Marketing research and opportunities it brings to Kinder Surprise

For my marketing assignments I choose Kinder Surprise as a product of investigation. Kinder Surprise is a part of well-trusted family company Ferrero, which produces confectionery products for adults as well as kids. In this post, I would like to tell you about marketing research and how valuable it can be for businesses (in particular for my brand of interest - Kinder). Enjoy reading :)

Before any product is launched, a company producing or delivering it might be interested in how successful it will be in a certain market in the future. The process of understanding and analyzing the competitors, clients, behavior of individuals, market trends and marketing environment is called marketing research . With the help of good research material, marketing opportunities and problems will be identified. To find the needed information, a research should be done, by means of collecting data from the target groups for instance. However, large companies, such as Ferrero, would not start interviewing people by themselves, they use service of outside agencies which specialize on market research. Such services are called syndicated data services , which are organisations that collect general information and sell it to clients.

"No research without action, no action without research" - Kurt Lewin

One of those agencies is Nielsen which measures consumer buying preferences. It monitors shopper behavior across demographics, stores, media  etc. for more than 250,000 households in 25 countries . Key business trends by product, category, channel or market can be examined using Nielsen services. For their retail measurement services point-of-sale technology sales and price data from major retail chain are obtained.

With the help of Nielsen, Ferrero can get a full understanding of the situation on the market of chocolate, in particular chocolate for kids. They can know the market share for specific sectors, total sales in a product category, sales of Ferrero’s own brands (Kinder, Tic Tac, Ferrero Pralines, Nutella) and sales of important competing brands (Mars, Nestle).

Ferrero can buy mainly primary data collected by Nielsen in the form of interviews, surveys because it is more reliable and requires time and effort. The information provided to Ferrero from Nielsen is extremely useful, as it tells whether Ferrero should improve its products in case sales of new Christmas packaging drop in comparison with the previous year’s (for instance). Secondly, they can provide insights into how changes in product offerings (Christmas packaging of Kinder Surprise for different years), pricing or marketing would change sales. Thirdly, if acquainted with upcoming or previous trends, the manufacturer of Kinder can make decisions on the popularity of toys amongst children and have a more specific focus. There is a lot more to this, such as Cultural Analysis, Social Media Research, looking for businesses to sell to, Demographic Research, New product Development .

Another example of a marketing research agency is the GfK company. It is German largest market research institute, and the fourth largest after Nielsen. Their strategy is to understand market dynamics and consumer behaviors to enable clients (such as Ferrero) to create winning strategies. They offer point of sales panels (what do customers buy, when and where), audience tracking (what do consumers watch, hear, read), custom research (why do they buy and what do they want), consumer panels (how do they behave and buy).

GfK deals with consumer habits, behavior, perceptions, attitudes, providing a profound understanding to a client (Ferrero/Kinder) of how consumers experience the brand, company and its services.

GfK can generate data about key consumer trends and point ideal target audiences, identify market opportunities and help Kinder develop growth strategies. This helps to drive the performance of a business. The impact of online and offline advertising could be evaluated and optimized if that is needed. GfK can try to evaluate the unique selling point of Kinder Surprise, how they compare it with other products and make customers keep coming back. For instance, they can find out whether it is more successful to place a stand with Kinder Surprise in the confectionery department or next to the cashiers, or why customers buy a Kinder Surprise substitution instead of it itself. They can also find out whether children are more interested in SpongeBob or Dora the explorer, in order to know which toys to put in a Kinder Surprise egg. 

Did you like the blog? More about the market research process itself on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq391bgs6h0