How Brunswick uses Reach3's New Customer Experience solution to nurture the next wave of brand advocates

Young family first-time boat buyers
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About Brunswick Corporation

Established in 1845, Brunswick Corporation is the largest maker of pleasure boats in the world. They are responsible for developing, manufacturing and marketing a wide variety of recreational marine products, such as boats, parts, accessories, propulsion, and business acceleration.

The challenge

During COVID-19, consumer habits and preferences were changing rapidly as people looked for alternative ways to spend time with their loved ones. Moreover, research performed by Reach3 Insights indicated that 45% of Americans had shifted brands during the pandemic, and 85% of these consumers planned to stick with their new purchase decisions.  

 

With a massive influx of new customers, Brunswick had to better understand the needs and expectations of these new boaters — fast.  Would boating become a new pastime, or a passing fancy for these consumers? 

 

Objectives

Engage new boaters and increase consumer loyalty, advocacy and retention by:

- Understanding the motivations and expectations of this new boater segment
- Mapping the new path to purchase  
- Identifying points of friction during the purchase journey 
- Tracking how consumer needs and preferences change over time

The solution

 

New Customer Experience solution

Boat owner sharing experience

Working with Reach3 Insights powered by Rival Technologies' mobile market research platform, Brunswick activated Ripl, a customer community solution for new and existing customers. This community was positioned as a free place for members to meet other boaters, earn exclusive perks and participate in mobile-based surveys on the Rival platform that will make boating more safe, fun and accessible.

The goal of the Ripl community was to gather deeper insights into the purchase journey of new customers, potential points of friction, safety concerns, and other key drivers of their decision-making process. To better understand the experiences of new and existing boaters, members were presented with a mix of open-end, selfie-video, and quantitative engagements.

“The Ripl community has already provided immeasurable value. The Rival platform has replaced the need to invest significant resources into siloed, ad-hoc research projects.

 

I don’t have a team of researchers at Brunswick, so the greatest source of value comes from having Reach3 on my virtual team."

 

-Larisa Mats, Consumer & Market Insights Leader

The results

Rival Technologies' platform allowed Brunswick to quickly gather rigorous quant data and deeper, richer qual feedback from their consumers in one agile learning stream. Using our solution, Brunswick made insight-driven decisions in a matter of hours and days – not weeks or months.

In order to get comparable data and insights at this scale, Brunswick would have had to run dozens of ad-hoc studies with considerable expenses. The community allows Brunswick to run rapid, repeatable studies at scale with a variety of key customer segments.

Notable wins  

1. Gathered actionable feedback that highlights critical moments in the digital experience and potential points of friction 

2. Received powerful video testimonials that punctuated critical customer feedback and made stakeholders take notice 

3. Uncovered insights that informed new marketing campaigns, retail partner programs and brand messaging