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Destination

Teens are constantly looking for the ‘next best thing', including new forms and flavours of gum.

We needed to gain deeper insight about them so we could encourage them to buy Wrigley's Juicy Fruit. We wanted to learn more about the purchasing process, including what influences their decisions, how they interact with chewing gum and how they react to advertising. We had a limited amount of time to achieve all this among a target market that is difficult to engage in research. 

Platform

Teens who chew gum are multi-taskers, tied to their mobile phones and in constant communication with their friends. Our unique research technique, Street Talk, used mobile phones as the interviewing device, giving us unprecedented understanding of how teens buy and use chewing gum on a teen-friendly platform.

Design and delivery

Gum chewers were recruited to make two trips to stores to purchase chewing gum. While they were in the gum aisle, they called in and described the decision-making process in as much detail as possible. We found out whether their decision was pre-planned, the factors influencing their decision, brand selection, the presence and influence of other teens, the influence of the store and how they learned about gum. They took photos and some of them completed journals tracking their purchase and usage of gum for a week. Follow-up phone interviews probed for further information and a MORe (MindShare Online Research) quantitative survey supplemented what we learned.

Evaluation

By connecting with teens in their time and space, using a research methodology that matched their mobility and the impulsive nature of gum purchases, we gained:

• Unprecedented insight into the gum buying process
• Awareness of how to get Juicy Fruit and other gums into the in-store consideration set
• Guidance on how to use mobile phones as research devices

MindShare not only makes use of syndicated research, they also employ proprietary resources to drive deeper insights into the consumer and our business. They really come up with ideas that are original, creative and tie into our business objectives.

Wrigley