Marketing strategies
Case Study
Marketing strategies
focusing on families
and kids
Challenges and opportunities of market research with kids
Activation strategy
Brand positioning
Client Context:
A Quick Service Restaurant wants to develop kids special offer and merchandising to reinforce its positioning as a family brand
The Challenge:
Kids are a relevant and not easy target for this fast food chain:
- They are the consumers of the present, and, most important, of the future
- They have tremendous influence on their parent’s choices in terms of restaurants & food
- They need to be entertained when consuming on the premises
- Their preferences are clear but not always fitting with parents needs
In this context, the company wants to better target marketing, commercial actions and merchandising in order to
- capture and maintain the volatile interest of the kids
- satisfy parents’ needs & expectations
The solution – how we did it:
CONECTA recommended to collect both points of view of parents and kids to build a more complete picture of the families ‘needs and preferences
Our research plan combined:
- Playing & drawing with their kids
- Listening & chatting with parents
We customized every element of the project based on our knowledge of the psychology and developmental stages of children and families
Group set up:
- Small groups of 4 kids to increase comfort and encourage sharing
- With kids of similar age,
- Relatives/friends were welcomed to make easier for the them to express themselves
- Short group discussion length to maintain the attention
Location: we chose a friendly and comfortable environment, creating two connected but different areas:
- one to discuss with parents
- the other to interact with kids, allowing them to see their parents
Moderation: while one moderator collected parents’ points of view, another expert was facilitating the discussion with kids.
This second moderator used specific techniques to understand kids needs and perception, such us:
- creating a puppet show to simulate the process of ordering at the restaurants and understand kids’ demands in terms of menus and food offer
- drawing out how they feel about the communication material on the premises
- playing with the merchandising’s offer to see what products are the most engaging
- using stickers to rewards them and keep them engaged
The outcome:
We provided insights and learnings to target the marketing mix to families:
-Adjust the look & feel of the brand
-Update the brand mascot
-Rework the merchandising, segmenting the offer by kids’ age and gender
-Improve the space distribution and redesign the restaurants in terms of lay out, decoration, visuals
-Optimize the menu, highlighting the star products for kids
