INNOVATION, INNOVATION
Innovation, innovation
Mike Faers, ex-McDonalds food chief explains how to ensure consumer insight is at the heart of your innovation
Consumer insight is a rich source of information to help drive truly innovative ideas and yet so often in business there is either not enough, the wrong type or too much that no-one knows what to do with it.
consumer insight is used within your innovation process to help fuel ideas for growth. An example of consumer
T
insight being a core priority within a business can be seen at Pedigree dog food in China where employees are encouraged to bring their dogs to work. The dogs attend meetings, there are play pens and there is even a series of benefits and incentives for employees who own dogs. One manager even held out on recruiting for a key post until he found a person who was a dog owner – this is truly living and breathing your consumer! Ideally all employees working
on a product or category would be within the target demographic group and at least users of the product. However, for most businesses this is quite often unrealistic and therefore ‘consumer empathy’ or understanding your consumers changing behaviour and attitudes should be at the heart of your innovation planning and are critical for the success of new products.
WHAT IS CONSUMER INSIGHT? Customer insight is a process that begins with knowing and understanding what your consumers want, and ends with proof of their satisfaction with your products and your organisation. It includes: • Identifying consumer needs and expectations - not only of your products and services, but
his issue I am going to be discussing how to ensure the right level of
also of the level of service you should provide; • Examining your processes and functions to ensure they are consumer-centric; • Encouraging and enabling your employees to be able to focus entirely on the consumer; • Implementing actions to improve the consumer experience; • Measuring internal performance, consumer behaviour and consumer perception to determine what further action is required.
HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW? • Learn how to use existing research reports to identify the demographics of your consumers and segment them to allow for easier NPD, marketing and promotion. Who are your priority consumers? • Talk to other experienced managers and agencies and broadcast the voice of the customer in the company.
HOW TO BUILD NEW UNDERSTANDING? • Immerse yourself in your consumers world; Meet consumers face to face, watch them, listen to them, talk to them, do what they do, go where they go, shop where they shop and read what they read. Qualitative research is as important as quantitative to give true understanding for differing consumer segments and should be category specific. How do they view our business, category and brands? Have knowledge of the
competition (where possible) – how are consumers comparing and making their decisions? What are their marketing strategies – how does that affect our category and brands? Who are our direct and indirect competition and what are their strengths and weaknesses? • Quantify consumer benefits -
FMCGNews.co.uk | FMCG News | 41
Understand the structure of today’s market; measure segment sizes; weight the relative importance of consumer benefits; plot current performance against consumer needs. How are they making their buying decisions? What are their key triggers? • Identify emerging trends • Set up task forces, consumer panels, research groups, invite trend experts; Meet leading edge consumers who may be the leading voices within your categories and communities; Involve outsiders – manufacturers, new technologies, new packaging and new shopping channels; Look to other countries and categories and trawl other markets and categories for new ideas. • Stay close to technology How are consumers shopping, and importantly, researching their decisions? What are the marketing/ promotional opportunities through new technology? • Build a stimulating physical environment - Ensure available facilities to meet consumers and have cross functional brainstorms (NPD, Marketing, Technical, Research, etc.) • Encourage idea champions Respond positively to people’s suggestions; Create a forum to share new ideas, recognise and reward new ideas and don’t punish
Mike says that the most savvy business owners tap into consumer insight in planning their business strategies
failure; Enable experimentation and exploration; Put money aside in budgets to fund experiments, give people time and freedom to explore new ideas. • Consider strategy - Communicate category strategy across the business and focus idea generation in areas of strategic priority but overall make sure strategy inspires rather than limits! • Focus on opportunities - Prioritise what might be rather than what was; Explore vague ideas aswell as clearly defined ones; Look for big changes and be prepared to live with uncertainty. • Collaborate with colleagues Go on teambuilding exercises cross-category to encourage new ideas; Inject fun into the business to break down barriers. • Keep it up! Don’t lose momentum on all the points above… By including these points within
your innovation process it should help you understand who you should be targeting, give you an understanding of consumer behaviour and most importantly give you plenty of new ideas to fuel the NPD funnel and ensure more successful product roll outs.
Mike Faers is the founder of agency Food Innovation Solutions. For more information visit
www.foodinnovation
solutions.com.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52