How we're working around Covid-19

Covid-19 has given us the opportunity to innovate some of our processes and get creative with our tried & true research approaches. Here are two examples that everyone can learn from:

1) Online Research Works. We’ve moved all of our qualitative work online this spring - from Ethnographies to Co-Creation sessions and we’re preparing for a mix of online and in-person research this summer. Moving research online has provided several benefits: it allowed us to find some very low incidence recruited consumers in multiple markets around the country which best met the needs of our client. It also allowed us to conduct research across multiple markets in much less time than it would have previously. An additional benefit for our clients included more of their team being able to attend these research sessions “live,” including global colleagues, since no one had to travel.

2) Consumers are willing to participate in in-store demos. To help with out retail test planning, we’ve conducted a quantitative survey to understand consumer sentiment around sampling foods in-store. I’ll admit my own surprise when the May round of this research came back with over 65% of consumers saying that they are currently willing to open and eat a sealed (i.e. tamper-proof) sample of a food in a grocery store. And fully 2/3 of respondents stated that they can anticipate being willing to try “open” samples of food in-store again in the future. We plan to run this same survey monthly for the next few months to see how consumer sentiment shifts and help our clients who are planning transactional tests with us in the late summer and fall.

We pride ourselves on our flexibility, ability to pivot and do whatever it takes to meet our clients’ needs in “normal” times. And it has been nice to find some silver linings during this pandemic. We look forward to working with you in whatever way is needed to keep your innovation engine running, while Covid-19 continues and beyond.