Simulated Environment Mobile Unit Development: Increasing Access to High-End Insights Research for SMEs

Consumer Insights Lab (CIL) has been at the forefront of democratising high-end consumer insights since 2020\.

Using the Simulated Environment that Abbie developed in her PhD research, CIL collects the true-to-life insights to help companies minimise risk, and maximise sales.

Through their innovative approach, CIL has supported local SMEs to increase sales by up to 35%, global Fortune 500 companies promote sustainable packaging to their customers, and helped grassroots startups to maximise their impact in empowering marginalised communities.

Poor quality data and lack of representation lead to poor product and service design. Research has also identified that 75% of businesses in the UK waste on average 14% of revenue on poor quality data, which equates to £197.8M every year.

The affordable options that exist for SMEs are online surveys and focus groups, but it is scientifically proven that they do not result in accurate or true-to-life insights. This is a point of concern, as it costs an average of £100K to develop and launch a new FMCG product and the average product recall in the UK costs £768K.

In the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector specifically, high-end solutions exist but are exclusive to large companies who have the capital to invest in the appropriate expertise, facilities, and methodologies which start at £60K per project.

Now CIL is looking to revolutionise her solution by increasing accessibility, reducing its carbon footprint, and increasing representation of underrepresented populations.

Our proposal for this project looks to tackle the challenges of accessibility to accurate data, representation of underrepresented populations, and reduction of development waste and investment.

Our goal is to build and pilot a mobile version of a high-end Simulated Environment (SE) lab; we will call this the Real World Mobile Unit (RWMU). This will be an easy to assemble, mobile simulated research unit, to make high-end insights accessible both physically and financially.

The RWMU is expected to reduce cost of high-end research by at least 79% and increase equal access to high quality insights for the 78.8% of SMEs that make up the £121B UK Food and Beverage industry.

Having the first-mover advantage will allow CIL to establish themselves as industry leaders, and with high scalability, this solution will position them to expand into numerous markets, in the UK and beyond.