Mars Wrigley owns a diverse set of products across dozens of categories. It’s the manufacturer behind America’s most beloved brands, from M&Ms and LifeSavers to Starburst and Skittles.

Cassie Jackson, Regional Manager of Insights at Mars Wrigley, spearheads research and insights for its confectionary brands.

Before discovering Knit, getting qualitative and quantitative insights required multiple surveys – often across different vendors, which takes extra time and resources.

“We would do a quant piece with one vendor and a qual piece with another vendor,” Cassie said. “Then, we’d have to parse through the data ourselves.”

In 2023, Mars Wrigley started searching for a new market research platform to help drive some efficiencies.

“We wanted a single source of truth to work off of,” said Cassie.

When she found Knit, Cassie knew the platform’s ability to run qual and quant in a single study would be a game changer. She also appreciated that the Knit platform expedited and automated research end-to-end, from survey generation through reporting.

“Having everything bundled was the solution we had been looking for.”

A big part of Cassie’s role is presenting findings to stakeholders across the organization. Since switching to Knit, she hasn’t had to spend time sifting through the data herself searching for a story, or trying to bring definition to disparate insights.

Instead, Knit’s AI autogenerates reports that integrate qual and quant insights into a cohesive narrative.

“Knit gives us that clear, concise story and brings in the voice of the consumer.”

- #### Identify what defines a great chocolate shape in the seasons
- #### Identify where they most often buy seasonal shapes
- #### Clarify the factors that matter most when purchasing – piece count, weight, price, brand, shape, packaging, etc.
- #### Identify the ideal piece size for chocolate shapes
- #### Explain the reasons they typically buy these types of products in the seasons

Mars Wrigley had a complete analysis report in their inbox within a week. This was a significant shift for the insights team.

“If we had run them through a different partner who was full-service, it would have likely taken a month to six weeks,” said Cassie. “We’re always looking to be as agile as possible.”

“For us to be able to get that level of quality at such a speed has been huge,” she added.

For Cassie, Knit didn’t just save her team time. It gave her the bandwidth to execute significantly more research per month and per quarter, so the organization can demystify consumer behavior and make business decisions with confidence.

“With Knit, we could do our job more efficiently and get to those key learnings and insights a lot quicker than we might’ve been able to on other platforms,” she added. “Being able to ask the AI to look into findings for us or generate another slide automatically – the time savings is huge compared to other platforms we use.”

Through qual + quant research, Mars Wrigley was able to:
- Deliver a compelling category story to stakeholders
- Build up its ‘right to win’ in the seasonal shapes category
- Make the decision to innovate in the seasonal shapes category
- Cut the time from survey → story by 6X

From individual brand strategy projects to ongoing concept testing studies, the world’s best brands are scaling their insights with efficiency and ease through Knit.