How Unilever Connected with New Canadian Consumers

Robin Brown, SVP, Consumer Insight, Environics &

Joseph Chen, Brand Building, Consumer and Market Insights,

Food, Home and Personal Care

May 21st, 2011

Agenda

1. The importance of collaboration between Client and Research Supplier when it comes to methodology development

2. Tips around Longitudinal approach to ethnography – how to make it work for you?

3. Geo-demographic Segmentation as an alternative approach to traditional quantitative segmentation

4. Other tips on how Unilever connect with ethnic consumers

The Importance Around Collaboration Between Client Side Researcher and Research Partners

Ethnic Business at Unilever

Be upfront about your business situation and budgetBusiness Questions…

● Understand the differences across consumer segments among Chinese and South Asian

● Understand the size of the opportunity for each segment

● Understand the behaviour and motivation around product choice/usage and brand connection

● Understand acculturation process and how that impact product usage behaviour and shopping patterns

We only have $60K to conduct this research

It is critical that we cover all the objectives and we need to make the budget work…

The Solution: We outsourced a portion of the research components to Environics…

New Ways Of

Thinking

EnvironicsCovered a Portion of Research

Unilever Consumer Insight

Team fieldedthe rest

Collaborate And Bring

All the InsightsTogether How many client side researcher

have led the field work on projects?

ConsumerInsight teamneeds to facilitate the entire processand all the brainstormingsessions

Having the Consumer Insight Team lead the field work? Is that the right thing to do?

● This is not something new as in the early 60s, 70s or even 80s insight team in companies used to lead all the projects including field work, report writing before they started to outsource all the work (P&G, Unilever, Kraft…etc.)

● The Consumer Insight team – sometime we don’t know the potential that we have as researchers leading the process and how we are actually the best people to lead the consumer deep dive field work process….

However, it can be very impactful and a proven success if you do it right…Tips for client side researchers leading field work…

● Be objective

● We are the truth seeker

● See everything from consumers’ eyes

● Make sure you focus on the objectives and how you would use the information

Research Framework

Prizm Segmentation

Ideations/Collaborationon research insights

In-Home and shopalongs GVA (lead by

Insights Team)

Four Months LongEthnographic Visits

GTA (Research Partners)

Secondary +

Historical Research

Geo-demographic Segmentation as an alternative approach to traditional quantitative segmentation

Segmenting the New Canadian Consumer

● The challenge: Produce a segmentation solution that is relevant across Unilever categories within a limited budget

● The solution: Leverage available secondary data and Environics Analytics’ PRIZM geo-demographic solution

PRIZMC2 Consumer Segmentation

● Classifies all Canadians into one of 66 groups based on their demographics, behaviours and attitudes

Captures: Socioeconomic status

Regionality

Ethnic Diversity

Urbanity

Demographic changes

Behaviours

Attitudes/mindsets

South Asian Lifestyle Segments…

● 7 clusters contain over 80% of South Asian immigrants in Toronto and Vancouver

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= South Asian Newcomers

= South Asian Comfort

= South Asian Affluentials

And Chinese Lifestyle Segments…

● And 7 clusters contain over 70% of Chinese immigrants in Toronto and Vancouver

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= Chinese Strivers

= Chinese Sophisticates

A wealth of data with no primary data collection

● Because PRIZM clusters are postal code based and linked to other data sources such as PMB you can then look into modeled behaviour of the segments based on secondary data only

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Index Index Index

73 145 81

33 37 28

73 111 71

102 54 134

103 79 102

154 157 133

14.1

6.1

11.5

6.6

12.5

23.1

TV

Radio

Magazine

Community Newspaper

Daily Newspaper

Internet

Media Usage

TV, Radio, Magazine, Daily, Internet measure “Heavy Use” Community News measures “3 out of every 4 issues”

TotalChinese Strivers

Chinese Sophisticates

Dry Soup Used in Household In Past 6 Months (%)

Index Index Index

77 79 76 Yes

112 112 112 No

120 113 126 Not Stated

Yes29%

No58%

Not Stated

13%

Total Chinese Target Groups

Chinese Strivers

Chinese Sophisticates

That can be tied to locations for direct mail, in store activation

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Making it work

● Geo-demographic tools can provide a wealth of data without conducting primary research – especially on niche markets

● Can provide valuable context and framework for more focused primary research

● Ensure that ensuing primary research can be effectively tied to the geo-demographic output

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Tips around Longitudinal approach to ethnography – how to make it work for you?

• Understanding their home environment, habits and category motivation

In Home

• Food Preparation observation and deeper dive into motivations

Food Preparation • Shop-alongs to

range of ethnic and mainstream banners

Shopper Connect

Email – homework on “Changing Self”

Email – homework on banner & channel motivations

Consumer Connects

Who we spoke to….A total of 20 households

12 in Toronto8 in Vancouver

10 Chinese10 South Asian

Distributed between Environics PRIZM segments

Making it work

● Continuous interaction with one point of contact (ethnographic researcher from same cultural community) throughout the three months

● Homework allowed exploration of complex themes – e.g. “changing self” along the immigration journey

● Ongoing client updates and adaptations in response to new insights

● Multiple touch points and a view of the dynamics of their lives – one participant found out that she was pregnant during the course of the research

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