How Wells Enterprises turned insights into growth
Transforming challenges into opportunities with first-party data
“With Scintilla, we knew it would work because we had the data to prove it.”
In 2024, sales for Blue Bunny, a Wells Enterprises ice cream brand, began slowing. To understand and address the challenge, Wells turned to Scintilla, using modules like Customer Perception, Channel Performance, and Shopper Behavior to evaluate the brand’s performance and positioning. Here’s how they gained a deeper understanding of the Walmart customer base and used their insights to help spur a double-digit sales increase.
The opportunity: Addressing a sales decline for Blue Bunny
In 2024, Wells noticed that Blue Bunny was experiencing lower unit and dollar sales, particularly for Scrounds ice cream tubs. This was assumed to be due to several factors, including economic and health and wellness trends. Further analysis in Scintilla led to additional questions: which Blue Bunny Scrounds customers are lapsing, and are they switching to other items?
The approach: Who is purchasing Blue Bunny at Walmart?
Using profiling metrics from the Scintilla Shopper Behavior Performance-In-Detail (PID) report, Wells found that their different Scrounds lines attract different customers.
With a holistic understanding of their customer profiles in hand, the next step was to identify which customers were leaving Blue Bunny and which products they were buying instead. The Shopper Behavior Switching report helped Wells determine that price-sensitive customers were leaving Blue Bunny in search of greater value. That led to the next question: how could Wells retain customers by providing high-quality products and high value?
Meeting customers with high-quality products and high value
Wells used Customer Perception surveys to talk directly to their lapsed Scrounds customers at Walmart. The surveys corroborated Wells’ hypothesis that those customers were seeking greater value: 38% of respondents said higher prices and less income caused them to lapse, and 75% said a lower everyday price would cause them to purchase again. To win those customers back, Wells successfully aligned with their internal leadership to recommend a new, lower Every Day Low Price to their merchandising team, in the form of a Rollback.
The results: Substantial sales growth
Wells presented their comprehensive, data-driven solution to their Walmart merchant. Supporting insights from across the Scintilla ecosystem, including Customer Perception, Channel Performance, and Shopper Behavior, placed customers' needs at the center. Blue Bunny sales not only recovered from their 2024 decline, but even surpassed 2023 levels, one of the brand’s best sales years. Ultimately, this strategy led to double-digit YoY dollar growth for Scrounds overall and nearly triple-digit YoY dollar growth in the Delivery channel.
