The Intent Enigma: Why Easy Navigation May Not Equal Sales for High Margin Craft Beer

Background

Our client, a player in the Australian beverage market, faced a common hurdle for successful craft brands. While the brand enjoyed strong presence on tap and high on-premise market share, this success was not as marked off-premise. Despite record awareness and increasing consideration, sales in bottle shops weren’t as strong as on-premise, exacerbated by a broader challenges in the craft category.

The business needed to bridge the gap between pub and home. To drive growth, they required evidence-based insights into how their portfolio performed at the point of purchase. A central part of this challenge was a category management question: is it better to be a small fish in the large ‘Premium’ beer pond, or a big fish in the smaller ‘Craft’ beer pond?

Approach

As a boutique quantitative market research agency, we draw on considerable experience but custom-design to brief. For this project, we deploy a shelf-testing methodology to provide hard data for these retail conversations. We deployed a split-sample experimental design to test two distinct shelf configurations: one where our client’s brand was ranged alongside international premium lagers, and another where it was placed within a dedicated craft beer set.

Using specialised quantitative tools, we measured three key metrics:

• Findability: We measured how accurately and quickly individuals could locate the product within each environment, and how this compared to leading competitors
• Salience: We captured heat map data by asking participants to indicate exactly what caught their immediate attention upon viewing the shelf
• Purchase Intent: Finally, we measured the so what by asking respondents which products they would actually buy from the range they were shown.

Outcome

The results provided a clear, albeit nuanced, picture of the brand’s shelf performance. We found that the brand was easier to find when ranged with premium beers, with a higher accuracy rate compared to ranging in the craft set. However, this visibility did not immediately convert to sales; purchase intent was significantly higher when the brand was positioned within the craft category.

The research has empowered the business to move beyond supposition. They now have a robust data set to inform internal ranging decisions and high-stakes conversations with major retailers regarding fridge placement and category strategy. By quantifying the trade-off between being ‘easy to find’ and ‘compelling to buy’, we were able to provide the clarity needed to navigate the next era of growth.

If your brands operate within consumer goods and you’d like to understand how to win at shelf or inform better ranging, reach out to Vibrant Insights today.