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A lot of research is already going on this front to support brands in take the right decisions for successful product delivery. However, multiple products are getting added to the market on regular basis and due to this brands are forced to do research more often to check for any threat from competitors or cannibalization of their products. Also, with this increased demand for research, there comes a cost and timeline that makes product managers and research teams look for alternates that are cost-effective and efficient in terms of time.
For any manufacturer, the most important task is to understand how consumers perceive their products, how they buy them or their alternatives, and what they usually see in a product before purchasing it. A lot of brands do real tests with in-store and physical product exposures to their prospective customers. This methodology works well as customer functional needs and emotional aspects are thoroughly recorded and an inline product strategy is developed for the market.
Virtual Shelf Product Research
The virtual shelf is a research methodology that is adapted well to understand real consumer behavior. With a Virtual-shelf, consumers participate in a virtually simulated shopping exercise with their PC or Mobile screen transformed into a marketplace with different shelf displays. A participant can interact with each SKU on the screen and access information like product name, brand name, price, size, pack type, offers, etc. like a real-world shopping exercise. The interaction with products helps the participant to know the product exactly like an In-store product exposure and give his/her opinion on products that look interesting.
To understand consumer behavior a static 'Virtual Shelf' does not seem to be a better solution as this shows only one scenario with fixed products and fixed prices. Consumers see a lot of shopping scenarios when they go out to different stores. So to get more realistic insights, 'Virtual Shelf' is being executed with the addition of Conjoint Analysis (also known as a trade-off analysis). With the addition of conjoint analysis, a series of real-life shopping situations are shown with products getting exposures on all possible configurations(size, pack type, price, etc.) across different rows of the shelf.
With this powerful combination following research needs can be met :
1. Price Pack Architecture - Considered as the most valuable research insights in CPG and FMCG domains. It helps the decision maker to keep eye on the preferences of their products and aid price changes depending on the market scenarios. This also helps the researcher identify consumer preference across types of packs (E.g. in the beverage industry - is the pet bottle more preferred than a glass bottle or tetra pack?), Optimal Volume/ Optimal Grammage of packs which will realize maximum revenue for the manufactures e.g. profitability proposition between a 330ml can vs a 250m can.
2. Current vs New products - It is very important to understand how the products of interest are performing in the market and whether is there any need to pull out / replace any current product. This can be achieved by showing the consumers new products which are still not in the market and whether they will be preferred or not by the consumers instead of older products. Or will they cannibalize any existing product of their portfolio? This also helps in getting the optimal prices of new products and creating pricing strategies to negate any impact of competitors pricing changes or new SKU introductions. It is helpful in instances where manufacturers are in a fix to choose among different new flavor options to be introduced.
3. Consumer psychological behavior - Consumers tend to get confused in making decisions when they see a lot of options. They look out for some alternatives but in the end, they chose the ones that make sense to them. To understand more about their shopping behavior following insights are generated:
a. Which products they viewed
b. Which product they finally purchased
c. Which products were considered and not purchased
d. The reason for rejection
e. How much time they spent on each product and overall shopping exercise
f. How much do they like to spend
4. Packaging test - Packaging is considered an important aspect of any product and plays a big role in a purchase decision. If the product is of high quality but the packaging is poor, there is a high probability of rejection. Companies spend a lot of money and thoughts to make the packaging attractive for any product. The packaging test is done by displaying the different packages (test packages) on different shelf positions to respondents and understanding which pack type is getting more attention. Follow-up questions are also introduced to know why any packaging was selected or not selected.
With the changing research space, newer methodologies are exploring areas that were untouched earlier and with advancements in virtual reality, research needs to alter the traditional methodologies.
So, next time you feel that there is a need to test your products with consumers in a real market scenario, give 'Virtual Shelves' backed by Conjoint a try. Many brands in the FMCG domain are reaping the benefits of its speed, cost efficiencies and not to mention quality of insights.
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