The Call

A new player in the QSR world set out to redefine convenience with their upleveled store that offered freshly prepared and made-to-order food. With a few stores in place, they weren’t seeing the customer traffic they wanted or expected at their made-to-order counter and needed help to understand where they were falling short on their promise of fresh food, fast. They partnered with Catapult to understand the customer experience, journey, and expectations of their made-to-order counter so they could identify key areas to quickly change and impact their business.  

The Celebration

We left the research with a set of action items the client could immediately start working to address with varying timelines, including a simple yet impactful adjustment for a featured item that saw a 3x increase in sales after changes were made. Our client now has clear direction for what their current and prospective customers want and need in a QSR/made-to-order meal, where they are falling short, where they are succeeding and need to lean further in, and which competitors are doing it best. Our client is now busy at work designing the next iteration of their store, which we will return to once a beta version is in place to gauge customer reactions and determine if the changes will provide them with the lift in sales they want to see.  

From our client…

“Catapult just gets it. Jill and Justin have been doing this for decades, so they understand our business problems just as well as we do. They knew how to address it, expertly executed the work, and delivered succinct insights and recommendations ranging from papercuts through strategic. In the end, Catapult’s report left us in a place where we ‘just got it’, enabling us to jump straight into action-planning. Their work is directly helping to shape the future of our business and how we meet our customers’ needs.“

The Call

An international component supplier to automotive manufacturers needed to fill their product development roadmap. They had traditionally relied on internal brainstorming sessions every 2-3 years to guide short-term solution development, but they challenged themselves to aim through a 10-year horizon to increase R&D lead-time and bring game-changing innovation into an already rapidly changing vertical. 

The Celebration

The innovation workshop spurred fresh thought about the future of consumer needs and produced over 200 ideas, each written and illustrated in Catapult’s Idea Abstract format. We ended our session by helping our clients prioritize the ideas, and those with highest priority moved into their Quality Function Deployment process for immediate product design work. The visibility and success of the project has also spurred discussion of repeating the approach for the client’s European division. 

From our client…

“Catapult’s approach goes well beyond the internal brainstorming sessions we have traditionally run. The thought-provoking process guided us to think much further into the future and excited our Innovation team to evolve an even wider range of new ideas into reality. And the volume and quality of ideas were incredible.”

The Call

An established leader in the durable goods category wanted to develop an innovative idea for how to utilize their product technology to better help consumers with personal care needs. While they are experts in their own category, this new idea took our client into a completely new space where they didn’t have depth of knowledge of consumers’ behaviors, attitudes, and needs. To ensure they were developing a product that truly fit a consumer need and determine the best marketing and messaging strategy for the new product, they engaged with Catapult to dive into this new-to-them world of personal care.  

The Celebration

After the research phases were complete, we held an activation session with the entire client team to share insights and create a pathway forward to impact product development and marketing plans. While our research affirmed this new product idea had legs and highlighted how it could be marketed to reach those who need it most, it also uncovered a potential flaw with the current product design that our clients were able to quickly address.

Now that the client team has an in-depth understanding of their target consumer and clear direction on marketing and product design, the next step will be a home use test with working prototypes to further refine the product design and understand which benefits the product truly delivers.  

From our client...

"The insights we gained from working with Catapult were extremely valuable to our business. Their thought leadership helped us explore an unfamiliar category, giving us clear and actionable product development and messaging insights that have helped us understand how our product fits within an entirely new market. Catapult is so much more than another research supplier, they are a true insights partner to us. They feel like a part of our team and work diligently every step of the way to ensure our success.”

The Call

An online retail giant opened a series of brick-and-mortar stores featuring a proof of concept for a new, tech-enabled shopping experience. Intended for on-the-go meal and snack occasions, these stores aimed to give shoppers a faster and more convenient experience versus competitors in central business districts. In 2022, the brand set aggressive topline growth goals as people returned to city centers, and to achieve this they needed to understand how to better meet customers’ needs throughout their end-to-end journeys.

The Celebration

We mapped the shopper journey along 7 key phases, highlighting moments to focus attention in order to win more shoppers and increase loyalty. We identified targeted areas for improving CX, ranging from low-hanging fruit through strategic shifts to better introduce the brand and cement its place in the everyday lives of away-from-home food shoppers. Additionally, we created shopper personas to give our client a northstar for any strategic changes they considered, ensuring that future CX was directly informed through the lens of consumer needs. Our client immediately formed strategic action teams focused on key areas for improvement and began implementing in-store changes that lifted customer traffic and revenue. 

From our client…

“Our work with Catapult came at a time when our team was down a person and they stepped up to cover that gap. Their expertise in our category made for a smooth transition, and Catapult even took on parts of our internal reporting and shareout process, inclduing a presentation to leadership which was incredibly well received. Catapult is more than a supplier, they are a partner I can trust who is every bit as invested in our success as we are.“