Establishing an Asian snack brand in the UK

FROM THE CLIENT

THE RESEARCH BRIEF

Understanding UK grocery shopper perspectives about brands, products, and ranges in the world food aisle to establish an Asian snacking brand and product range in UK grocery retailers. Assessing awareness, appeal, usage, packaging and carrying out a product trial.

THE METHODOLOGY

Pre-task – tech solution provided by Brand Jar   

1. Grocery retailer shopping mission – visit the world food aisle to review Asian snacking products and ranges.  Share perspectives brands and products that are appealing and unappealing, focusing on packaging, size, branding, on-pack design, language, claims, flavours and purchase intent.
2. In-home product test – consumer experience and taste-testing of four snacking products. Using mobile-first platform, Brand Jar, participants shared their thoughts and opinions on appeal, packaging ergonomics, branding, on-pack design, eating and taste experience. Snacks were ranked from ‘most liked to ‘least liked’ to conclude the testing.

Focus groups
Six groups of lead household grocery shoppers to take party in an online deep dive discussion to reveal participant’s shopping and snacking habits, openness to trial, associations, opportunities and barriers to purchasing Asian snacks. Packaging design, content, labelling, and format were debated aligned to frequency, occasion, and overall appeal.   

Accompanied shop
Uncovering shopping behaviours pre-during and post the World Foods Aisle. Exploring in aisle, merchandising, product cues, on-shelf appeal, purchase prompts, and decision making. 

Participants were – 

Segmented into pre-family, young family, and older family   
Main or joint food shopper for their household
Spread of preferred supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Asda, M&S, Aldi, Lidl and Waitrose  
World Food aisle shoppers, from occasional to frequent 
Open-minded buyers of a range of savoury snacks
Aged 18 and over 
Mix of genders
UK regional spread
Representative of UK ethnicity population mix

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‘At every stage this research has returned powerful insights that have been game changing. The results have provided confidence in approaching potential stockists as we now know the market like the back of our hand.’

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DELIVERED BY BEAM  

THE CHALLENGES  

The world food aisle is one of the few remaining areas of supermarket real estate, without a highly curated feel. Overwhelming, confusing, and over or under-stocked, it contains ‘ethnic foods’ in one space. With growing globalisation, diversity across consumer groups, and influence to purchase and trial, there are huge opportunities for world food brands.  

The World Food Aisle often presents barriers to UK shoppers. Common and widely-recognised visual cues like (red for ready salted crisps or Coca-Cola), do not exist, or are too difficult to decipher for shoppers. It makes breaking through with unfamiliar brands, products, and packaging a real challenge. 
The barriers are not limited to overwhelmed shoppers, category managers and merchandisers also face serious challenges delivering NPD on supermarket shelves.     

Complexity, cost, and competition for marketing support poses a key challenge for ‘ethnic’ products. Support for World Foods is often reserved for religious festivities, or local marketing campaigns in line with the demographics of shoppers at a particular supermarket. This is also true for brands pitching their product – facetime with a category manager can be difficult, even more so if you don’t have insights and data to support the business case for getting your product on the shelf.   

Establishing a detailed understanding of how open-minded, UK consumers navigate and make purchase decisions within the World Food Aisle would be essential in identifying how a brand could break through, establish products and grow range within this category.  

BEAM DELIVERED 

With a comprehensive methodology, delivery of a 360-degree view of the barriers was BEAM’s focus.  Accurate and honest recruitment that delivered quality completes ensured the richest outcomes and enhanced the research reporting.  

Pre-task – Often neglected or under-optimised, BEAM saw an opportunity to enhance the pre-task beyond ‘warming- up’ participants. In-store and in-aisle photo and video capture through the eyes of genuine shoppers would provide valuable data to inform the following focus groups and associated collateral to bring reporting to life. Using Brand Jar as the tech solution provided benefits for both the participants and client – 

• Participants received instructions and questions via WhatsApp making each process simple, convenient, and fast to complete. In-store image sharing would provide a snapshot, whilst the product taste test would provide a richer, qualitative source of insight. The step-by-step instructions and questions ensured participants experienced each product in-hand, with guided consideration of packaging format, design, feel and ease of use, product smell, texture, and mouthfeel BEFORE sharing their opinions on taste and flavour. This ensured robust nuanced responses. 
• The research team and client were able to view participant data in real-time in the Brand Jar platform. With built-in AI summary tools, data filtering and visualisation, it was quick and easy to identify key themes. These insights were used to shape and enrich the focus group discussion guides within a few days.

Focus groups – with a pre-task complete, participants had already started to consider the category in detail. Using a discussion guide informed by pre-task findings, the focus groups were simple to facilitate, and discussions moved with pace to reveal richer, more valuable insights.  

Accompanied shops – findings established in the preceding stages provided clear cues for identifying recognised shopper behaviour in-store, and in-aisle during observation. Conscious decision-making, and discreet impulses were identified during the navigation, consideration, selection and transaction/purchase journey. 

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THE CONCLUSION  

The comprehensive exploration of a category was executed to maximise all possible value for the client by delivering deep insights with clear actions for improvement and direction. This is a scalable solution for brands of any size, with varied project budgets, that effectively helps to shape brand propositions, products, and approaches.  

The speed of participant completion, and the ability to access real-time in-platform results using Brand Jar’s platform, delivered results in hours, not days. The fast pace of this litmus test research can be powerful for all stake holders – researchers have information to improve every stage of the methodology and end clients can access early indications and immediate results.  

This project demonstrated how complex, multi-stage projects, when approached with an innovative mindset, can be executed with simplicity and acute attention to detail. The results are powerful actionable insights that exceeded the expectations of all stakeholders.

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Want to understand more about BEAM’s work with FMCG brands? Read a case study on a ‘UK soft drink challenger brand’

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