Six years ago Levercliff stepped gently into the world of consumer research as a service provider with the recruitment of our Consumer Insights Manager, Clair Prior.
Since then, our growing consumer team has delivered a huge range of research projects for an enviable roster of brands which emphasises the value suppliers see in understanding their consumers.
Levercliff’s 15th UK Quarterly Consumer Insight Tracker will be released in late October. It’s completely free – if you’d like a no strings copy, please contact Clair Prior.
There are many excellent reasons to invest in consumer research, one of the most common perhaps being to quantify interest in a new product concept to justify conclusive action e.g. investment in new kit, marketing budget, or persuading a customer to take a specific course of action.
Only last week did we have one such conclusive result, with Speciality Breads securing its 1st listing for a brand new frozen bread concept which will launch in 2025 – watch this space.
Given my commercial background, what I most look forward to when we get research findings back is the narrative it gives our client’s teams, which in turn they give to their buyers. We all know supplier meetings with buyers are increasingly infrequent and too often online, therefore when we have their attention we’ve got to make that time count and add as much value as possible, more than just getting promotions confirmed and prices agreed.
A feature about the selling-in deck we created with the Speciality Breads team was that it was dominated by the consumer insights backing up the concept - in fact, no new category data was bought. An additional feature was its attractiveness, well designed by Dan Beck using all his experience as master storyteller but also using our continuous focus on training our teams in presentation quality with the likes of Andrew Doyle and Jack Milner.
Speciality Breads' success illustrates why consumer research is increasingly part of almost every piece of work we do for clients under the broader banner of category management. For challenger brands in particular, or indeed any brand which sits alongside the FMCG branded giants that can dominate certain categories with distribution/promotion-led strategies (think confectionery, or crisps, or biscuits), there is no more powerful way to get a customer’s attention than product and brand plans informed by a consumer-led narrative.
To subscribe to our newsletter for more Food & Drink News and Insights, complete the subscription form here. Alternatively follow us on LinkedIn
Written by Fintan O'Leary, Executive Chairman
.jpg)
