How it started

Mondelēz International, a multinational snacks and beverage company, wanted to understand the impact of shelf-ready packaging and merchandising on UK shoppers’ in-store behaviour.

Traditionally, one would approach this request by setting up a large-scale face-to-face in-store study. However, this comes with many logistical challenges and at a high cost, especially with COVID-19 restrictions back in 2020. Therefore, Mondelēz was looking for a more innovative approach that would allow to replicate a realistic shopping experience and test several situations with a quantitative sound sample.

How we inspired change

To tackle this challenge, Human8 integrated VR stimuli into a mobile survey, which consumers completed in their own environment, using their mobile phones and cardboard VR viewers. The VR experience allowed us to capture behavioural data indicating attention, and to combine this with explicit survey data to deliver new insights.

To create a realistic shopper environment, we partnered with Gorilla in the room, a leading AR/VR market research mobile platform. They filmed 360º videos of the target shelf in the supermarket aisle and created three different fixture planogram presentations. In post-production, labels and product prices underwent CGI (computer-generated imagery) changes.

As we were already running a long-term UK shopper community for Mondelēz, the ‘Snack Chat community’, we were able to recruit 300 consumers in a cost- and time-efficient way. During the survey, the consumers inserted their smartphone into the VR viewer and, after a 30-second VR experience, they were redirected automatically to the survey, to select the products they recognized from the VR shelf.

How it lives on

The insights from this innovative shelf test enabled Mondelēz International to prioritize investing in shelf-ready packaging and confirm merchandising principles into supermarkets.