approach to its existing full-service customers and set up a trial in some of its restaurants. Through a series of qual Accompanied Dining Trips and quant on-site interviews we were able to compare the two service styles directly in terms of relevance, revisit intention and overall brand impact . The insights generated gave the business a clear idea of whether to, and where to, roll out the fast-casual approach along with granular feedback around improvements needed at each key touchpoint across the customer journey.
Thinking big, keeping focussed

Usage & attitudes in Casual Dining
Retail & Dining

Our client was looking to build future strategy for two brands within its portfolio, based on strengthening brand equity and fixing brand issues among relevant segments of guests for each individual brand. We employed a traditional U&A approach online to generate broad market understanding with an in-built ‘deep dive’ on the two specific brands in question. The outputs provided clear market segmentation and targeting strategy; guidance on brand positioning opportunities and how this would translate in menu changes as well as clear media and communications guidance – all ultimately translating into a strategy that would attract new guests, bring back lapsed guests and build loyalty among existing ones.
Please Sir - I want some more

Food benchmarking in Casual Dining
Retail & Dining

Keeping the menu refreshed is critical to the success of any casual dining restaurant brand. Not only does the menu need to look good, but it needs to feature dishes that really taste good, as well as genuinely deliver to customer expectations. We regularly spend time putting customers in front of the chefs on-site for a major family-oriented casual dining chain to monitor and benchmark the performance of completely new dishes as well as renovated recipes. By pre-recruiting customers and potential customers into the restaurant for controlled product testing we help identify the winning (and losing) dishes and give the development team the steer they need to keep their customers coming back for more.
Alive and kicking

Understanding the role of stores in a multichannel world
Retail & Dining

The rapid rise of online shopping and the reported problems in the high street are creating doubt about the future role of retail stores and their benefits to consumers. Our client – an appointment booking technology company – wanted to understand consumers’ perspectives on the ever-changing retail landscape. In particular, what the benefits of stores are compared with online shopping and what would drive people to stores more often. The opportunities from the research were very positive for our client in terms of the level of interest in using their online technology. Our client’s customers and prospects also learnt how to maximise the benefits of stores for their customers. Thus a win-win-win-win all round! As a consequence, we co-hosted a global webinar with our client’s CMO, which can be accessed here: http://go.bookingbug.com/modern-consumer-2018-webinar-recording.html
Fast not Furious

Understanding opportunities in Fast Casual dining
Retail & Dining

As a nation we are rapidly embracing a ‘fast-casual’ approach to eating out and have seen a plethora of restaurants and eateries popping up which offer an attractive combination of contemporary décor, modern menus, efficient and informal service and affordability. Our client wanted to tap directly into this opportunity by launching a new Fast Casual brand into the UK (the brand exists already in other markets). We engaged in a comprehensive programme of research involving three core strands: an early phase of desk research to understand the UK market and the potential opportunity; qualitative consumer work-shopping to explore the broad proposition in detail and refine it for the UK market in terms of relevance, positioning and tone of voice; a final quantitative phase to generate confidence around the intended launch plans into specific areas of London in the coming year... watch this space!
Sharing means caring

The importance of keeping certain items on your menu on customer perceptions of value for money
Retail & Dining

Some of us love to share our food and some of us hate it. But either way, when it comes to casual dining in a pizza restaurant, you need to offer your customers the choice of a sharing size, whether they end up choosing it or not. We spoke to our client's casual dining customers in depth, in store and online to understand how valuable the sharing pizza was to them and predict what they would do if faced with a series of different price and availability scenarios when eating out. The outputs enabled our client to move forward with a menu that now offers all the choices and value their customers expect at prices that make sense commercially for the business.
All aboard!

