Marketing, Packaging, and Messaging Research for Netspend

Immediate pain: Netspend needed to overhaul prepaid card packaging and messaging — but traditional packaging tests weren't revealing why consumers select one card over another.

As a leading U.S. provider of prepaid card solutions, Netspend's Head of Research and Insights, Mr. Chris Ogilvie, faced an urgent, familiar problem: packaging and messaging decisions can make or break selection, yet standard approaches miss the deeper motivations. Mr. Ogilvie believed that instead of running only conventional packaging tests, the team had to understand real shopping journeys and how attitudes and values drive choice.

To get actionable answers, Netspend hired Gold Research, a national customer journey mapping and research firm, to conduct market research and customer journey mapping that would uncover the true drivers of selection decisions.

Central question: How can Netspend redesign packaging and messaging to reflect the attitudes and values that actually drive card selection in real shopping journeys — not just pass traditional packaging tests?

Key differentiator: the virtual-shelf test that presented competitor cards alongside a single Netspend card — testing concepts in a real competitive shopping context to reduce isolation bias.

1. First, we designed and executed robust qualitative research: in-depth interviews and focus groups with a diverse set of target consumers to surface shopping behavior, purchase habits, attitudes, values and preferences while concurrently testing early-stage concepts.
2. Then, those qualitative findings were used to guide internal teams to optimize planned packaging and messaging options.
3. Finally, we commissioned a quantitative survey sampling hundreds of consumers to validate and make findings projectable; each respondent viewed a virtual shelf displaying competitor cards plus one Netspend test card to rate concepts in context.

Methods/technologies: in-depth interviews, focus groups, concept testing, quantitative survey with virtual-shelf stimulus, projectable sampling — delivering consumer insights, purchase-behavior analysis, and actionable packaging/messaging guidance.

Outcome: Selected a packaging, messaging, and design combination that increases appeal and reduces barriers to purchase for most consumers, with the new design scheduled to roll out later this year.

1. In-market outcome: Design approved for rollout.
2. Consumer benefits: saves shoppers time, improves product understanding
3. Business impact: expected lift in sales and customer retention
4. Keywords: shopper insights savings; mobile survey turnaround time

Client Testimonial:

"The insights from this work will save customrs time while shopping and they will have a better post purchase experience because they have a better understanding of the product. We expect to see a lift in sales and customer retention as a result of rolling out this new packaging." — Mr. Chris Ogilvie, Head of Research and Insights, Netspend.

FAQ

1. How quickly were results delivered? Within 60 days.
2. Was the method scalable or replicable? Yes — insights were used by marketing and creative teams and can be replicated for other packaging and messaging decisions.