Affinnova Helps Post Foods® Revolutionize the Cereal Aisle to Meet Consumers’ Tastes

14 Jul 2011

Post Foods, LLC, producer of some of the world’s most recognizable breakfast cereals, has improved consumers’ experiences in the cereal aisle by utilizing evolutionary technology from Affinnova, the global leader in marketing innovation software and services.

“By incorporating the insights uncovered in this study, retailers will be able to provide a shopping experience that is more closely aligned with consumer need.”

The cereal aisle at the local grocery store can be a frustrating and confusing place, where it can be hard to locate a preferred product due to a wide array of brands, packaging and varieties. Post Foods continually seeks to improve the shopper experience, and the company’s Integrated Insights & Strategy team recently sought to test consumer reaction to new cereal aisle shelf configurations. Rather than go through the time-consuming and expensive processes of conventional methods, which are also significantly limited in scope and scale, the New Jersey-based company was able to test 384 unique cereal aisle configurations using a technology-based concept optimization and benchmarking solution from Affinnova of Waltham, MA.

To anticipate which of the innovative new shelving configurations would appeal to consumers, Post Foods turned to Affinnova’s IDDEA II technology. The IDDEA II process provided a testing alternative that not only compressed the development timeline but reduced testing costs and enabled the evaluation of the entire concept space. With IDDEA II Post Food’s team introduced and tested hundreds of different configuration options as mock cereal aisles, directly with cereal consumers. Using Flash technology, consumers were able to simulate walking through aisles while evaluating choice sets.

Driven by consumer preference that emerged from Affinnova’s IDDEA II optimization phase, three top cereal aisle configuration concepts emerged. These concepts then underwent further evaluation and benchmarking to determine how they matched up against current configurations in two major supermarket chains. The results showed that consumers strongly preferred two of the three new top concepts over the current configurations.

Affinnova’s IDDEA II optimization and benchmarking enables marketers to develop a limitless number of concept variations, and then quickly and accurately assess all options. A dynamic evolutionary algorithm engages target consumers in a “survival-of-the-fittest” process that identifies the concepts with the highest market potential from virtually any size test field.

“Having access to the unique and highly actionable data on consumer preferences that resulted from working with Affinnova, we are able to have a more consultative dialogue with our retail partners,” said Kelley Peters, Senior Director, Integrated Insights & Strategy, Post Foods. “By incorporating the insights uncovered in this study, retailers will be able to provide a shopping experience that is more closely aligned with consumer need.”

“We were not only able to help Post Foods to test a large number of alternatives in a short time frame, but were able to accurately predict which concepts would resonate with consumers,” said Waleed Al-Atraqchi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Affinnova. “Our IDDEA technology is shifting the way companies manage their innovation process.”

Source: Post Foods, LLC