Consumer Research for Food Businesses

In this practical webinar, Jo argues that consumer research for food businesses isn’t optional. Testing your product on friends and family isn’t enough. Honest feedback from real target consumers is what keeps your product relevant, reduces the risk of a costly launch failure, and gives you the data you need to make better decisions at every stage of your brand’s development.

Jo covers the full range of methods, from quick social media polls through to in-depth focus groups, with a clear eye on what’s realistic for small food businesses with limited budgets. The webinar works through six practical approaches to market research for food businesses – social media, events, taster clubs, visiting consumers, post-purchase surveys, samples with questionnaires, and focus groups – weighing up the pros, cons, and costs of each. Jo’s core argument runs throughout: consumer research isn’t just a pre-launch checklist item. It’s an ongoing discipline that should be built into your marketing activity permanently, because consumer needs, shopping habits, and trends keep changing whether you’re paying attention or not.

Key Takeaways:

• Friends and family will never give you completely honest feedback. Consumer research only works when it involves real target consumers who have no personal stake in telling you what you want to hear.
• Social media polls are a fast, low-cost way to settle simple questions – which flavour, which packaging design, which format – but you need a meaningful following for the results to be statistically useful.
• Events and markets put you directly in front of target consumers. Keep feedback mechanisms simple – a sticker on a board, a vote in a bin, a name in a jar – because people will engage if you make it easy.
• Taster clubs, built through your email list, give you a pool of willing participants for ongoing market research. A small discount is usually enough incentive, and you can go into much more depth than social media allows.
• Post-purchase surveys are an underused tool. If someone has just bought your product, they’re primed to tell you what they think – and that feedback can shape everything from product development to packaging messages.
• Samples sent to 15–20 target consumers with a survey can generate really useful pre-launch data to use in retailer presentations: “X% of consumers surveyed said they would buy this product” is a powerful line in a pitch.
• Build consumer research into your ongoing marketing plan – a twice-yearly survey, follow-up emails after purchase, feedback at events. Brands that stay continuously close to their consumers are the ones that stay relevant.

Notable Quotes:

• “It’s not about what you think your product should be. You need to keep the consumer’s needs and wants at the heart of everything.”
• “If you launch a product without any consumer research and it falls on its face, it wastes a lot of money and a lot of time. So why not reduce that risk?”
• “The more you know your consumers, the more you can tailor absolutely everything to them – your marketing, your product, your proposition, your positioning, your packaging.”
• “Brands that listen to their consumers continually… are going to be the ones that are successful.”

Next Steps:

If you need help planning and actioning your consumer research, as well as making the most of it to steer your direction, get in touch with the team at Relish today.