Miraka Ran Remote Research on dscout to Gain Global Insights and Save Time
Brendan Haigh of Miraka (a sustainable food company) takes us through how his team used dscout to get rich insights from consumers on the other side of the world in a fraction of the time.
Miraka is a New Zealand-based dairy-processing company, with an ethos—providing sustainable milk products that not only nourish their customers but the world as well.
“Miraka is a Māori-owned company,” explains Brendan Haigh, general manager of innovation at Miraka. “Māori have a tradition of being travelers and are the descendants of the great explorers of the South Pacific. As a result of these travels and arriving here in New Zealand, everything’s a long way from us.”
For Miraka, expanding its consumer base beyond their home base is easier said than done; the closest country is a three-hour plane ride away.
To gain insight into consumer habits, Miraka knew they needed to leverage the right remote research tool that could help them save time and find great users.
So they turned to dscout.
The problem:
When the New Zealand-based company wanted to expand its consumer base to other countries, they faced a challenge: how do you gain deep user insights when your customers are thousands of miles away?
For their initial trials to reach China, they relied on WeChat, one of China’s most popular messaging apps to gain insights and feedback on how their users felt about one of their products, Taupo Pure.
They saw success with WeChat, but Miraka knew they wanted a more sophisticated way of approaching remote design study. Luckily, Brendan learned from his peers about how dscout could provide exactly that.
The solution:
Learning about dscout, came at an opportune time. Miraka wanted to expand their reach into America, starting with California, as they wanted to find users who shared similar values to those of Miraka.
“Californians are a really diverse group of people. We wanted to find consumers who connect with our story and our values because those are the sorts of people we want to sell our products to and develop products for.
I’m aware that people say that sustainability is really important to them. But, more often than not, there are other reasons why they purchase a product. We were trying to tease that out.”
So they began by asking users on dscout to record themselves pulling dairy products from their kitchen and explain why they purchased it. Then they had users record themselves shopping for sustainable products in a grocery store.
“There’s that sense of realness being there in the environment surrounded by the sounds and the different products. We learned that sustainability is a really complex multi-factored concept that means a lot of different things to different people; be it organic, grass-fed, animal welfare, or recycled packaging.”
The impact:
Miraka was able to attain rich insights from their dscout study. dscout allowed Miraka to save time on areas that otherwise would have been a resource sink. Since Brendan’s team had insights faster, they were able to dig into data and iterate quicker as well.
Specifically, Miraka gained a greater depth of insight into how consumers approached purchasing products. Brendan went on to use the video data for his executive team to better explain the impact of the study.
“Overall, it took only about three or four weeks to complete the project, which was really good from a time perspective. We could have spent that much time just trying to negotiate a contract with a traditional in-market company! Now we can get on and do it.
That’s exactly the kind of thing that companies like ours want. More time doing stuff, and less time faffing around.”
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