Winner - Consumer Products Research Award 

Market Research Effectiveness Awards 2008

Research projects come in many shapes and sizes, but none more challenging than the need to understand what global consumers might want 20 years in the future, in a market where we have no way of getting them to experience the potential products that could be developed for them.

Thus it was with this project for Prevar^TM, the New Zealand-based global company charged with leading apple and pear innovation worldwide.  Prevar^TM was looking for an understanding of pipfruit consumers around the world, specifically what it was they would value in their apples and pears in the future.

The options were wide – from different skin and flesh colours, through to functional benefits such as appetite-suppressing apples, or heart health boosting pears!  All these bred by natural means, without any genetic engineering…

A patient 9-month design period saw the ‘birth’ of a truly global project – an online survey of 1200 people, in 10 countries and 7 languages!  The survey itself employed a range of complex techniques – not to mention plenty of pictures, both real and ‘constructed’.  The research team quickly became the office experts in apple and pear varieties, not just in New Zealand but also around the world!

The dataset was huge, but needed to be chunked down into core messages that specifically addressed Prevar^TM’s five objectives: questions they needed to answer in order to include consumer input into their priority setting.

In presenting the results to Prevar’s Board of Directors, the research team focused on those specific questions – building supporting evidence for the advice and direction they were giving on each point. 

Although they can’t show any new fruit varieties developed as a result of this research – that could take a decade of more – the teams at Prevar^TM and Synovate have no doubt as to the effectiveness of this research.  For the first time, the global breeding programme has been informed by a worldwide consumer view of the market – not just in terms of which tastes appeal in sensory testing, but also in terms of how consumers view their fruit consumption in general, the problems that fruit solves in their lives, and how they could respond to future pipfruit innovations.

In presenting the results of this research to the Pipfruit New Zealand Conference, Prevar’s CEO highlighted work now being done to explore possibilities in health and wellness, and convenience – areas identified as opportunities in this research.