Case Study: How Mondelēz and Discuss Turned 10 Years of Consumer Interviews into Same-Day Insight
By Discuss
- case study
- AI Personas
- Shopper Research
- AI Moderated Interviews
- Data Analytics
- Video Analytics
- Video Research
Mondelez International, one of the world’s largest snacking companies, faced three compounding pressures on its European insights function: the need to deliver findings faster than research cycles allowed, shrinking budgets with no reduction in stakeholder expectations, and an inability to activate the significant body of consumer knowledge the company had already accumulated. Research was commissioned project by project, meaning prior findings were difficult to query and new studies were required each time a question arose.
Mondelez worked with Discuss, an AI-assisted research platform, running 337 projects and 1,254 sessions across 29 or more markets over ten years. The team applied multiple methods on a single platform, including live moderated interviews, asynchronous shopalongs, product placement sessions, and ideation workshops. AI-assisted analysis surfaced themes and compressed reporting time. The Virtual Personas feature, which builds AI-powered personas from the brand’s own prior consumer interviews, was used to answer strategic stakeholder questions by querying accumulated research data without commissioning new fieldwork.
Mondelez generated $2.6 million in total engagement value. Costs were meaningfully lower than a single full-service agency model would have produced. Shopalong clips briefed on a Thursday were in stakeholders’ hands by Monday. Cross-functional teams including marketing, R&D, and packaging joined consumer sessions live for the first time and returned to video clips during their own ideation work.
“A senior stakeholder asked me a question in the morning. By end of day I had an answer grounded in real consumer data we’d already collected. No new study, no waiting.” — Anna Citro, Innovation & Strategy Insight Manager, Europe, Mondelez International
Read the full version of this case study on the Discuss website here.
