Case Study: How McDonald’s Turned Innovation Tracking Into a Real-Time Growth Engine
By Dig Insights
- case study
- Behavioural Tracking
- Innovation Testing
- Innovation Research
- Pricing Research
McDonald’s Canada is the Canadian operation of one of the world’s largest quick-service restaurant chains, running frequent product launches and promotional programmes across a large, multi-stakeholder organisation. The insights team needed to evaluate the performance of new products and promotions beyond sales data alone, understanding which consumers innovations resonated with, why purchases were or were not made, and how performance compared to competitors. Without timely consumer insight shared across teams, decisions were delayed or made without a complete picture.
Dig Insights co-developed an always-on innovation tracker with McDonald’s Canada, built as a weekly measurement tool paired with a dynamic dashboard. The tracker captured awareness, trial, repeat behaviour, guest perceptions, purchase triggers, barriers, and audience segmentation by demographics and frequency. Results were fed into a shared dashboard accessible across marketing, operations, supply chain, and franchisee teams, enabling cross-functional visibility into live innovation programmes rather than relying on post-campaign reporting.
The tracker enabled McDonald’s Canada to optimise pricing and SKU strategy for Summer Drink Days after data revealed gradual price increases were weakening perceived value. It also identified the iced frappe as an overperforming product with strong trial and satisfaction scores among Gen Z consumers, despite minimal marketing support. The dashboard aligned multiple internal stakeholders around a shared data source, enabling mid-flight adjustments.
“By extending our understanding—by creating that direct line to the consumer—we’re able to see how an innovation is really landing. This kind of feedback doesn’t just help you track performance—it helps you evolve, faster and smarter, over time.” — Catie Brooks, Director of Consumer Insights, McDonald’s Canada