Drivers of choice for car ferry travel on the IoW
Retail & Dining

IoW residents got the chance to tell us about the pros and cons of living on an island and more specifically about what matters most to them when it comes to travelling across to The Mainland with a car. Our client was keen to hear about what Islanders want from a car ferry service in terms of the broader on-board experience as well as understanding ticket types and pricing options. A series of qualitative focus groups were conducted with residents living in different areas of the Isle of Wight to understand the motivations and barriers around their choice of route as well as brand, highlighting clear opportunities for future development for one of the main IoW ferry companies.
Putting the 'mmm...' back into the menu

Making your menu pretty as well as proftable
Retail & Dining

Finding the menu design that sells the most profitable dishes and looks good at the same time. In casual dining it’s a difficult balance getting your menu ready for an update that appeals aesthetically, sends the right brand message and sells the dishes that maximise profit margin. One of our casual dining clients found themselves in this very position and so we put their menu through its paces using elements of our staged Menu Optimisation Suite. Combing qual, quant and eye-tracking we identified the optimum menu design for visual appeal, navigability and likely impact on purchasing and commercial KPIs. The winning design route is now helping to satisfy appetites across the full restaurant estate.
Beauty is in the eye of the shopper

Will a 'shop within a shop' work for mainstream beauty?
Retail & Dining

Shopping for beauty products is a very personal and emotive experience. It's not as simple as 'grab and go' even in the context of 'value proposition' and it is vital that shoppers feel comfortable enough and inspired to try out new products while effectively browsing in-store in this category. Our client, best known for clothing retail, wanted to understand how to enhance its offer in the beauty and cosmetics area in store and whether gains could be made through a move to a 'shop within a shop' design. Our mixed-method approach combining qual and quant research, both in-store and online, proved the concept was well-received by customers and could generate incremental cosmetics spend. We went on to test out five different design concepts among a value-driven but very discerning and carefully segmented target audience. We were able to single out a clear ‘winner’ with realistic and actionable recommendations for design improvement prior to concept launch and full store roll-out.
Keeping Little Tummies Happy!

Kids menu and food bench-marking in Casual Dining
Retail & Dining

A major family-orientated chain was reviewing its Kids Menu offer and needed to understand how several newly developed dishes performed against the current counterparts among the target 5-11 year olds. The Kids menu design also needed a refresh and so we employed a creative two-pronged solution: creative workshops with Mums to understand Kids’ food choices and decisions to feed into the menu design plus interactive quantitative food tasting sessions with the children in-restaurant. Clear winning dishes were taken forward for full-scale development and a new menu design generated to coincide with and complement their launch.
'Down with the Kids'

Understanding the Schoolwear market
Retail & Dining

As a leading player in the Schoolwear market our client was keen to understand the process its customers go through in terms of supplier choice as well as their current purchase behaviour, requirements, motivations and experiences. Initial exploratory tele-depth interviews with customers were used to inform a larger quant survey which engaged both customers and non-customers in a detailed feedback exercise. The research was able to generate the necessary insight and actions for our client to be able to forge stronger and better relationships with its existing and potential customer base.
The heat is on!

Menu design, navigation & eye-tracking
Retail & Dining

We all like it to be easy to find what we want on the menu when eating out. As part of an initiative to make the whole dining experience for its guests more enjoyable, we worked with one of the leading casual dining chains to help them assess a new simplified version of their menu. They wanted to tune the level of spiciness of the dishes on the menu to better fit with customer desires as well as ensure it was easy to navigate and, quite literally, identify the ‘hot spots’. Qualitative design workshops with guests led to a new menu being developed – both in format and in design approach. Eye-tracking follow-up sessions then enabled us to check that guests were able to navigate the new menu and find the right dishes ... and at the right spice!
Music to the ears

Assessing the impact of music in the retail environment
Retail & Dining

Creating the right environment for both customers and staff in store is undoubtedly a goal for all retailers, but just how much does music contribute to the experience and is it really worth the investment? We gave one of our trade retail clients a real understanding of what both their customers and staff thought of their in-store radio, and whether it genuinely made the shopping experience or sense or the workplace any better, or indeed any worse. A combined qual and quant approach allowed us to take our research to a level that generated clear guidelines for our client around optimising the approach to the radio, the music and the DJ across their store estate – ultimately seeking to improve the experience of all those who find themselves in and around their stores.
Who pays the ferryman?

Understanding drivers of choice for travel to and from the IoW
Retail & Dining

How do Isle of Wight residents decide which passenger ferry route to take when travelling to the Mainland? This was a question posed to us by one of the main providers of passenger transport to and from the Island in a bid to improve their customer offer in terms of service, facilities, timetable, tickets and onward transport connectivity. Benefiting from having our own national field-force of interviewers we sent a few extra ‘shipmates’ across to the Island and spoke to hundreds of IoW residents in the key towns, as well as talking to passengers mid-crossing on the Solent. The results highlighted the key reasons people choose the transport routes they do as well as identified gaps and opportunities to be fed into the client’s broader planning process for customer improvement initiatives in the longer term.
Can’t cook, won’t cook?

