New meat products testing Shopper 360 case study

Summary

This project builds on a current MLA marketing project with Lumaten (D.CSI.2020) to utilise a virtual supermarket platform to build, test and understand shoppers response to five new MLA value added meat product concepts.

The output required is to derive insights to help determine which category the brand owner should sell the product in, and to identify the key call-outs in a case study to translate insights from a virtual supermarket testing the value proposition and understanding the customer in-store journey.

Objectives

The objectives of this project were to:

• build and test five concepts provided by MLA through the shopper 360 framework
• report on the key findings and provide an overview of the approach as a case study Final Report that introduces product development and insights via virtual supermarkets.

Key findings

• Based on Shopper 360, Better beef and snack 3 were identified as the lead innovations and provided direction on how to further enhance these propositions.
• In contrast, if traditional panel methods had been used, Super Beef and Snack 2 instead may have been selected based on top 2 box results along with other “claimed” indicators.
• Once these products were merchandized in the full retail context, they did not engage shoppers and therefore would likely have failed upon launch.
• This new technology enables innovation to be tested earlier in the development process, with a higher degree of accuracy and insight.

Benefits to industry

The case study demonstrated the ability for Shopper 360 to predict the success of innovation, faster, more accurately and with more actionable insight than traditional research methodologies.

Shopper 360 generates quantitative data on each step of the shopper journey and can identify where shoppers either engage or reject products, enabling a decrease in wasted product innovation involving food waste, time impacts and rework.

MLA action

• Explore tools such as virtual planograms to test new meat-based concepts and “fail fast”.
• Capture insights that can shape future portfolio of strategic investments for higher valued usages and occasions of red meat inclusion. This includes other trading departments beyond fresh meat in supermarkets such as snacking condolers and delicatessen hang sell.

Future research

Developing case studies to present industry with alternative ways to test minimum viable product concepts and understand customer journey mapping other than in-market launch has the potential to make Australian red meat innovators and brand owners more agile to include voice of customer insights as part of the design process.

Now that basic virtual planograms have been developed, inserting new “prototypes” can be a faster build. Further, consideration for how might Australian based red meat brand owners simulate market testing in overseas markets could mean future research to set up a “USA or Asian” style supermarket format again is possible.