• Relevancy of insights: Consumer preferences change. Conducting an Empathy Trek too early or too late may yield outdated or less applicable learnings.
 
• Strategic alignment: Insights gathered at the right time can directly fuel strategic decisions like feature prioritization, packaging, messaging, and shelf placement.
 
• Budget and resource efficiency: The earlier consumer expectations are confirmed or challenged, the more you can avoid costly course corrections later.
 
• Consumer-centric decision-making: Right-time research shows you’re listening — and delivers confidence that product choices reflect real customer needs.

What happens during a pre-launch Empathy Trek?

 
• Spending time in consumers’ homes to explore how they cook, snack, or store products
 
• Accompanying people on shopping trips to understand decision-making at shelf
 
• Exploring routines to see what’s lacking or causing friction (e.g., back-to-school lunches, baby care)

Why this stage matters

 
• Validate your assumptions: Is the consumer pain point as urgent as you think? Are competitors already addressing it better?
 
• Discover unmet needs: See problems and workarounds consumers aren’t consciously aware of — or haven’t vocalized.
 
• Inspire innovation: Direct observation can spark ideas or feature sets your team might not have otherwise considered.
 
• Anchor your positioning early: Understand how consumers frame the benefit in their own words to shape messaging later.

Launching a new CPG product is an exciting milestone – but it's far from the finish line. Once your product hits shelves, that’s when the real consumer story begins. A post-launch Empathy Trek is an invaluable opportunity to observe how consumers truly interact with your brand in their daily lives.

While traditional market research might offer post-launch feedback through surveys or sales data, those methods often miss the full consumer experience. Empathy Treks, as part of your post-launch strategy, help you understand why consumers behave the way they do – not just what they’re buying or saying.

Why conduct an Empathy Trek after launch?

• See real-world product use: Watch consumers prepare your frozen meal, apply your skincare product, or place your new snack on their kid’s lunch table. These lived moments offer insights into habits and challenges you can’t simulate in a test environment.
• Uncover unmet needs: Launching a product often reveals overlooked pain points, like confusing packaging or inconvenient sizes. In-context research allows you to spot and solve them early.
• Validate product positioning: Are consumers connecting with your intended brand message or using your product for unexpected reasons? Direct observation bridges the gap between marketing intentions and consumer reality.

Examples of post-launch improvements sparked by consumer insights

Consider a beverage brand that introduced a new low-sugar soda. Initial sales looked promising, but in-home insights revealed that consumers were mixing it with fruit juices for a stronger flavor. This led the brand to introduce a more robust flavor profile in future formulations.

Another example: a cleaning product was designed with a spray nozzle for convenience, but many consumers found it slippery when wet. Post-launch observations led to a packaging redesign that significantly improved usability – and repeat purchases.

Post-launch can be one of the best times for CPG consumer research because you’re not guessing – you’re reacting to real behavior. At this stage, an Empathy Trek empowers teams to move from assumptions to clarity, turning early feedback into a road map for iteration and growth.

Whether you're adding a new flavor, redesigning packaging, or introducing a healthier variant, line extensions and renovations play a vital role in CPG innovation. But even familiar products need fresh validation – especially when making changes that affect how consumers perceive or use them.

An Empathy Trek in this phase is particularly powerful because it allows teams to evaluate how a new version fits into daily routines and real-life decision-making. Unlike lab tests or concept reviews, in-context research puts your product where it matters – in kitchens, bathrooms, pantries, or shopping trips.

Benefits of in-context research during a product change

• Test relevance and usability: Will the new feature be embraced, ignored, or misused? Observing actual behaviors helps ensure your intended benefits are being picked up by consumers.
• Spot unintended friction: Even small renovations can introduce confusion. For example, a slight color shift in packaging may cause shoppers to overlook your product completely on the shelf.
• Understand family and lifestyle dynamics: A new variation might appeal to adults, but how do kids react? How does it impact storage, preparation, or repurchase decisions?

This is especially valuable for large CPG portfolios where multiple SKUs live side-by-side. A line extension might cannibalize your own sales or confuse loyal buyers if not properly communicated or positioned. An Empathy Trek helps assess whether new offerings expand choice or dilute clarity.

Even small product tweaks deserve close consumer scrutiny. Empathy Treks offer meaningful consumer insights for CPG innovation by giving you the context that traditional testing might miss. When you walk alongside your customer in their world, you gain a fuller picture of how new iterations affect trust, usability, and preference.

Deciding when to conduct an Empathy Trek depends on your business goals – but the key is choosing a moment when decisions can still be shaped by deep, real-world consumer understanding. In other words, timing it before the die is cast.

Here are a few guiding questions to help identify the right research moment:

Are you making a strategic decision that will affect consumers directly?

Whether you're planning a launch, rebrand, or product enhancement, any change worth investing in is worth testing with the people it impacts. Running an Empathy Trek early in the decision cycle helps ensure those moves align with real consumer needs, behaviors, and preferences.

Is there a knowledge gap or internal disagreement?

Does your team need clarity around how consumers experience your product category at home or on the go? Are different departments seeing the consumer differently? Empathy Treks ground everyone in a shared truth based on live, observed behavior – not assumptions or dated segmentation curves.

Are you navigating market complexity?

Today’s CPG environment is dynamic – consumer expectations shift fast, and product success depends on relevance and ease. Knowing when to conduct an Empathy Trek allows you to reduce risk while increasing the chances of connection. Use this approach whenever you face uncertain terrain like new demographics, new categories, or new channels.

In short, the best phases for CPG consumer research are:

• Pre-launch: To uncover unmet needs and inform development
• Post-launch: To refine based on actual use
• During renovations or extensions: To validate real-world impact

Choosing the right moment for in-context qualitative research ensures your decisions are guided by empathy, not just data. And because SIVO Insights tailors each study to your specific product lifecycle challenge, you get meaningful, actionable consumer insights every time.