Understanding the motivations and decisions along the takeaway customer journey
Retail & Dining

Working out what to have for an evening meal every night of the week is hard at the best of times, not least when you’re pushed for time, and that’s when a takeaway can take the strain out of the weekly meal planning. We helped one of our favourite casual dining brands get a deep understanding of the motivations behind ordering a takeaway as well as the decision-making process at all key points in the customer journey. Using a mixed qualitative and ethnographic approach we were able to pinpoint real opportunities as well as critical areas for focus for managing the takeaway business moving forward, against the backdrop of a thriving restaurant business.
Getting to the heart & sole

Understanding the outdoor footwear market
Retail & Dining

Those who love the great outdoors need the right shoes to really enjoy it at its best. The outdoor footwear market is an increasingly competitive place to be for some of the more traditional brands. So, the focus of this piece of research was to achieve a clear understanding of who’s buying what when it comes to outdoor shoes, as well as to assess relative performance of the main brands across a spectrum of outdoor activities. An online approach with embedded video response questions enabled customers to ‘talk directly to the client’ while ensuring we captured all the key desired metrics. By layering engaging customer footage and visual mapping with robust data we ensured full engagement from our client’s internal stakeholders. The outputs identified a credible and clear path through what emerged to be a surprisingly cluttered and confused competitor brand landscape.
Who's who?

Profiling shopping centre visitors
Retail & Dining

The insight team of some of the leading shopping centres in the country approached us with a problem. Their existing monthly tracking study profiled the nationalities of those visiting their centres, but they had a strong suspicion that the numbers they were getting did not match reality. We began a monthly tracking study designed to cover all of the key details: place of origin, spend, group composition, reason for visit, age and gender etc. with the ability to explore key regions across the globe. Our work confirmed our client’s suspicions – the mix of nationalities was far more varied than previous research had suggested, and the percentage of foreign visitors notably higher. We’ve conducted over 20,000 interviews in the centres and our work is now the primary data source on foreign tourism.
Going the extra (royal) mile

Identifying opportunities in luxury retail
Retail & Dining

Our challenge was to find out what opportunities there were to go ‘above and beyond’ customer expectations within the context of a multi-channel luxury retail environment. The focus was on understanding how existing and new initiatives could drive perceptions of ‘excellence’ and ultimately spend. By talking to customers through an online platform and incorporating a mechanism for feeding in customer-led ideation, we were able to highlight the opportunities for this major luxury fashion retailer, leading to smarter investment planning.
Making sense of the pound

Understanding discount shoppers’ response to changes in price structure
Retail & Dining

Getting prices right in any retail setting is critical to its overall commercial success, but in discount retailing is undeniably top of the agenda. We’ve been helping what was one of the biggest single price discounters understand the response from shoppers to a change in its pricing structure; the potential implications on brand perceptions and share of spend. Qual group workshops explored different price tier options across different categories as well as understanding shopper response to alternative merchandising scenarios and potential branding implications. This dovetailed into pre and post store exit interviews to give our client the reassurance they needed to launch the new initiative across the estate.
Transforming transportation

Optimising the value of new cloud based logistics services
Finance, Private Equity & Consultancies

Our global private investment client recently acquired a European cloud based logistics services organisation. In order to maximise the potential value of its services to its logistics carrier partners, 12 new technology services were developed. Market Measures was asked to identify the optimum combined packages of these new services and estimate maximum potential sales revenue. A sophisticated Choice-Based-Conjoint interactive model was developed, which enabled our client to evaluate tens of thousands of service package options, whilst calculating the sales value and price sensitivity of each option. The model spanned 9 European markets. Using a 3-tiered solution of Platinum, Gold and Silver packages, the model identified a potential opportunity of over €1 million incremental sales revenue per annum. More subtly, groups of logistics carriers were clustered into likely purchase behaviour based on their individual preference for the new services and their price sensitivity.
Just the one?

