V.RMH.0113 - Fast prototyping value added meat products – A pilot trial of Watch Me Think mobile video ethnography for product and concept testing

Summary

MLA commissioned three pilot projects with Watch Me Think. One of these pilots involved a qualitative in-home usage test prior to the product being launched and the other two involved qualitative concept tests. Both approaches have been successfully used with FMCG companies worldwide to answer key business questions that occur at different stages of the innovation process.

For Meat Chips a Pre-launch Consumer Review was conducted, which is one of WMT’s lean solutions co-created with FMCG clients to deliver fast and affordable learning from the consumers themselves about what elements of the marketing mix need optimizing before it is progressed to a commercialization phase, or which to monitor after launch.

In a mobile ethnography pre-launch product review, product samples are sent to the participants and they are asked to self-record videos of their experience of trying the product in a normal usage occasion. The Watch Me Think research team observe all the video data multiple times and use this to collate their findings and recommendations.

For Wellness Meat and Sustainable Meat, a concept test was conducted.
In a mobile ethnography concept test, stimulus is sent to the participants and they are asked to self-record videos as they respond to the stimulus.

Each piece of stimulus is evaluated first in the context of their current repertoire and secondly in relation to each other so the client can see plainly what’s working and what’s not working around appeal, relevance, uniqueness and whether the language used to communicate the proposition resonates and is believable for the target audience, or not. This step in the innovation process is critical to ensure that concepts going into quantitative testing are sense-checked by consumers so assessment is made on the idea itself and not the presentation of the idea.

Objectives

The primary objective of this project was to investigate whether mobile ethnography can help better understand the consumer experience of products and concepts on projects MLA supports than can be achieved by traditional qualitative methodologies such as focus groups.

The key questions the project hoped to answer were:

1. Does mobile ethnography provide an opportunity to observe genuine pain points and pleasures of consumers, with regard to the meat category?
2. Does mobile ethnography provide an opportunity to hear how consumers naturally talk about meat, benefits and sustainability that could help identify more relevant messaging?
3. Identify where mobile ethnography provides the most benefits during theinnovation process (i.e. concept testing, physical samples or both)
4. Does mobile ethnography provide additional insights than those achieved with traditional methodologies such as focus groups?

Key findings

• Red Meat still plays a central role for consumers even if they are trying to reduce the amount they eat. There is a genuine need around helping consumers feel “less bad” about eating the red meat they have always enjoyed and want to continue to enjoy.
• Snacking is indeed a fertile space for meat to play in because of the swell in interest of high protein, low sugar and gluten-free. The love of savoury snacks has been built around exposure to potato chips and the way that category has blossomed. Those in the red meat space could learn a lot from observing how the potato chip category has evolved with macro trends around authenticity, health, provenance, and simplicity.
• It is never too early to test product ideas with target consumers. Investing a little time and money at the beginning of the innovation process, if set up with clear hypotheses, will save time and money in multiple iterations of prototypes and concepts in the long run.

Benefits to industry

Broadly speaking, this project demonstrates to industry partners that there is more than one way to get feedback from consumers, and that not every piece of consumer research has to take months and require a large budget. This project also highlighted that different methodologies and approaches will give different answers and that a variety of approaches should be considered every time an industry partner has a business challenge that requires consumer input. Sometimes focus groups are employed because they are familiar and stakeholders feel more in control as they sit behind the glass, but asking consumers to explain what they like and don’t like and why in front of a peer group and with the influence of even the best moderator is never going to reveal the nuance of truth that occurs in one’s own time and place, using a product as they normally would, with all the extenuating factors playing into their response. Seeing is believing, even if in a small sample size of target consumers - seeing and hearing at the same time evokes a call to action.

MLA action

Report to be shared on the MLA R&D website and introduction's are to be facilitated to interested research partners.

Future research

When testing products for launch as a 'disaster check,' the stimulus should be as close to market quality as possible and should be in as near-finished packaging as possible and with one proposition to provide context. In this case a Pre-Launch Consumer Review lean solution is an appropriate approach and will be a very cost effective and efficient way of:
a) ensuring the concept bundle is ready for launch
b) provides the producer with compelling consumer footage to share with retailers.