Innovating icons: A Nestlé case study

Room 1 | 12:00 pm - 12:30 pm | Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Picture this: you sit down at a friend’s dinner party and see ice-cold bottles of sparkling water on the table. Doesn’t this detail make the evening feel elevated, maybe even a little fancy? We think so, and there’s a reason why. Nestlé’s iconic sparking water brands have stood the test of time and have been some of Nestlé’s most popular SKUs year-over-year.

But with massive innovation in sparkling water flavors, new brands and pricing pressures to contend with, how should the Nestlé sparkling waters team evolve their large and fragmented SKU portfolio to remain competitive? This was the challenge Laurence Duhamel-Gravel and her team took on in the Canadian market. They leveraged Dig Insights’ Virtual Market solution to forecast the implications of potential macro and micro changes to their portfolio and pack-price architecture strategies. This tool allowed us to translate numerous potential go-to-market scenarios into unit and dollar and profitability forecasts and to identify an optimal path forward.

Join Marcie Connan, EVP at Dig Insights, and Laurence Duhamel-Gavel, marketing intelligence and strategy lead on the premium waters business at Nestlé Canada, as they dive into how Virtual Market helped Nestlé optimize their suite of sparkling water brands, the benefits of a methodology that recognizes the role of impulse and trade-offs in purchasing decisions and how Nestlé translated insights into retail transformation.

Key Takeaways:

1. Holistic innovation: Redefining the boundaries – Key learning: Innovating goes beyond product development; it encompasses any change that tips consumer decisions in your favor, including pack type, configuration and pricing. By challenging the traditional view of innovation, we open doors to unconventional and impactful strategies.
2. True-to-life decisions in the virtual realm – Key learning: Consumer decisions in the real world are heavily influenced by impulse and context, elements that are often missing in research. We will discuss how to bring real-world drivers of decision-making into your research.
3. Strategic decision-making: Navigating internal dynamics and retail sales – Key learning: Research is only powerful if it drives action. Explore the art of managing internal stakeholders and selling to retailers. This session sheds light on winning strategies for successful decision-making, both internally and in the complex landscape of retail partnerships.

Case Study Food Presentation by End-Client