The Call

Our client was working with a 10+ year old consumer segmentation solution that had all the signs it was time for a refresh – the market landscape had changed, time had passed, and the segments didn’t feel as actionable or relevant as they once did. Knowing they wanted to get it right and make sure they created not only a statistically sound segmentation solution but also engrain the insights into the company culture they partnered with Catapult to develop a fresh and completely new take on their consumer segments.

Our Response

Early on, the decision was made by our client that enough time had passed that they didn’t want to preserve the existing segments. Instead, they wanted a fresh start that aligned with today’s marketplace and consumer. Catapult developed a multi-phase approach to developing, understanding, and embracing the new consumer segments. First, we started with a full team working session to clearly define our goals and uses for the new solution. Next, we paired a rigorous quantitative survey with an iterative and collaborative approach that allowed us to create a multi-platform segmentation solution together.

With the segment definitions in place, we then embarked on a qualitative exploration with key segments to further understand who they are at their core – their needs, motivations, lifestyles, and nuances that set them apart. Finally, the research all came together in a 2-day collaborative working session where we fully immersed the client team in their new segments. We paired insights sharing with a series of immersive activities and activation exercises to ensure the new segments became second nature insights to our clients and their internal stakeholders.

The Celebration

The segmentation solution has been widely embraced by our client’s entire organization. The segments serve as a common thread through all of their consumer research activities and are at the core of their marketing and new product development efforts. Our clients still talk about the exercises and memorable moments of our final collaboration session and refer to the segments as if they are people in their lives that they personally know. The solution is over 3 years old today and it continues to consistently show up in the market as expected. Through our continued work with our client, we take every opportunity we can to check in on the segments when conducting other qualitative and quantitative research. This helps us to spot market or segment shifts as time passes so we can make sure our clients can get ahead of any refreshes needed to keep the segmentation solution relevant and useful within their organization.

The Call

The largest global purveyor of online advertising, search technologies, and AI had created a Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) application development platform to help developers produce apps capable of performing complex jobs. To better compete in this tightly contested space, they created a new set of cloud computing extensions to appeal to backend developers and wanted to assemble engagement strategies to properly reach this audience. Our previous work identified a stratified set of decision-makers, including in-house and agency developers, so the client came to us to create personas to better understand the unique perspectives driving tech stack consideration and adoption.     

 The Celebration

Our work informed the client’s DevRel team through a combination of written summary reports and video highlights to summarize key learnings while bringing forward the voices of the target audience itself. The personas we created clearly defined the overlapping messaging opportunities as well as specific, audience-specific strategies for meaningful engagement. The client was able to directly glean necessary inspiration to update web assets, targeted ad buys and content creation, and also used our reporting to guide keynote and other major speech themes for their annual developer conference viewed by over 1.4M people. Today, their BaaS platform is a market-leader, and their extensions feature remains a differentiator versus its biggest competitor.  

The Call

Recent regulations in the EU aimed to simplify cross-border tax calculation and remittance by introducing VAT One Stop Shop (OSS). However, marketplaces like eBay faced logistical challenges as individual sellers are often unprepared for tax compliance and current tax software not always prepared for real-time, accurate calculation during a sale. A leading B2B tax software provider wanted to test the market viability of an OSS solution before spending resources to create it, which is where our B2B background was called upon to help.     

 The Celebration

We identified a clear need for OSS solutions among small- to mid-sized marketplaces, particularly those expanding into new EU markets, to the degree that this client could make the decision to proceed in developing their OSS solution. In addition to profiling the makeup and organization of tax departments, our work also uncovered several insights that would go on to help this client market their solution, including the perception within many marketplaces that they are tech company at heart, which leads to software engineers having a seat at the table for tax software decisions. Further insights about competitive tax engines’ shortfalls allowed this client to fine-tune an OSS offering that addressed multiple needs and led to an impressively successful product launch.   

The Call

An industry leading durable goods manufacturer wanted to evaluate their method for collecting consumer feedback on products currently in development using a simulated purchase environment. The core research questions were centered around understanding if the consumer experience was a positive or negative one, and how that impacted brand perceptions and trust. The simulated purchase environment they used for testing was unique and was hypothesized to lead to negative consumer sentiment given the eventual disappointment that they couldn’t actually buy the not-yet-released product they encountered online. Working together with Catapult, a research program was designed to replicate the manufacturer’s online test environment within a survey tool to determine if their simulated test environment was eroding brand trust.

Our Response

Four purchase pathways were monadically tested and included a combination of a standard online checkout process or the simulated checkout where respondents were met with a notification that the product isn’t available yet. Two brands were used in the testing: the manufacturers flagship brand or a made-up brand. A series of diagnostic questions were administered, and the results were analyzed by comparing the different purchase pathways.

The Celebration

Our data showed that respondents greatly disliked the simulated test environment where it was revealed that the product they wanted to purchase was still in development. However, as strongly as they disliked the simulated process, none of the negative sentiment carried over to the brand itself. A series of recommendations were presented to the manufacturer to improve the simulated purchase experience. Our client is already implementing the changes to their process and looking forward to continuing their simulated testing environment in a more consumer-friendly way.

The Call

A quickly emerging brand of women’s health products wanted to accelerate their brand growth and win new customers with a data-backed and legally defensible doctor recommended claim. They partnered with Catapult to design and execute a study to gather the data needed to determine if they could make the claim that their brand is doctor recommended in the women’s health category.   

The Celebration

Our analysis determined that the data supported a “doctor recommended brand” claim that our client could confidently place on their packaging and other marketing materials. With this information in hand, our client immediately updated their product packaging and website to take advantage of their proven position as a doctor recommended brand which they expect to positively impact sales and brand love. In order to help our client confidently maintain their claim over time, Catapult will partner with them to repeat the research program at a regular cadence to ensure they always have data on hand to support their claim in a challenge.