Snack Factory's Pretzel Crisps® Brand “Rethinks Pretzels” utilizing Affinova

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Snack Factory's Pretzel Crisps® Brand “Rethinks Pretzels” utilizing Affinova
June 07, 2011
Affinnova, Inc., the global leader in marketing innovation software and services, is pleased to announce that Snack Factory selected Affinnova to help spice up its snack food product line. Utilizing Affinnova’s technology to quickly and thoroughly test product concepts and designs for greatest market potential, Snack Factory’s Pretzel Crisps® brand introduced two new "bold and spicy"flavors yesterday.

The rapidly growing, New Jersey-based producer of the flat-baked pretzel cracker took a different path when choosing new flavors, product look and package design to expand its best-selling Pretzel Crisps® brand. Rather than go through a time-consuming focus group process that would have produced qualitative results, Pretzel Crisps® surveyed two separate groups of 400 consumers to select the two “most likely to succeed” flavors out of 180 alternatives. The process took just weeks using Affinnova’s technology-based testing and evaluation process.

Pretzel Crisps® faced a dilemma when product developers came up with 180 new variations. Using traditional testing methods to narrow the field to two flavors for additional development would require too much time and expense, while manually winnowing the variations prior to launch might have ended up omitting the most popular concepts.

Affinnova’s IDDEA technology provided an alternative that not only compressed the development timeline, but also reduced testing costs. The new Pretzel Crisps® flavors were introduced to the public on June 5, 2011, at the International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association (IDDBA) show in Anaheim, CA.

“Using Affinnova’s technology, we were able to test all of the variations and determine the two optimal versions of flavor, product look and packaging design in weeks at an affordable price,” said Perry Abbenante, Vice President of Marketing for Pretzel Crisps®. “We would not have been able to complete such in-depth consumer testing of so many variations if we used traditional market research methods.”

Affinnova’s IDDEA technology enables marketers to develop a limitless number of concept variations and then quickly and accurately assess all options. An interactive evolutionary algorithm engages target consumers in a “survival-of-the-fittest” process that identifies the concepts with the highest market potential from virtually any size test field.

Once the top concepts have been identified, Affinnova’s IDDEA II provides a comparative measurement of top concepts against relevant benchmarks, including competitors. The process maps concepts on two dimensions of purchase intent — breadth and intensity of appeal — thereby gauging a product’s potential for success.

A recent yearlong study found that 64% of client initiatives tested using Affinnova’s IDDEA software produce optimized concepts that outscore their leading competitor, while pre-optimization concepts from the same initiatives bested their leading competitor only 22% of the time.

“We allow innovative companies like Snack Factory to bring their ideas and concepts to market faster, with a higher chance of success,” commented Waleed Al-Atraqchi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Affinnova. “Our IDDEA technology has shifted the development process from conventional development and testing to innovation optimization.
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