Summary for Jacci Weber

Summary for Jacci Weber

Jacci Weber, Manager, Consumer Insights at The Wendy’s Company spoke about her journey and experiences as a Market researcher.

The Wendy’s Company mainly has several functions under Consumer insights – segmentation, delivery, loyalty, technology, consumer panel, merchandising, industry trends, brand target, satisfaction, brand health tracking, media measurement, operations, value and restaurant development. Jacci specifically handles the delivery, loyalty, technology, merchandising, satisfaction and operations functions.

She shared a few real life examples of qualitative research assignments. One of which involved a focus group for analyzing the effectiveness of the new designed menu board. The focus group had 6 people each with 3 Spanish speaking and 9 English speaking groups. The aim was to evaluate the attractiveness of a new menu board.

The merchandising team came up with a new menu board with less focus on the combo items and far lesser pictures. The board members weren’t really sure about the new board and hence decided to carry out a research used to quantify the impact of the menu board, the perception of consumers and what caught their attention.  An online monadic virtual shopping exercise was developed  and visual tracking analytics were used where users could have a virtual drive thru experience of ordering at Wendy’s and create an order. There were 400 participants per cell with 2 cells i.e. the test menu board and the control menu board. The results showed that the new(test) menu board was perceived as premium with heat map showing focus on salad and not the chicken combos. This research led to the redesigning of the menu boards.

Another research that Jacci spoke about was to track and analyze Wendy’s competitors. Mystery shoppers/consumers were sent on a “mission” to visit McDonald’s. There were 20 people with 5 female and 15 male who shared their experience on a video camera. The research led to the finding that consumers had positive reactions about the kiosks and eay payment options.

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