3 Takeaways from Zappi’s debut at Groceryshop 2023

Last week, I had the pleasure to attend Groceryshop in Las Vegas for the first time. Being Zappi’s first time attending the event, I was eager to see customers and countless product innovators at some of the best brands in the world. 

Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

The Zappi team met with over 30 prominent brands – both long-standing customers like PepsiCo and Mars, welcomed new partners like Whisps, and met with more intrepid brands that see value in infusing agile consumer insights into their ways of working. 

We delved deep into discussions on navigating industry challenges, keeping pace with consumer preferences, and how to develop game-changing products. More than that, we had the opportunity to sit in on talks on the future of retail from Rodney McMullen, CEO of Kroger, and embracing innovation during uncertain times fromKristen Riggs, President of Salty Snacks at The Hershey Company.

Among the illuminating conversations, three key takeaways emerged, especially relevant for insights professionals: 

At a glance, this seems obvious. But in practice achieving true alignment between insights teams and business strategy has been elusive. 

That’s because most Insights professionals sit too deep within data and projects, ensuring marketing, product, and retail teams have the insights they need to make decisions, so that it can feel like they operate in a vacuum. However, there is immense opportunity for insights professionals if they can connect valuable consumer insights to latent business needs.

At the end of the day, our goal is to generate behaviors for our business that are aligned with the needs of our customers. We bring customer-centricity into the way our businesses make decisions. But, if we don’t understand the business strategy, our insights will be empty.

Delivery, subscriptions and services are just the outset of a sea of change happening in the grocery industry, driven by evolving consumer purchase behaviors. This rapidly changing environment means that there is no longer a one-size-fits-all approach to product innovation, packaging and communication. 

As brands look to stay ahead of the curve, consumer insights can be a powerful tool in navigating this complex terrain. From the concept stage to flavor selection, pricing strategies, packaging, and claims, consumer insights can play a crucial role in ensuring you have product-market fit and product-experience fit in a rapidly evolving point-of-sale landscape (in-store, delivery, digital, subscription, etc.).  The product is the constant and it has to work across retail channels.

One recurring challenge that surfaced during discussions was the perception among brand managers and retail specialists that insights functions often act as gatekeepers, blocking them from accessing the insights they need to drive the business forward. 

This is a common issue that – because of technology – has become more attainable than ever before. Marketing, retail, and product innovation teams are more comfortable than ever with technology. More important than that, they are craving consumer insights to inform decisions. 

That’s why insights teams need to open their systems to every team across the organization. 

No, I’m not crazy! In fact, brands like Pernod Ricard are already doing this. And you can too. With the right guardrails in place, you can make your self-service surveying tools available to individual team members, so they have on-demand insights to make the right decision, with little risk. 

This is a win-win, because it not only enables them to get smarter, the insights team has more time to focus on business strategy (see bullet 1). So, the insights team can lead a culture of customer-centricity and tackle big business challenges.

I was thrilled to share my learnings with you. I learned a lot and had many great conversations. If you were one of them – thank you! If you weren’t but would like to be, chat with us! 

I leave you with this bonus photo of myself and Chester Cheetah, courtesy of our lovely partners at PepsiCo, as a thank you for reading this.