How Nestlé is Using AI-Native Research to Keep a Flagship Brand Ahead of the Changing Consumer

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As one of Nestlé’s flagship brands, nearly everyone has seen Lean Cuisine’s products in the frozen food section of the grocery store. Historically, Lean Cuisine focused on providing low-calorie microwavable meals, but the brand noticed consumer preferences changing: shoppers are increasingly looking for more protein, fiber, and new flavors instead of prioritizing calories. 

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Lean Cuisine wanted to get ahead of this trend before it became a problem. If it wanted to continue being a leader in the marketplace, the brand would need to evolve with consumers rather than directing them — a tall order, given that the organization hadn’t undergone significant change in a long while. 

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Nestlé leadership informed Lean Cuisine’s Consumer Marketplace and Insights Pilot Co-Lead, Patricia Descamps, that she had six weeks to uncover findings about what modern consumers want and provide her strategic recommendations. Six weeks is an impossible turnaround with traditional agencies, and DIY platforms would lack the rigor necessary to achieve in-depth insights. Not wanting to sacrifice speed or proper methodology, Patricia turned to the AI-Native Research Agency, Knit. 

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Why Knit? 

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The scenario Patricia was faced with is familiar to many researchers. Stakeholders demand thorough insights under tight deadlines, so insights teams are accustomed to making trade-offs. Knit empowers insights professionals to have the best of all worlds thanks to our Researcher-Driven AI model: we’re staffed with human researchers who ground our advanced AI in sound methodologies, steering it to achieve verifiable, defensible insights in as little as a few days. 

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Patricia says: “Speed is important, but at the end of the day, it’s all about the right information, the right insights that we can get from our consumers, and that’s why we decided to partner with Knit.” 

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Our AI isn’t tacked on to the end of our workflow, either; it’s embedded into every step of the journey, from design and sampling to fielding, analysis, and reporting. Plus, Nestlé’s dedicated full-service Knit research team took the work off of Patricia’s plate so she wasn’t bogged down in execution and could focus on driving strategy. 

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What Lean Cuisine Researched

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Patricia wanted to conduct research amongst three key segments:

• Lapsed consumers — why don’t they buy Lean Cuisine products anymore? 
• Current consumers — what keeps them loyal to the brand? 
• Non-brand buyers — where are gaps and opportunities for shoppers who don’t typically buy Lean Cuisine products? 

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Knit and Lean Cuisine conducted two studies, both with integrated quant and qual, to collect feedback from over 1,500 consumers in less than four weeks. Patricia was a particular fan of Knit’s AI-moderated video questions that probe participants dynamically and align follow-up questions according to Lean Cuisine’s desired insights, which create stronger empathy with stakeholders and make consumers more tangible. Patricia adds:

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“My leadership doesn’t have to hear the insights from me, they can hear it directly from the consumer. Knit’s video AI capabilities allow me to have amazing conversations with my leadership and cross-functional teams.” 

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Once the findings were in, Knit delivered a decision-ready report Patricia could share with Nestlé’s leadership in time for their meeting — at an affordable price point to boot. 

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“This is a very cost-effective solution… Working with this team really allowed me to elevate not only the insights, but the study design itself to the next level… [we could use] Knit to reach real consumers and leverage AI to get closer to them in a faster way.” 

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Research as a Living Resource 

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Traditionally, insights teams run a study, analyze the findings (and spend a great deal of time reworking outputs if they use ungoverned AI), produce a report, share it with stakeholders, and help guide a decision. This one-and-done approach requires a tremendous amount of tedious execution, re-running studies for follow-up questions, and stretched budgets to repeatedly talk to consumers. 

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Lean Cuisine didn’t want to adhere to this outdated process, though. Knit’s research team empowered Patricia’s bandwidth, but she also enjoys access to Knit’s proprietary platform (as all customers do), allowing her to dig into the insights whenever she or her stakeholders have further questions. She can apply new audience cuts, prompt the AI to surface new findings, explore open-ended and video question themes, and much more. 

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This way, insights don’t become a static report that sits on a shelf once complete; they become a living resource that continues to yield value over time. 

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Want to run quant and qual in the same study? Talk to one of our experts to learn how Knit can help elevate your organization’s insights function and demonstrate to executive leadership the strategy you’re capable of. 

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