Overview

A new product has launched. But are consumers experiencing it as the brand intended?

Our client, an established drinks brand, had introduced a new variant designed to be served differently, helping the brand expand into a wider range of consumption occasions. The team wanted to understand how consumers encountered, purchased and consumed both the original product and the new addition, whether they recognised the new proposition and whether it was broadening the brand’s relevance.

Asking people what they thought of the launch wouldn’t reveal the whole picture. The team needed to understand what had actually happened. What drew attention, how people interpreted the proposition and how those first impressions shaped the subsequent drinking experience.

Approach

People don’t experience a launch as a marketing plan. They encounter a bottle, notice something on a menu or hear a recommendation. That starting point can shape everything that follows.

We conducted individual depth interviews with recent purchasers of the product, covering purchases in shops and in pubs and bars. Recruiting on actual behaviour gave us real experiences to explore, rather than hypothetical reactions to the proposition.

Using ReTrack™, we relived a recent purchase and the subsequent consumption occasion. We explored what caught their attention and how the purchase decision unfolded, before exploring how they prepared, served and experienced the drink.

We also relived their first encounter with the product. This helped us understand how the initial introduction framed the product and informed what people did next. We then used Association Mapping to explore the associations attached to each product and the wider brand.

The sequence mattered. Starting with actual experiences reduced the risk of later questions putting ideas into people’s minds that hadn’t influenced the original decision.

Output

The research identified where the new proposition was getting lost between first encounter, purchase and consumption, and how this limited its potential to broaden the brand’s relevance.

By connecting consumers’ actual experiences with the psychology behind them, we explained why these issues were occurring. This included how existing associations, attention and the context of discovery shaped interpretation and subsequent behaviour.

These insights gave the client clear direction on what needed to change in communication and activation to help consumers understand and experience the proposition as intended. We also established where different purchase environments required different support.

The result was a clearer set of priorities for supporting the launch and expanding consumption occasions, whilst retaining the strengths of the established brand.