Dollar Shave Club + Qualtrics

Dollar Shave Club built their brand around serving a specific consumer segment with a direct-to-consumer shaving experience that disrupted traditional retail. But as the company looked to accelerate growth, they identified a significant untapped opportunity: expanding into a new target consumer market. The challenge wasn't just about product development – it was about truly understanding a demographic they'd never served before.

"We needed to move fast to validate whether our brand could resonate with this new consumer segment," said Nikki Frisz, Senior Director of Marketing at Dollar Shave Club. "Traditional research methods would have taken weeks and a significant budget, limiting how thoroughly we could explore this new audience before making strategic decisions."

Rather than commit to lengthy, expensive traditional research upfront, Dollar Shave Club partnered with Qualtrics to explore synthetic panel technology. This allowed them to rapidly test key assumptions about these consumers' shopping behaviors, brand perceptions, and product preferences, getting directional insights in days rather than weeks.

The program focused on critical business questions: How does this consumer segment approach personal care shopping? What drives brand loyalty in this segment? Would Dollar Shave Club's value proposition and brand personality translate to this new audience?

Validating strategy with confidence

The synthetic data revealed actionable insights that aligned closely with human research patterns, giving Dollar Shave Club confidence to move forward with their expansion strategy:

• Market reality check: The AI correctly identified that this consumer segment primarily shops for personal care at accessible retailers and through direct-to-consumer websites, rather than specialty stores, providing realistic expectations for distribution strategy.
• Brand receptivity: The data showed strong directional alignment on how this segment perceives direct-to-consumer and mainstream brands, confirming Dollar Shave Club's positioning could translate to this new segment.
• Behavioral insights: Synthetic responses accurately mirrored human data on routine-based attitudes like "I don't enjoy shaving and only shave when I have to," validating key customer pain points the brand could address.
• Segmentation clarity: Both synthetic and human data produced identical themes around shaving perceptions – "experience" versus "necessity" – giving the team clear customer personas to target.