Case study

Product Innovation for Mars Snackfoods: Understanding Couple Interactions at Home during the Evening

Objectives

To identify opportunities for new product and packaging concepts and better position their current brands.

Research

Past research discovered most of Mars snackfoods are consumed during the evening and are part of occasions involving couples, friends or family. But how is it consumed? What do people really do? How do you design for this?

The Innovation team at Mars commissioned an ethnographic study to understand what makes up shared time between couples in home during the week and weekends. The study was carried out with 6 households across the UK. Each researcher spent 4 evenings with each household to understand how couples interacted, how they relaxed in each others company and what made them feel connected as a couple. Typical day to day routines were observed and recorded including rituals, customs, values and norms around food, media, products and brands.

Naked Eye developed an interactive map with imbedded media (film clips) which told each participant’s story of how events unfolded and the ways time was divided up throughout the evening. We identified what filled up their moments and their different states of mind from arriving home to turning out the lights. An online intranet was set up to allow the Innovation team to blog their thoughts as material was collected and uploaded online during the research.

Findings

Several design concepts were presented based around 3 core themes: ‘Permissiveness’, ‘Indulgence’ and ‘Play’. The research directly impacted the product communication for one of their key brands and the concepts from the ethnography have since generated new pack and product prototyping concepts for their designers.