Mars Wrigley

Mars Wrigley is the world’s leading manufacturer of chocolate, chewing gum, mints and fruit confectionery – marking them out as one of the biggest players in the food and drink wholesale industry.

They invited b2b.store to pitch for a convenience retailer research project that would provide in-depth insight into the channel and how customers were buying products in the sector. The project had a particular focus on B2B eCommerce to understand how Mars Wrigley could increase the volume and value of online sales.

The project saw b2b.store carry out a series of initial one-to-one qualitative interviews with retailers to understand key considerations that went on inform the written survey that formed the basis of the quantitative research.

The surveys were then distributed across multiple avenues b2b.store had access to, including customer WhatsApp channels, established email databases, POS houses and eCommerce portals. In total, b2b.store got the survey in front of more than 30,000 retailers across the UK and Europe.

The results from the surveys were combined with desk research based on analytics from b2b.store’s eCommerce channels to create a snapshot of online usage – providing Mars with a detailed market read that would inform their future decisions.

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Mars Wrigley survey: in numbers

retailers reached by survey

months project ran for

countries covered by research

How did b2b.store complete the research?

How did b2b.store get the survey in front of so many retailers?

We took a multi-faceted approach to the project, using our team’s experience of interviewing retailers and analysing responses to hit as many avenues as possible. This meant using our existing channels and relationships to distribute the final survey, but also using industry connections to conduct one-to-one interviews.

How did you analyse the data?

Our team boasts decades of experience working in this sector, including an analyst who formerly worked as CFO at Adidas and Strategy Development Manager at Mars, who led the analysis of the survey findings. We constantly stress tested the data to come up with new findings, often adapting questions to ensure we were digging beneath the most obvious conclusions to discover the true motivations behind retailers’ behaviours.

Which countries did the research cover?

The basis of the survey covered the UK as the one of the most established independent retail markets in the world, but also spanned across Europe to compare and contrast behaviours there. The other two nations we focused on were Netherlands and Poland, where we identified research partners on the ground in each of those countries in order to get the results we needed.