Listening to Consumer Behavior Helps Develop New Product Innovations
At A GLANCE:
113 Industries is a technology-driven services company that analyzes enormous volumes of social media data to find consumer needs and consumption behaviors that drive the development of game changing products and services for Fortune 500 companies. While doing work with Ocean Spray, the team at 113 identified several unexpected consumer trends in regards to their attitudes and consumption around cranberry juice. The insights lead to new products and branding strategy and results that exceeded their expectations.
RESULTS:
Created two new product lines and gained additional shelf space in the stores
Campaign results have exceeded all expectations for new product introductions
Expanded beyond the traditional breakfast juice marketCHALLENGE:
Overcoming the Limitations of Traditional Focus Groups
Finding the next $100 million-dollar idea is never easy. According to Nielsen Research, 85% of products launched fail to reach $50M in revenue within three years. Even successful brands popular with consumers can struggle to innovate to meet the changing needs and preferences of their consumers.
The challenge could be that traditional focus groups often let 15 people in a room decide what 15 million would buy. Social media analytics provides brands a more complete focus group with hundreds of thousands, even millions of opinions from which to identify consumer trends, opinions, and even new product ideas.
Unlike traditional innovation processes based on consumer panels and focus groups, organic consumer conversations across online platforms identify consumers’ attitudes, behaviors, psychology and motivations when engaging with a product. This process generates a more accurate profile of the consumers, their compensating behaviors and most importantly, their unarticulated needs.
113 Industries Founder & President, Anupam Singh, and Partnership Development Liaison, Nikhil Singh, use the depth of NetBase social data and to better understand consumer attitudes and preferences. The NetBase API allows 113 Industries to combine robust, real-time data with IBM Watson to understand user psychology and allow for innovative, personalized social campaigns.
SOLUTION:
Identifying the Next $100 Million Beverage Line
When Ocean Spray contacted 113 Industries, the morning juice market was in decline. The beverage company needed a new strategy to boost sales, but continuing to focus on the shrinking morning juice market wasn’t the answer. Traditionally, new juice offerings consist of extending a product line with new flavors profiles, such as Cran-Grape or Cran-Apple but simply adding new flavors seemed like a strategy that would yield minimal impact for growing revenue. Ocean Spray needed a game changer.
By analyzing 150,000 conversations around cranberry juice, the 113 Industries team focused on 7,748 conversations and identified 3 recurring consumer behaviors that would inform new product innovation and transform Ocean Spray’s product line to serve new markets without competition from traditional juices—like apple and orange juice.
- Consumers were actively sharing their love of cranberry juice but also the embarrassment associated with the perception that drinking cranberry juice was to improve urinary tract health
- Consumers were drinking cranberry juice during non-breakfast hours. Social listening identified that women were drinking cranberry juice classes to hydrate themselves after Zumba classes
- In lieu of a cocktail, women were enjoying the rich texture and color of cranberry juice in a wine glass as an evening drink without the alcohol
RESULTS:
Consumer Insights Help Expand Beyond the Traditional Juice Market
Rather than competing for attention in the breakfast juice market, the strategists at 113 took these new consumer insights into consideration and hosted a design workshop to create new products that incorporated the health benefits of cranberry juice while addressing new day parts unmet by traditional juice products. As a result, the company created 2 new product lines—Ocean Spray Pact, cranberry infused water, and Ocean Spray Mocktails.
Using a detailed profile of their new target consumer, Ocean Spray shifted their branding and advertising of these exciting new products from their traditional cranberry farmers to one in which active female consumers were enjoying Ocean Spray products. The new products and branding strategy allowed Ocean Spray to gain additional shelf space in the stores as well as expand beyond the traditional breakfast juice market. Results have exceeded all expectations for new product introductions and have delivered the best results of any new product in Ocean Spray’s recent history, well on their way to a new $100M+ revenue stream.
Through social listening we uncover consumer behaviors, needs and white spaces. Using these behaviors, needs and strategies, we help our customers innovate and create actionable plans to develop new products and services that are instantly adopted and lead to immediate success for our clients.
Razi Imam
Co-Founder and CEO, 113 Industries
Download a PDF of the Ocean Spray case study
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