Winning on flavor: introducing a new line of BBQ meat to a competitive industry.

Launching a successful new product line

Our client, a large packaged food company specializing in pre-packaged meat considered launching a new BBQ meat product to compete against popular national brands. Ensuring a successful product launch meant they needed to identify what combination of meat type, packaging form, serving size, product claims, and price would be the most appealing combination to potential customers. Additionally, they wanted to gauge interest in additional potential new product concepts and collect original ideas for new BBQ meat products from consumers. Some of the key questions we answered included:

• What new BBQ meat products are consumers most interested in?

• For the most appealing product in the test, what is the best estimate of its sales potential and how does it impact the sales of the brand’s other products?

• What are some other creative ideas for BBQ products consumers can come up with?

One of the challenges of launching a new packaged food product line is identifying the attributes that appeal most to consumers’ needs and preferences and ultimately lead to greater sales. Other challenges are understanding how a new product would fare against established competitors and how expected sales would be impacted by different pricing strategies. Fortunately, GroupSolver® built a market share simulator that took into consideration all of these factors and allowed this client to proceed to launch the product with confidence.

Uncovering consumer preferences with GroupSolver®

The GroupSolver® platform collected insights from over 1400 consumers across target grocery channels to identify top concepts and viability of the client’s new product line. In addition, we used pricing analysis and granular market share modeling to estimate product sales and impact in the marketplace.

We found that there was one BBQ product concept that generated significantly higher probability of purchase for our client’s brand. Further, within the concept, we identified one key product attribute – centered on a unique flavor proposition – that was the biggest driver of potential demand for the new product. Beyond flavor, our data showed that BBQ-specific type of beef was the most popular meat type, and using our AI Open-End™ technology we found that consumers were also interested in several other specific BBQ products. Finally, we clearly identified consumers’ preferred packaging design and optimal pricing options that would give the new concept the best chance to win in this lucrative product space.