Global Ice Cream R&D Unit

Case Study 2019

Early Stage ConceptQualification

Nestlé

Business Challenge

Nestlé’s Global Ice Cream R&D Unit in California, USA wanted to speed up the process of evaluating and qualifying early stage concepts globally in order to streamline the process from idea to market.

Main targets:

ü Qualify more concepts fasterü Reduce time-to-market for new

products

2

The Research

In order to make a standard framework that could be used continuously, a simple and efficient questionnaire was developed standardizing the different parts. This allowed the setup to be flexible with regards to the number of concepts tested from time to time.

7200 respondents

8 global markets

Frequentice cream

eaters

For the specific test, 9 different concepts were tested in 8 global key markets. Nestlé developed the questionnaire in English and Opeepl handled translations and scripting for 8different markets. 900 interviews were performed per market amongst frequent ice cream eaters - 300 for each concept cluster.

3

The Research Framework

CONCEPT2

CONCEPT 1

CONCEPT3

Q1:PURSCHASE INTENT

Q2:ASSOCIATIONS

Q1:PURSCHASE INTENT

Q2:ASSOCIATIONS

Q1:PURSCHASE INTENT

Q2:ASSOCIATIONS

Q3:FAVOURITE CONCEPT

300 respondents

CONCEPT5

CONCEPT 4

CONCEPT6

Q1:PURSCHASE INTENT

Q2:ASSOCIATIONS

Q1:PURSCHASE INTENT

Q2:ASSOCIATIONS

Q1:PURSCHASE INTENT

Q2:ASSOCIATIONS

Q3:FAVOURITE CONCEPT

300 respondents

CONCEPT8

CONCEPT 7

CONCEPT9

Q1:PURSCHASE INTENT

Q2:ASSOCIATIONS

Q1:PURSCHASE INTENT

Q2:ASSOCIATIONS

Q1:PURSCHASE INTENT

Q2:ASSOCIATIONS

Q3:FAVOURITE CONCEPT

300 respondents

The questionnaire included a respondent filtering part + sections of concept evaluations based on only 2 standard questions per concept. Each respondent was only exposed to 3 concepts and the concepts were rotated continuously.

4

5

The concepts were shortly described and pictured in mock-ups. The concept evaluations were focused on immediate purchase intent and concept associations. The 6 languages survey and concept translations, scripting and setup of 8 questionnaires and sampling of 7200 interviews took 10 days in total.

The Research

5

The Results

Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 Concept 4 Concept 5 Concept 6 Concept 7 Concept 8 Concept 9Country A XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX%Country B XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX%Country C XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX%Country D XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX%Country E XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX%Country F XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX%Country G XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX%Country H XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX% XX%

Highest per market

Medium per market

Lowest per market6

Via Opeepl's online reporting system, Nestlé was able to follow all results live and start analysis even before the sampling was completed. To compare the concept evaluation across the 8 markets, data was exported and merged into a single very over-viewable heatmap concluding the popularity of each concept. The heatmap visualization of the results made it easy to conclude that 3 concepts performed well in all 8 markets while further 2 performed well in several markets.

The Implementation

7

Nestlé used the results to decide which concepts to focus on going forward in the concept development process and which concepts to discard.

Furthermore, the standardized early stage concept testing has become an internal standard to evaluate all future concepts before going into later stages of concept development.

Global Ice Cream R&D Unit

Nestlé Research Partner:James Romans

Consumer Sensory Insights ManagerNestlé R&D Center Inc

Opeepl Research Partner:Morten Korch-Haahr

Co-Founder & CEOOpeepl

Nestlé