Customer Background
Company: New Age Floral
Industry: Floral Design
Established in 2020, New Age Floral is a proud leader in the floral design industry's sustainability movement. The company's journey began with a simple goal: to eradicate unsustainable floral design products, like green foam bricks, by offering natural alternatives that prioritize our planet's well-being.
The company's groundbreaking product, the OshunPouch®, stands as a testament to its commitment to innovation and sustainability.
The Challenge
Over the past several years as inflation spiked and tariff wars made importing and pricing uncertain, New Age Floral faced economic challenges that led to flat sales. To address the problems, they embarked upon a journey to discover the reasons for the decline and understand which messages would most resonate with florists, distributors and consumers.
The company needed answers to critical questions:
- Which product features and price ranges would generate the most sales?
- Considering that competitors were greenwashing their messaging, which messages related to sustainability would best differentiate New Age?
- Should they emphasize "home compostable" versus "commercially compostable"?
- Which price points would command the biggest market share?
- How much could the company charge for its products without decreasing demand to an unsustainable level?
The Solution
To find answers to their questions, New Age Floral worked with Fractional CMO Aaron Ziemann who collaborated with Subconscious AI Advisory Partner Michelle Seay Baker using the following methodologies:
- Consumer Behavior Exploration with AI Causal Research Experiments
- Conjoint Price Analysis using AI Causal Research Market Simulations
Sample size: 125 respondents on the final experiment, with sample sizes varying across multiple preliminary experiments.
Phase 1: Determine the Most Important Features
High-level experiments were run to assess whether brand names, prices, or various product features were most important to customers.
Price emerged as the most important factor consumers would consider when purchasing eco-friendly floral foam.
Phase 2: Test Compostability Messaging
Experiments were rerun with a narrowed feature focus to determine if "home compostable" and "commercially compostable" could be differentiated and which would resonate more strongly.
Home compostable products emerged as the stronger preference among eco-conscious consumers.
Phase 3: Determine Optimal Price Points
The price ranges New Age uses currently were entered to uncover which prices would cause consumers to be more likely to purchase the product.
Sales would start to drop off if products are priced over $100. The optimal price to maintain market share: $60.
Phase 4: Test Messaging and Slogans
A new experiment was designed to focus on the most important features (brand, price, compostability type) and test specific slogans and supporting ad copy to decide which ones to test in real-world campaigns.
While eco-conscious consumers prefer "Certified True Compostability," "The Flat-Pack that Pays for Itself" appealed to both eco-conscious and pragmatic consumers, suggesting broader market appeal.
Phase 5: Market Simulation and Price Optimization
Using the Market Performance Simulator, the team experimented with numerous scenarios comparing Oshun Pouch to competitors at various price levels to understand how price changes would impact market share and revenue.
The demand curve showed clear price sensitivity. Market share peaks at $60 and declines steadily as price increases.
Willingness-to-pay analysis revealed which messaging, brand positioning, and price combinations would maximize customer value perception.
Key Findings
Through a series of agile, iterative experiments, the team learned that:
- Price is the dominating feature on which consumers base their purchasing decisions.
- Using the words "home compostable" contributes to increased purchases among eco-conscious consumers.
- Charging prices over $60 would likely detract from purchase and reduce market share.
- "The Flat-Pack that Pays for Itself" appeals to both eco-conscious and pragmatic buyers, suggesting broader market reach.
- The highest price tolerance paired with the ad copy: "Ending the greenwashing noise with the only floral stabilizing mechanic that is independently certified home-compostable, eliminating micro-plastics with a zero-waste lifecycle."
- Consumers in this market are highly responsive to price changes.
- New Age Floral can carve out significant market share with a focus on "home compostable" products at preferred pricing with aligned messaging.
Results and Impact
Cost Savings
New Age Floral saved approximately $65,000 in research costs that a traditional research agency would have charged for similar research.
Reduced Risk
With this causal research capability, New Age Floral gained access to predictive insights based on consumer behavior rather than static survey data, making campaign launches less risky and more profitable from day one.
Faster Time to Revenue
Access to insights within a few weeks, rather than several months, gave New Age Floral the opportunity to launch new campaigns and begin increasing sales and revenue much faster than traditional research would allow.
Conclusion
Facing a challenging sales environment with inflation and tariffs in flux, and the need to differentiate in a market with misleading "green" claims, New Age Floral needed a cost-effective way to understand consumer purchase behavior and optimize their marketing and messaging strategy.
In a groundbreaking human-AI collaborative effort, Michelle Seay Baker, APR, and New Age Floral's Fractional CMO Aaron Ziemann were able to help the company save $65,000 in research costs and bring clarity to strengthen strategic marketing direction, reduce campaign launch risk, and increase the potential for rapid revenue growth.
Ready to clarify your growth strategy?
Let's explore what research-led insights could mean for your business.
Schedule a Conversation