A leading beer manufacturer wanted to select the most promising product among 5 newly developed recipes of grapefruit-flavoured beer mixes. As these drinks are often consumed outside the home, it was key that this selection was performed on data obtained in a realistic context so it could be as predictive as possible of consumers’ real decision-making behaviours.

Approach

SAM offered its Casual Bar Setting, a relatively new methodology that essentially re-creates a bar setting in controlled conditions. The research took place in Germany and the US, where consumers were invited in groups with their friends and/or relatives to have a drink in a realistic bar setting where they were allowed to chat, read newspapers and play games to allow gamification and social interaction.
Consumers had, over the course of the session, up to 10 free choices among the presented products, and observational data such as choices, sequences of choice and consumption time was collected.

Conclusion

Not only did the study allow researchers to find out what was the most chosen drink, but the approach also provided an understanding of the whole consumption experience, with new behavioral indicators such as quantities consumed, first choices, new choices, fidelity and versatility of consumers.

The Casual Bar Setting was also found to increase discrimination between products, which made the final selection easier and more predictive than in traditional CLT.

For more information on the Casual Bar approach, please contact us.