How Mars made its case to Brazilian retailers.

The M&M’S® Tubes range is a widely known and well-liked brand in the Brazilian market. In fact, it was the best-selling chocolate item in the M&M’S® portfolio for some time — until the brand made changes to the product. The changes meant a slight price increase, and the brand saw a decline in sales.

The lower sales caused the product to lose its strong in-store placements with key retailers, who argued that the product changes had hurt sales. To get to the root of the challenge, the consumer insights team at Mars turned to Cleria to gather concrete supporting evidence — and to win back listings in future retailer negotiations.

The team at Mars wanted to understand the impact of its product changes in the eyes of consumers — taking a deep dive into perceptions, overall product feedback, awareness sources, and key competitors, and surfacing the barriers holding back growth.

They also wanted to understand their consumer profile: who was buying the product, who was not, and how available it was in stores. The key focus was actionable insight to validate their own hypothesis about the impact of the product changes — and to make a credible case in the next round of retailer listing negotiations.

• Identified significant barriers to growth by analyzing barriers to conversion — and identified ways to address them.
• Gained an in-depth understanding of where it could most easily source new consumers, along with a full competitor overview.

By combining Cleria’s Brand Tracker 360 and Product Testing, Mars got a full view of its own brand funnel and that of its competitors. Brand Tracker 360 mapped consumer profiles, awareness sources, brand perceptions, overall product liking, and Net Promoter Score.

This let the team analyze the drivers and barriers to conversion for its own product against key competitors — a credible way to validate its hypotheses and put the arguments retailers had made about placement, consumer profile, and pricing to rest.