Photo: Richard Multimedia · Unsplash
A large-scale remote study run for a major German market-research agency, whose end client was a major US confectionery manufacturer. 100 shoppers, click-along sessions, one question - do people really buy candy the same way online as they do in the aisle?
Photo: Richard Multimedia · Unsplash
The manufacturer's products reach shoppers two ways: across tens of thousands of physical retail doors, and through the online storefronts of the retailers that carry the brand, but it planned for candy as if it were one shopping behaviour. The working assumption: a candy purchase is a candy purchase, wherever it happens.
My brief was to test that assumption at scale. Do people actually shop for confectionery the same way online as they do in the aisle, and where do the two diverge? The answer would shape how the brand merchandised, assorted, and promoted across channels.
A large-scale remote qualitative study, fielded across 2022. The focus was mints, gums, and candies. Chocolate surfaced in sessions but was treated as secondary and sits outside the main findings.
A sample of 100, distributed equally across the country and recruited to span ages, household types, and how heavily people buy candy - from occasional treaters to regular pantry-stockers. Each joined a remote session from home, running to a 30-minute length of interview.
Every session paired a semi-structured interview with live think-aloud tasks; participants narrated real browsing and buying on virtual storefronts modelled on the retailers they already use, and walked us through recent in-store trips as they recalled them. The recordings, not opinions, became the evidence base.
Findings were written up as a ~100-slide report, led by an executive summary for quick stakeholder alignment, and adjusted to the client's internal corporate template and reporting requirements.
Tasks ran on virtual storefronts rebuilt to mirror four of the retailers where the brand actually sells; people shopped in places they recognised, not a generic mock-up.
Each session followed the same protocol, conducted on a proprietary virtual-storefront environment built to mimic real online stores.
A short interview to capture each participant's everyday confectionery habits - where they buy, how often, and what usually prompts a purchase.
A free, think-aloud task: shop for any candy they liked, browsing and choosing the way they normally would.
A brief survey immediately after the first task, capturing reactions while the experience was still fresh.
A second, more directed task - by group assignment, participants shopped to buy either gum or candy, narrowing the lens onto one category.
A closing interview after the second task to unpack the choices made, the reasoning behind them, and how the two trips differed.
The clearest pattern in the data: people shop for candy in two distinct modes - and the channel they're in largely decides which one is running.
The cart was for the considered end of the spectrum: long-term pantry resupply, hunting for new or novel products worth trying, and chasing bargains, bulk deals, and multipacks. Online rewarded planning and comparison - shoppers arrived with intent and time.
Physical retail was where impulse lived: the "pick-me-up" grabbed on the way past, the familiar staple restocked without thinking, and the opportunity buy that appears at the register. The aisle and the checkout sold the treat; the website stocked the cupboard.
Gum kept surfacing as a thing apart.
Participants didn't file gum alongside chocolate or sweets in their heads; it sat in a separate mental category with its own triggers, occasions, and shortlist. People reached for it for fresh breath, focus, or a habit behind the wheel, rarely as a treat, and shopped for it accordingly.
The implication was practical: lumping gum in with the rest of confectionery - in assortment, in messaging, in how purchase was modelled - missed how differently it's actually bought.
Before COVID, candy was a low-consideration buy. It dropped into the basket on autopilot; an obvious, barely-noticed purchase.
The price increases that followed changed that. Across the sample, shoppers described pausing on candy in a way they hadn't before: checking the price, comparing pack sizes, weighing whether the treat was worth it at the new number. A category that used to be automatic had quietly become a decision.
The headline wasn't a metric, it was a reframing. The manufacturer had been planning a single cross-channel candy strategy; the study showed it needed at least two, plus a separate playbook for gum.
Findings fed directly into how the brand thought about merchandising, assortment, and promotion by channel - what to lead with online versus at the shelf, and how to speak to a shopper who now stops to compare prices on a product that used to land in the basket without a second thought.