Supercharging Market Expansion with Cultural Understanding

The Challenge

Our client, a leading global meal kit brand faced challenges adapting its product to different cultural attitudes and food habits. The brand needed to evolve its offering to meet the specific needs of consumers in markets it was still establishing a presence within. The company aimed to better understand local food preferences, identify barriers to adoption, and optimise its product-market fit by uncovering consumer needs and developing localised offerings with targeted messaging.

Our Approach

The process began with a knowledge audit to identify gaps and inform the design of future research. A semiotic cultural analysis explored food practices, values, and social structures in target markets, while a two-week digital ethnography phase captured household behaviours and food-related needs through open-ended questions. Participants documented their food routines using multimedia tools, providing real-time, immersive insights.

The Outcome

The research findings enabled our client to better understand consumer needs in each market, allowing it to tailor product offerings to local tastes, refine communication strategies, and address usage barriers. The insights also helped further segment the target audience, to help in boosting engagement and adoption rates. Ultimately, this research improved the brand’s product-market fit, strengthened its global position, and set the foundation for more effective customer acquisition strategies and long-term growth.