Developing a strategy to maximise the value of online wine club members
Finance, Private Equity & Consultancies

Our challenge was simple: to understand what makes our high value customers tick and how we can get more of them. Our client was a successful and fast growing online wine club with interests in the UK and US. Using a mixed-methods approach we mapped the competitive landscape and defined competitive reasons for spend. We understood the behavioural and attitudinal differences between different membership value bands and input into the creation of a strategy to increase share of spend with our client, among existing customers. It was a great project. Fun and interesting to work on with insight which really has made a difference to the future profitability of the business.
Looking out for your investments

Monitoring the performance of retail investment portfolios for Private Equity clients
Finance, Private Equity & Consultancies

Huge sums of money are invested in retailers by Private Equity firms. Making swift, well-informed investment decisions can have multi-million pound implications for our clients. We work with consultants and Private Equity firms to monitor the performance of their investment portfolio from the customer perspective. Using primary research to track customer sentiment, experience and brand perceptions we add an extra layer of visibility to investment decisions. Over the years we have effectively tracked customer sentiment towards prominent High Street retailers and correlated these findings to their underlying financial performance. Genuinely valuable insight with huge potential return on investment.
The Shopper Index

Ongoing monitor of grocery shopping habits in the UK
Finance, Private Equity & Consultancies

Our research provides ongoing visibility to the constantly changing habits of grocery shoppers in the UK. We monitor how, when and where people shop; as well as why they make these choices and how they rate their experiences. Tracked through time our research is used by national commentators and features regularly in The Grocer. This type of ongoing monitor provides a vehicle for monitoring trends as well as addressing more time sensitive issues like the "Sugar Tax" and potential implications of "Brexit" on British retailers. We provide the research expertise to ask the right questions and make the most of the output.
The ABC of canteen design

Consulting Primary School pupils about their canteens
Finance, Private Equity & Consultancies

It’s really important to get the environment just right for young people when they take a break from their lessons at school to have a drink, a meal or a snack in the canteen, and it’s not just about the way it looks! The overall design concept needs to take account of a whole range of other sensory characteristics to ensure the needs of every child are catered for, including noise, space, congestion, comfort etc. With key personnel involved from the design agency, the catering supplier and the schools themselves, we ran a series of exploratory workshops to find out what works and doesn’t work for Primary School pupils when it comes to their canteen. The sessions were creative, engaging and really good fun for all parties involved, with outputs that included clear design guidelines moving forward as well as some ‘quick wins’ for the schools directly involved in the consultation process.
Make mine a pint!

Recruiting a rapid response panel
Field, Tab & Analytics

Our brief was to set up a panel of brand loyal regular on-trade drinkers, to enable our client to evaluate a number of possible formulations for further larger scale quantitative testing. Segmentation work had previously been carried out to identify core consumers and the client was keen to test out new recipes with them in order to get an “expert” understanding of what worked and what didn’t. Using our fieldwork team we were able to recruit a selection of target respondents and to engage them to participate in regular on-site tasting sessions and group discussions over a number of weeks. This allowed adjustments and modifications to the products to be made and re-assessed in real time.
Who's out shopping?

Visitor profiling
Field, Tab & Analytics

Our interviewers can regularly be found at shopping centres and retail parks up and down the country, tablets at the ready. From Scotland to Kent and from Essex to Wales, they conduct on and offline surveys with shoppers via our bespoke research app. Capturing up-to-the-minute visitor profiles and measuring specific performance indicators for comparisons across time and against other retail centres. Our coverage across the UK allows us to access multiple sites in real time. Our offline app means we can still research the weird and wonderful locations where 3G and Wi-Fi connections are not always available.
Love thy neighbour

Analysing residents' survey data
Field, Tab & Analytics

We don’t always have to collect survey data ourselves, and are more than happy to offer our analysis capabilities to help some of our clients interrogate and report on data that they already have, but who don’t necessarily have the resources to analyse themselves. We’ve been working with local councils to help them make sense of the thousands of responses they get from their local residents through their own survey tool, to understand how the services in the local community have been changing over the years. We generate insights that point the local council in the right direction in terms of tracking where they need to focus their efforts; which pockets of the community they need to communicate better with and what to tell them about.

Clever stuff

Featured work

Good work makes happy clients

Plus many more…