What is a Virtual Market study?
Pack and price optimization is one of the most important levers of success in Consumer Packaged Goods. What pack size do you offer? What pack configuration? What is your optimal regular price? What is your optimal sale price? How often should you be on sale? All of these variables need to be optimized in context with your strategy: are you trying to maximize volume, units, revenue or profitability?
We believe that these pack and price questions can only be answered with research that tests your offerings in a competitive context. To address this need, Dig Insights developed a proprietary tech solution; Virtual Market looks like online grocery shopping. Over several choice screens, respondents see your products and competitive products. Across those screens, we experiment with product availability / pack size / pack configuration / regular price / depth of discount. Unlike a conventional conjoint, each product has an independent set of prices and discounts. This gives us total control over the experiment and the data modelling.
The benefits of doing a Virtual Market
How a Virtual Market works
Timeline
Understand competitive context
Across the respondents, we explore thousands of possible in-market scenarios to get to grips with the competitive landscape.
Build a base case
We then build a base case that represents the current market. This is calibrated to in-market unit volumes.
Experiment
What happens if you add a new SKU or multiple SKUs? What happens is you remove SKUs? What happens if you change your pack size or your price?
Optimization
We can run optimization analysis that looks at every possible scenario and represents a strategy that maximizes your volume, units, revenue or profitability.
Reporting
All results are reported as forecasts of units, dollars and profitability. So you have research results that are loved by finance, sales, procurement, and retailers.