Business challenge
A large supermarket chain urgently needed to review its prepared salad offering in light of revenue declines following changes to the category.
Research was required in a number of areas to inform how best to restructure the category to revive its profitability. We wanted to establish and quantify the size of each mission and occasion, and also to understand how big the ‘lunchtime’ occasion really is and why people had moved away from the supermarket’s own label prepared salad range in recent months.
What we did
To enable us to get a rounded picture of the prepared salad shopping process, 9 accompanied shops and approximately 70 in-store observations took place over 6 stores. These provided in-depth information on reasons for behaviour and choices made.
The quantitative stage consisted of 1,200 online interviews conducted following the initial shopper research. We utilised trade-off techniques to test the impact of the premium tier. 2 focus groups were conducted in parallel with the quantitative stage, enabling us to build on the key findings of the survey as they came in.
Outcome
We were able to provide comprehensive recommendations to all the objectives. As a result, our client had a clearer view on the necessary strategy to implement for the prepared salads category moving forward, and supportive evidence to submit to stores in the future.