A major part of our role as market researchers is providing insights that fuel informed and agile decision-making for business leaders and organisations with an eye to innovation.
This is especially true at Square Holes, as one of our core values is IMPACT. What impact means to us is that our reports and deep dives don’t just deliver static insights but are used to drive significant decision-making that transforms your business model or offering.
As our Managing Director and Founder, Jason Dunstone, puts it, impact is about progress.
“Impact means making decisions that turn exploration into meaningful progress. It’s not just ROI or big shifts (though we value those), it’s about doing work about people and culture that sparks curiosity, invites deeper thinking, and uncovers what others miss,” says Dunstone.
“Impact is choosing partnership, long-term client relationships and impactful decision making and change over time – beyond box-ticking, evidence over assumption, and progress over comfort. It fuels innovation, nurtures our team, and creates momentum. Sometimes in bold leaps, sometimes in small seeds that grow into something significant.”
A trap many businesses fall into is relying on assumptions or intuition when engaging in decision-making, whereas market research is about ensuring that decisions are grounded in evidence rather than guesswork. By analysing market conditions and competitor activity, companies can anticipate potential challenges and adapt their strategies accordingly. This is especially pertinent in rapidly changing markets, where consumer expectations and cultural advancements evolve quickly.
Square Holes has partnered with Meals on Wheels SA since 2022 on yearly research projects, exploring customer satisfaction, changes in expectations and usage of the service, as well as volunteer experience.
Cathy Lock, Stakeholder Engagement Consultant for Meals on Wheels SA says that this research is vital part of a host of tools Meals on Wheels use to keep up with cultural and demographic changes that affect their offering.
“We are living in, as everyone is, a very changing environment. We’ve got changing demographics of our target clientele as the baby boomers are getting older, and they’ve got very different expectations to the generation that came before them, who have been our clients for a long time. We’ve got rapid growth of external competition. In our marketplace, once upon a time, the only home-delivered meal you’d ever be able to get would be Meals on Wheels. But now there are so many options for people in so many formats,” says Lock.
Lock adds that the growing popularity of online food delivery services like Uber Eats and subscription models like Lite’N’Easy have also changed customer expectations.
“We’ve also got changing customer expectations. People have different expectations about what they can get for their money and how it will fit their personal food preferences and lifestyle. Also, we are in a very different economic environment, including all the changes to the My Aged Care system, access to subsidised services and customer copayments, as well as the increased cost of living. Obviously, our production costs are also increasing. So, we are in this very rapidly changing environment and trying to respond to all of that,” says Lock.
Using market research alongside incident and complaints analysis, sales data, business analysis and external market evaluation, Meals on Wheels is working towards several innovations in the production of their meals, changes to the service model, and changes to the customer journey.
Lock says that the research has helped the organisation to make adaptations that allow it to better tailor their services to the changing needs of its dedicated customers.
“For 70 years, our service offer has been relatively unchanged, but we’ve been slowly making adaptations to that, and there are lots of other innovations in the pipeline. And we’ve been trialling some completely different ways of meeting people’s needs with much more flexibility and choice,” says Lock.
“We keep asking those questions of our customers, “What do you value about our service? What makes the difference for you? What would make it work better?” That kind of thing. So, it’s kind of keeping a finger on the pulse of what people are looking for… I mean, one of the benefits of using Square Holes is that you can do the trending for us about how those things might be changing over time, and we need to be aware of those oncoming changes in expectations or usage or whatever.”
One way that the market research has helped to solidify a point of difference for Meals on Wheels SA services is through the confirmation that their deliveries are also chiefly about human connection.
“We always say this is our important point of difference from other meal providers. One of the things that Square Holes surveys have shown us is that getting a regular healthy meal is the benefit of the service most highly valued by customers. A close second is the social contact and the ‘safety net’ of knowing that somebody’s coming, and that if they find them in trouble, they’ll do something. And this completely confirms our point of difference, really, from a Lite n’ Easy (style model), for example,” says Lock.
Lock states that other benefits include having clear and concise evidence to help direct their workforce and partners over important changes.
“There are a couple of other useful aspects to having this kind of research, one being that the evidence can be used to explain strategic and operational decision-making to our workforce and partners and to implement change across the organisation. It’s important to bring our diverse statewide branches and their volunteer workforce along with you,” says Lock.
“And when you’ve got evidence of what customers are saying about your service and what they want and what works for people, it’s helpful in change management.”
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