The situation

A.D. Laskey Consulting (ADLC) specializes in collaborative, custom research solutions that deliver the insights companies need to make better decisions. The Silicon Valley firm assists companies with business and market strategies, advertising and public relations research and testing, and consumer research to optimize products and features.

A rapidly growing snack food marketer established a partnership with ADLC to incorporate research insights into strategy development and business planning. After several years of marketing its snacks through its own website, the company is expanding its consumer reach by selling selected products through retailers.

The challenge

ADLC recognized that the company would have a better chance of earning shelf space if it approached retailers armed with insights into consumer attitudes and preferences about its products. To that end, they proposed concept testing the different snacks the company was considering pushing out to retailers.

However, this still-young start-up had limited resources, and the costs of conventional consumer concept testing for these products were excessive. The company was ready to proceed without research, but knowing its importance, the ADLC team sought a solution within the company’s budget.

The solution

The ADLC team turned to Dynata’s Samplify®, an agile DIY research platform that provides 24/7 access to Dynata’s panel of millions of consumers. Samplify offers easy-to-use targeting and survey authoring tools as well as real-time access to results; researchers can also field surveys created with other survey software. ADLC cited four reasons for choosing Samplify:

1. Quality: Access to Dynata’s first-party panel, with the ability to set sample parameters using hundreds of highly accurate pre-tagged identifiers for panelists, and control over other parameters such as responses per day and days in field.
2. Speed: ADLC was able to view responses as they were recorded in real time and obtain full results the moment the study finished, enabling them to deliver completed analysis to the company in under two days.
3. Flexibility: To meet the company’s aggressive timetable, the ADLC team fielded each of the customized concept tests as soon as each concept was ready for market; its president even self-deployed one overnight from overseas.
4. Cost-effectiveness: ADLC estimated they achieved their client’s goals for roughly onequarter the cost of similarly custom, robust conceptual testing research.

The results

Samplify enabled ADLC to conduct conceptual testing on all the snack foods the company intended to place into retail distribution – and delivered important insights that significantly influenced the company;

• The company learned which products had the greatest appeal to a particularly desirable consumer segment – enabling them to position their snacks more effectively with retailers;
• Feedback for one snack still in development showed strong consumer preferences for two flavors that differed from the ones the company had assumed would be the favorites – leading them to change their formulations;
• The company took steps to alter the packaging of another product after consumers were consistently critical of elements in the existing design.

The studies also yielded broader insights about consumer perceptions of and preferences for snacks as a category, enabling the company to strengthen its product development for the future.