Actionable Insights Discovered Through Consumer Ethnography

The Situation

SABMiller has had a strong hold of the beer category in Colombia, but until recently it didn’t have the consumer insights necessary to further expand its success in the region.

To gain this understanding, SABMiller partnered with King-Casey to clearly understand the path to purchase and discover how to emotionally connect with consumers. Critical to this effort was research into the sub­channel of tiendas sociales, which is Spanish for “social stores.”

Rich P2P Consumer Insights

To truly understand these target consumers, King-Casey conducted in-depth ethnographic research. Researchers met consumers at their homes and then spent entire evenings with them at the tiendas sociales. The learnings informed a program aimed at increasing visit frequency, getting more consumers to drink SABMiller products instead of other alcoholic or non-alcoholic options, and encouraging consumers to trade up to SABMiller’s more profitable premium beer brands.

Optimized P2P Strategy

An optimized path to purchase communications strategy was created to capitalize on the attitudinal and behavioral insights gleaned from the ethnographic research. Three key findings from the research were:

• Most consumers know what beer product they will consume prior to arriving at the tienda
• The display zone, pay zone and social zone are the critical points at which consumers planned purchase can and must be disrupted
• The consumer’s “first order” (round #1) must be influenced as it dictates what brand of beer they will drink the rest of the night

King-Casey’s Customer Zone Strategy and methodology (above) was utilized to divide the tiendas sociales into eight distinct customer zones (street, entry, display, social, pay, entertainment, bathroom and exit) and a communications strategy was developed for each zone based on consumer attitudes and behavior.

Optimized P2P Solutions

In-store communications solutions were developed specific to each customer zone and included three different investment packages, with the more extensive packages designated for the stores with the most SABMiller business potential.

About King-Casey

For more than half a century, we have been helping companies build competitive brands by dramatically improving the customer experience. Our highly creative solutions are firmly grounded in insights and strategy from consumer data. Our solutions are designed to delight your customers and help you achieve your business objectives. We provide a complete range of services including assessment, research, branding, retail merchandising and communications and store design. We will help you develop creative, innovative solutions that result in increased customer loyalty, higher sales and greater return on investment. We can make a positive impact on your business while exciting your customers with fresh, innovative and competitive design solutions. Be sure to visit our website: www.king-casey.com.

For more information please contact:

King-Casey (USA), Howland Blackiston, Principal, T: +1 203 571 1776, hblackiston@king-casey.com