Identifying incremental sales opportunities
Objective
Located in Mid Wales, Hilltop produces a wide range of products including honey, maple syrup, agave, and fitness & beauty products.
With an aim to grow penetration, the number of shoppers buying the brand, the team developed 3 new concepts that they want to test using a combination of category insight and concept feedback to:
Understand existing motivations and attitudes to buying honey
Identify key barriers to buying the category
Validate the target audience for each concept
Identify the potential incremental impact of each concept to help Hilltop Honey grow penetration
The reason for using TRKR was to understand the commercial opportunity to grow incremental sales for Hilltop. To identify groups of shoppers, those who are existing Honey shoppers and those who don’t buy Honey, and understand whether these new concepts could grow both shopper numbers and occasions for consuming honey.
As previous clients of TRKR, the Hilltop team used TRKR’s proposition development tools to mock up 3 written proposition concepts to test with both existing category shoppers and those who don’t buy honey.
This approach ensured that they weren’t just relying on their own gut-feel, but instead backing this up with robust validation from an unbiased and nationally representative audience.
Working alongside the Hilltop team, TRKR scripted survey questions to ensure:
The teams assumptions and hypothesis about how shoppers currently behave within the category were validated
They identified barriers to buying honey including attitudes and perceptions of the category
The 3 concepts received detailed feedback, warts and all!
TRKR carried out an in-depth survey of 1,000 UK Grocery shoppers, exploring their behaviour in the category, barriers to buying honey as well getting direct feedback on the new Hilltop concepts.
With the resulting TRKR report, the Hilltop team were able to understand:
Key motivations for buying Honey in the UK
Who buys Honey and how this differs by brand and Own Label
Barriers to buying Honey
Preferences - formats, sizes and flavours
Why shoppers will buy a Honey brand for the first time
Initial feedback on the Hilltop proposition
Preferences towards certain concepts, proposition features, flavours and formats
Feedback on the proposed price points
Willingness to buy the Hilltop range, from BOTH existing Honey shoppers and non-Honey shoppers
Approach
What was the final outcome?
The launch of Hilltoppers, a new range of honey-inspired flavours to attract new shoppers into the category…….and initial listings secured in Asda and Ocado
“For brands like ours to grow it’s important to understand how we can grow shopper penetration, both from existing category shoppers and by bringing in new shoppers to the category. We can have the best ideas in the world yet without validating our thoughts and opinions they remain just that! Working with TRKR helped us to validate our concepts, prioritise which ones would have the biggest impact and also identify the potential incremental opportunity within different shopper groups. The output of the TRKR work has also helped us to pitch to the major multiples to win new listings for our new Hilltoppers range .”
Kate Utting, Marketing Director, Hilltop Honey