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King's Hawaiian + Fuel Cycle

Hitting the Market Research ROI Sweet Spot

King’s Hawaiian leveraged Fuel Cycle’s Community and FCX partner solutions to transform their research process, enabling frequent and agile research studies, cost-effective DIY projects, and continuous insights for immediate action, helping them keep pace with evolving customer needs and preferences.
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Overview

King’s Hawaiian, a renowned producer of Hawaiian sweet bread and rolls, faced challenges in gathering customer insights quickly enough to keep pace with evolving preferences. The company’s Head of Consumer Insights, Troy Figgins, and his team adopted Fuel Cycle’s Community and FCX partner solutions to gain always-on access to valuable customer insights and an array of agile research methods and tools. This transition enabled King’s Hawaiian to conduct more frequent, cost-effective, and efficient research, providing better directional strategy to internal stakeholders and obtaining high-fidelity input at multiple stages of product development.

The Problem

King’s Hawaiian needed fast insights for evolving customer needs.

After experiencing a decade of consistent growth in distribution and awareness, King’s Hawaiian looked to identify a starting point for new and exciting ventures. But with traditional research tools, they couldn’t gather insights quickly enough to keep pace with evolving customer needs. As a result, they took a few risks with new products that didn’t perform as well as they had expected.

The Solution

King’s Hawaiian’s team created The Ohana Circle, an online community offering agile research methods through Fuel Cycle Exchange for continuous customer insights.

That’s when the company’s Head of Consumer Insights, Troy Figgins, and his team discovered market research online communities. Upon launching their community, The Ohana Circle, the team quickly realized that it didn’t just grant them always- on access to the pulse of customer interest they needed to stay ahead of changing behaviors and preferences. It also enabled them to leverage an extensive assortment of agile research methods and tools with the Fuel Cycle Exchange (FCX), resulting in a continuously evolving dialogue with their most important stakeholders.

Troy Figgins

Troy Figgins

Head of Consumer
Insights

King's Hawaiian

“I don’t know how we lived without Fuel Cycle… The breadth of research and value that you get out of online communities is unmatched. After a year, I went from a skeptic to a 100% evangelist for online communities”

The Results

King’s Hawaiian achieved their seven research goals through Fuel Cycle’s Community, enabling more frequent, agile initiatives, quick insights, on-demand customer input, DIY research customization, targeted concept testing, and flexible community management options.

The team at King’s Hawaiian began their community journey with 7 key goals in mind. Here is a snapshot of how they got there:

King’s Hawaiian Goals:

  • Understand ongoing customer interests
  • Streamline process from question to answer
  • Provide directional strategy to internal stakeholders
  • Conduct more research in less time and at a lower cost
  • Get a read on customer receptivity to innovation
  • Interact with a variety of customers
  • Build a research process with easy maintenance and management

What They Get With Community:

  • Ability to transition from a single large study per year to more frequent, agile research initiatives
  • Quick turn insights from an always-on research hub with qualitative & quantitative analytic capabilities
  • On-demand insights from customers to drive strategy for product and brand teams
  • DIY capabilities to customize unlimited research projects at a fraction of the cost of full-service
  • Ability to introduce concepts to specific customer segments for high- fidelity input at multiple stages of product development
  • Infrastructure that supports the full spectrum of research, from ad hoc with panel to longitudinal with niche audiences & everything between
  • Options for DIY, full-service, or hybrid community management services are available and can flex based on need

Looking Forward

Fuel Cycle’s Community and FCX partner solutions transformed King’s Hawaiian research process, enabling frequent, agile studies with quick directional understanding, cost-effective DIY projects, and continuous insights for immediate action.

Using Fuel Cycle’s Community and FCX partner solutions, King’s Hawaiian transformed their research process from:

  • Infrequent > Frequent, Agile Research Studies
  • Need for 100% Accuracy > Quick Directional Understanding
  • Rigid, Expensive Projects > Cost-Effective, DIY Solutions
  • Long, Drawn-Out Studies > Continuous Insights for Immediate Action

Internal demand for access to community insights has skyrocketed at King’s Hawaiian, and the Insights team plans to meet this need by leveraging additional solutions via their Community. To meet the needs of King’s Hawaiian and other customer-centric brands, Fuel Cycle is comitted to continous innovation that delivers agile insights at scale.

The Fuel Cycle Difference

Fuel Cycle’s award-winning Research Engine is the most comprehensive intelligence-gathering ecosystem that exists today. Our platform enables decision-makers to maintain constant connections with their customers, prospects, and users to uncover real-world actionable intelligence. By integrating human insight with critical business data, and through automated quantitative and qualitative research solutions, Fuel Cycle’s Research Engine powers product innovation, brand intelligence, and enhanced user experience.

Breakthroughs require action. We built Fuel Cycle to ignite it.