Cookin’Sights: a research program to support kitchen appliance brands

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Image by Werner Heiber from Pixabay

Arpa, a worldwide expert in the design and manufacture of kitchen appliances, is rolling-out in 2021 an ambitious consumer research program to support BtoC brands that place the end-user at the heart of their innovation strategy. “Branded Cookin’Sights, this program is unique in its scope; with 6 major steps taking place over a 9-month period on the German market with more than 4500 respondents over the whole program – Arpa explains -. The combination of the methodologies involved also contributes to the unique character of this program. Based on the double-diamond approach of Design Thinking, Cookin’Sights combines both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, traditional methodologies such as ethnography or U&A (Usage and Attitude studies) and 2.0 methodologies such as Social Listening. The upstream exploratory phase of the program will provide an in-depth understanding of consumer motivations and barriers to consumption. It will highlight their major frustrations and unmet needs during the cooking experience. This phase will also allow us to better understand the interactions that consumers expect between their different cooking appliances to facilitate the realization and guarantee the success of their recipe. The following qualitative phases involve co-creation workshops with consumers to generate new areas of innovation and create new product concepts. These qualitative phases will be followed by a succession of quantitative phases to prioritize innovation opportunities, evaluate their acceptability to consumers and quantify their market potential”. The program was designed to support kitchen appliance brands that wish to: decode consumer usage, understand consumers’ perceptions of products and brands, identify the major purchasing paths and purchasing criteria, highlight genuine consumer insights that can be leveraged by brands, reveal weak signals and anticipate emerging expectations and behaviors. With Cookin’Sights, arpa’s ambition is to foster the co-development of user-centric appliances with high value-added functionalities for consumers. The first step of Cookin’sights started in February 2021 with a Social Media Intelligence initiative. An expert in Social Listening monitored over 1500 qualified consumer conversations (from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, forums, consumer review sites and blogs…). The data collected came exclusively from public content generated by users over the last 12 months. It revealed what consumers spontaneously express about their buying experience and the usage of their kitchen appliances, as well as their primary sources of satisfaction and frustration.