The challenge
Chilled ready meals are a category in motion, and nowhere more so than in convenience stores and discounters, channels with their own shoppers, missions and rules.
Oscar Mayer wanted to get properly under the skin of this world: consumer needs, attitudes and retailer perceptions, specifically through the lens of convenience and discount.
The research had to do more than describe the category as it stands. It needed to uncover unmet consumer needs and the gaps where future opportunities sit, and to do so in a form that could facilitate ongoing conversations with retailers, because for a manufacturer, insight that cannot be taken into a retailer meeting is only half finished.
What we did
Quantitative category understanding, retailer performance analysis, qualitative digital groups, consumer vox pops and innovation expert feed-in.
How we did it
We built a multi-phased approach designed for iterative learning, with each phase sharpening the next rather than running in parallel silos.
The programme started with quantitative online surveys, establishing the shape of the category: who shops it, how, and what they think of the retailers serving it. Just as importantly, the quantitative phase uncovered the areas that deserved deeper digging, which then set the agenda for the qualitative discussion groups. That sequencing meant the qualitative time was spent where the data said the interesting questions were, not where assumptions placed them, and consumer vox pops added voices and faces that bring findings to life in a boardroom.
Throughout, innovation expert feed-in connected the research to what could actually be made and sold. Insight teams and innovation teams too often work at arm’s length; putting innovation expertise inside the research process means opportunity areas arrive already sense-checked against commercial and development reality.
What it delivered
The research highlighted opportunity areas for Oscar Mayer that translate across retailers and across the chilled ready meal category overall, helping to inform future strategy. The findings then did the second half of their job: they were used directly in conversations with retailers to help develop specific strategies going forward, turning a research programme into a commercial asset at the negotiating table.
In their words
“The whole team at FIS Group have been nothing but helpful, resourceful, and a pleasure to work with throughout our project spanning 2 pieces of quantitative work and 2 qualitative group sessions. Prior to work starting, FIS Group hosted multiple sessions to understand our objectives and returned with extremely useful results. After the work was completed, we had debriefs hosted by the respective members of the FIS Group team who explained the findings in an easy-to-digest way, with clear, insightful, and actionable recommendations.”
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