Marks & Spencer has harnessed the power of VyPops to support its food trends research and product development planning. Using the new video insight tool from Vypr, the retailer’s customer insight team strengthened its research with video clips of customers from across the UK speaking in their own words. The self-recorded videos were embedded into a live digital report cascaded to internal teams.
Focusing on making consumer insights human and real, VyPops provides soundbites of consumers talking about how particular trends affect their daily lives and shopping behaviour. To inform their research, Marks & Spencer was able to target specific consumer groups about key themes, including the cost of living, on-demand eating through the rise of delivery apps, and flexible routines rising from the post-Covid hybrid/work-from-home revolution. The Consumer Insight team also wanted to determine how sustainability affects people’s daily lives.
VyPops allows customers to send out questions to consumer audiences and receive real-time video responses. Users can target their desired audience using Vypr’s highly segmented panel of 65,000 consumers and receive editable, high-impact videos to bring research findings to life.
Video provides enhanced insight cues from the consumer’s tone of voice and facial expressions, providing clearer insight into how they feel compared to a selected or written response. The responses via VyPops provide three to four times more qualitative insight than a standard text response. This helps brands to develop products consumers want, keep up with shifting behaviours and sell products faster.
Chloe Wilk, insight partner for M&S Food, comments: “The critical benefit of the VyPops service is that we were also able to use the Vypr platform to reach the right customers to speak to for our focus themes. That level of accuracy to hear the right voices is invaluable.
“Ultimately, it will enable our product development team to deliver their three to five-year vision for our innovation pipeline. The video insights from Vypr complement the data and analysis we’ve conducted for the report.”
Tasmin Sibbald, customer growth director at Vypr, said: “People are so familiar with using video on their phones that we can now gain an unbridled and unfiltered research response directly from consumers.”
She added: “Putting a voice and a face to responses helps build further credibility to consumer insight. Combining with other forms of insight and analysis, it helps brands and product owners to create better products and experiences for their customers.
Vypr has produced an eBook on the Importance of Video in Consumer Research, downloadable here.