By Don Phipps
Recently, Applied assisted a large Korean packaged goods company in an In-House Usage Test (IHUT) on frozen food items, one that would serve as an entrée and the other as a snack. The test delivered results that assisted the company in making decisions regarding pricing, branding, claims, ingredients, amount of food in the package, type of package, channel selection, and other product launch information.
The first step in this process was to recruit participants for the IHUT. The project required participants to access a web community and do daily activities such as creating videos or taking photos of their cooking techniques, demonstrating how they prepared and cooked food, and showing what their shopping experiences were like. In addition, participants received food packages for evaluation. One test required participants to cook the food in two separate ways and compare them based on preference. Finally, participants had to agree to participate in 60-minute in-depth interviews, so that the company could understand in more depth and detail how participants decided on types of food to purchase, what influenced their purchases, the frequency of their purchases for various food types, food usage and occasion characteristics, and how they decided on where to buy the food under evaluation.
Applied monitored daily activities to ensure participation. As is typical with these kinds of studies, participants sometimes drop out, so Applied over-recruited so that participant substitution could occur without too much trouble. Clients were actively involved, not only in shipping frozen test products to Applied’s Los Angeles office (which Applied subsequently sent to participants), but also in monitoring activities and gathering data as available.
Regarding the IDIs, Don Phipps, a data scientist and qualitative research expert, conducted the hour-long interviews. The interviews took place on the Zoom web platform. Interviews took place at odd hours and on weekends as needed. Clients were able to join and observe the interview and offer questions as needed to get any information required. Phipps also reviewed the interview guide and offered specific guidance that converted the more formal, academic questions originally supplied by the client to conversational questions that encouraged response rather than feeling like test questions.
This combination of IHUT, web community, and IDIs revealed fascinating insights into consumer behavior – not just what and how participants were making selections for food, but why participants made these choices and what they felt about competitor products. Additionally, the sample size of 50 IDIs was robust enough that important trends on consumer usage and preference emerged. Finally, the client gained valuable data on the test product and its unusual and potentially ground-breaking ingredients.
Holding everything together was a dedication by both the client research team and Applied’s project staff to gathering data in a logical and extensive manner. The willingness to work at odd hours was also a plus, as Korean time and USA time made meetings and participation at times awkward. Still both teams persevered, bringing the project to a successful completion. This willingness and dedication to task was a critical factor in delivering to the client the necessary information to create a product launch that minimized risk and gave the product an improved probability of success.