National Pork Board Uses Reinvented A+U to Understand the Demand Landscape for Pork

Editor’s Note: Insights That Work is a showcase of how the GRIT Top 50 Most Innovative Suppliers create solutions to some of the biggest challenges in insights today. This year’s edition provides case studies on brands like Nestle, Shell, Frito-Lay, and more.

---

Challenge

In 2017, the National Pork Board adopted a new role to provide the U.S. pork industry with leading-edge consumer research and insights. NPB sought to conduct foundational research to create a comprehensive Pork Demand Landscape. This study would help inform strategies and tactics that could be used among a variety of stakeholders. The research needed to address many business issues including:

• Illuminate the who, what, where, when, why, and how, of pork consumption in the U.S.
• Identify, define, and clarify the best target audiences for pork today and in the future, for both in-home and out-of-home consumption.

 

Solution

C+R conducted a research plan that used one of our most exciting IlluminatorTM solutions, Dollars + Attitudes®. This research program spanned over a year, with regularly scheduled data-sharing work sessions with National Pork Board and their agency throughout the program.

The program kicked off with a Category Discovery by leveraging Numerator’s InfoScout OmnipanelTM to initially understand purchase dynamics of the client’s categories and subcategories versus competitive proteins. This helped us to understand key volume drivers and opportunities.

We wanted to gain insights from different ethnicities and those with different category affinity, including Millennials, Unacculturated, and Bicultural Hispanics. We conducted ten focus groups to explore perceptions, emotions, and barriers associated with the category. A proprietary online community was implemented to capture digital journaling and shopper missions to understand usage and shopping behavior.

 

Outcome

The insights provided a clear path for innovation to better position pork by consumer generation, family type, and nutritional priorities, as well as for the creation of retailer selling stories. In partnership with the client’s agency, comprehensive publicity and social media campaign was rolled-out based on key insights.