Insights You Can’t Get from a Lab

• Unexpected product pain points (e.g., packaging that leaks in bags)
• Creative usage hacks consumers invent on their own
• Social or situational barriers to use, like embarrassment or messiness

Why Shadowing Helps CPG Brands Make Better Decisions

• A beverage brand might see that users toss unopened bottles because fit or portability fails during a bike ride
• A skincare company could observe consumers skipping a key step in their regimen due to time pressure
• A snack product may be eaten in multiple stages due to portion or packaging limitations

Portable Products Are Built for Movement. Your Research Should Be Too.

Key Elements of Product Shadowing

• Recruiting real users: Participants are selected based on key behaviors – such as frequent travel, busy parents, gym-goers, students, or professionals who rely on portable products throughout the day.
• Immersive presence: A trained researcher joins a portion of the participant’s regular day (with consent), observing how they engage with CPG items naturally – during errands, at work, commuting, or transitioning between tasks.
• Contextual observation: Researchers take notes on location, timing, packaging interaction, emotional responses, and workarounds during each real-life moment of use.
• Follow-up interviews: Brief conversations capture motivations and impressions to supplement what was observed visually.

Example: Observational Research for Snacks and Cosmetics

The Empathy Layer in Shadowing

• Spot patterns in behavior across different people and settings
• Identify gaps in product performance, usage, or experience
• Inspire product improvements rooted in empathy, not assumptions

Portable Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) like snacks, toiletries, cosmetics, and beverages are ever-present in our routines – found in gym bags, glove compartments, purses, or desk drawers. These products cater to convenience, yet understanding exactly how, when, and why they’re used outside of traditional settings isn't always clear from surveys or focus groups alone.

That’s where shadowing – a practical consumer observation method – plays a key role. By accompanying consumers through their daily lives, researchers can see firsthand how people interact with portable products in real-world environments.

Snacks and Beverages in Transit

From protein bars eaten between meetings to flavored water sipped during a school pickup, observing on-the-go usage of consumer packaged goods reveals behaviors that are influenced by time pressure, physical environment, and emotional state. For example, one person might prefer a resealable snack pack due to frustration with crumbs on their car seat – a detail that might not show up in a standard usability test.

Cosmetics and Toiletries on the Move

Products like deodorant, face mist, lip balm, or dry shampoo are frequently used in restrooms, rideshares, or office break rooms. Through real-world product shadowing, CPG brands can notice subtle routines: how someone balances a compact mirror while holding coffee, or how often beauty products are reapplied during a long commute. These observations can highlight opportunities for packaging redesign or claims positioning (e.g., one-handed use, spill-proof applicators).

Travel Essentials and Personal Care Items

Field research methods for portable CPG items like hand sanitizer, lotion, or mini toothpaste often show how consumers adapt or even hack products for convenience. For example:

• Transferring contents into smaller containers
• Taping or labeling products to prevent accidental sharing
• Storing items in specific bag compartments for quick access during air travel

Understanding these behaviors through experience-based research allows brands to design with intent – not assumptions.

In short, observing everyday items like snacks and cosmetics in the context they’re actually used gives brands a reality check. These insights serve as a springboard for designing products that align more closely with real consumer needs, not just aspirations shared in interviews.

SIVO’s Empathy Treks take consumer observation to a deeper level by combining shadowing with empathetic inquiry. This approach goes beyond tracking usage patterns – it helps brands understand the “why” behind everyday behaviors.

In practice, an Empathy Trek doesn’t just follow someone with a clipboard. Instead, our trained researchers build rapport and listen actively, uncovering context that drives decisions. For portable CPG products, this often means joining participants on a commute, a grocery run, or a hectic school drop-off – and quietly witnessing how products are used along the way.

Spotting Workarounds and Friction

One of the most valuable aspects of this shadowing method for portable consumer products is spotting creative adaptations. Consumers often find their own solutions when products fall short – like tucking an oversized bottle into a sock for insulation or using a snack wrapper as a makeshift coaster. These DIY fixes are goldmines for innovation.

Surface-Level Preferences vs. Functional Needs

In traditional interviews, consumers may talk about flavor preferences or brand loyalty. But Empathy Treks help identify functional needs that carry more weight: durability, spill control, ease of opening, portion size. By observing real-life product use, SIVO uncovers micro-moments–like a child struggling to open a juice box or a jogger skipping a sports gel due to packaging fuss.

Why Empathy Changes the Game

This holistic, human-centered technique helps teams break free from assumptions. Often, clients report that the user behavior insights gathered during an Empathy Trek eliminate the guesswork in product positioning. What resonates isn’t always what’s said – it’s what’s done, and when.

For example, a popular hand cream came under scrutiny after Treks revealed it was only used at home due to oily residue. Consumers wanted moisture but feared greasiness while on the go. This insight led to a travel-sized, fast-absorbing formula – a perfect example of needs uncovered through mobile product usage observation.

SIVO’s approach blends trust-building with expert curiosity, allowing product teams to gain a real-time look into how CPG products fit into – or interrupt – everyday life. It’s about discovering what people actually need, even if they don’t consciously know it yet.

Seeing consumers engage with your products in their natural environment provides a type of clarity that's tough to replicate in labs or interviews. Observational research – especially shadowing in real life – offers an unfiltered view into how people use, modify, or work around products as part of their day. And that raw perspective is a launchpad for smarter innovation.

For CPG brands aiming to refine form factors, boost usability, or create new product lines, shadowing and consumer observation offer game-changing advantages over traditional research techniques alone.

1. Discovering Unspoken Needs

Real-world field research helps uncover friction points consumers may not express outright. If packaging consistently slows people down or doesn’t fit in cupholders or backpacks, repeated observations can fuel new design features that better suit on-the-go usage.

2. Faster, More Targeted Product Iteration

Unlike waiting for sales data or post-launch feedback, real-life product use insights during early R&D enable brands to pivot quickly. It’s easier to make impactful tweaks when you understand what’s happening in the car, on the train, or between meetings.

3. Empathy That Drives Differentiation

Shadowing builds empathy within your product team. Once you’ve seen a consumer juggle lunch, emails, and a bottle cap that’s tough to open, you think differently about convenience. These details fuel design thinking and differentiation in crowded CPG categories.

4. Enhances Packaging, Portability, and Positioning

Observational insights regularly lead to breakthroughs in:

• Functional packaging: Easy-to-open, spill-proof, mess-free options
• Portability features: Compact sizing, resealability, or modular storage
• Claims and messaging: Aligning branding with the product’s context (e.g., “desk drawer-ready” or “hassle-free hydration”)

5. Reduces Development Guesswork

Market research methods that include shadowing limit the need for assumptions during concept development. Instead of wondering how consumers will use a new travel skincare kit, you’ll know – because you’ve seen it in motion.

Overall, CPG research grounded in real-life observation delivers a richer understanding of behavior, moving beyond what people say to what they do in the wild. These insights bridge the gap between your original intent and the everyday moments that truly matter to consumers.