New Opportunities for growing online caterer

An online caterer had grown rapidly through innovation in new offerings to its platform and services. It recognised that a systematic market research approach – based on identifying unmet needs – was needed to identify new opportunities efficiently and thereby continue its growth. It had tried an industry recognised approach that had yielded nothing but high cost and frustration. A significant amount of internal resource had been devoted and the outcome was high profile. Timing was critical as this was to feed in to business development plans – allocating budgets and resource for 1, 3 and 5 year plans.

Investigate whether the original research was fit for purpose.

If so, identify an approach to draw out useful meaning from the survey data.

If useful meaning could be uncovered then present back with recommendations.

– reviewed the theory behind the industry recognised approach and the way in which the survey was designed and conducted

=> We were able to reassure the client that it had been conducted properly and that the approach theoretically should have delivered what they required

– reanalysed the data according to the model and showed that no mistakes had been made

– rethought the whole analysis approach questioning whether the industry recognised model was actually effective

=> We concluded that is was superficially logical but had fundamental flaws.

– redesigned the analysis to address those flaws

– added further value by segmenting the market according to needs based clusters and then profiled those clusters to show the client how needs differed by types of customer

– created a new, pictorial way of presenting those results back that was easy for non-stats people to understand

– led an internal workshop to use the findings to identify development targets

The survey results confirmed that some courses of action already identified were appropriate and the client was able to allocate budget and resource to those with confidence.

It identified new areas of focus and the client is creating new technological solutions to tap into those opportunities.

It identified issues for third parties and the client is working with those third parties using the results as evidence for need for change.

Growth is continuing and the client has extended the approach to other parts of its business.