Get a Demo

How Weber's four global insight communities turn everyday questions into actionable insight

How Weber's four global insight communities turn everyday questions into actionable insight

Photo of Rushan Theunis, Weber's senior manager of Consumer Insights
quote start

The one standout thing about the Rival platform is that it makes surveys conversational. When you have a community, they're always on. You're reaching out to them on a very regular basis — at least a few times a month. You don't want it to feel like a chore, like something that's boring or another task that people have to do. It needs to be engaging, it needs to be fun.

Rushan Theunis

Senior Manager of Consumer Insights, Weber
quote end

92% completion rate

with consistently high participation across community activities

4,000+ global members

across four communities the U.S., Germany, U.K. and Australia

Access to always-on insight

answering questions in real-time, with no extra research budget

About Weber

Since 1952, Weber has been a leader in the grilling industry, known for its charcoal, gas and electric grills, along with a wide range of accessories, recipes and maintenance resources. Built on a legacy of innovation and consumer feedback, Weber continues to evolve its products and experiences based on how people actually grill, cook and connect.

Friends grilling and preparing food together at an outdoor barbecue with burgers and vegetables

The Challenge

Weber has always valued direct input from consumers, but as the business expanded globally, maintaining that connection at scale became more complex.

While the team already had three insights communities in place with another supplier, a few challenges emerged:

  • Skewed audience: The community over-indexed on older consumers, with limited engagement from Gen Z and millennials.
  • Growing demand across markets: Teams in regions like Australia were looking for similar access to insights.
  • Resource constraints: Managing the community required significant hands-on effort as internal bandwidth tightened.
  • Unanswered business questions: Many questions surfaced in meetings without budget or a formal research plan, making them harder to act on.

Weber needed a more flexible and scalable approach that could support both larger initiatives and everyday decision-making.

The Solution

Weber partnered with Rival Technologies to evolve its insights community program into a more modern, always-on resource for the business, focused on improving engagement, expanding reach and making insights easier to use across teams.

Mobile chat-based survey interface showing Weber’s Barbecue Circle community answering questions and sharing feedback

Reasons Weber chose Rival

Mobile-first, conversational design: Surveys sent as mobile chats created an experience that was more natural and easier to respond to, helping drive stronger participation, especially among younger audiences.

Video and visual feedback: Unlimited video responses allow consumers to share feedback in their own words, adding depth and making insights more impactful for stakeholders.

Building profiles over time: Attributes are appended to each member’s profile as they engage with research, allowing the team to target specific groups without asking everything upfront.

Ongoing recruitment and expansion: Targeted panel and social recruitment improved demographic representation, enabled expansion into additional markets, and brought in both customers and non-customers to broaden perspectives and support more use cases.

Supported service model: Weber gets ongoing support across incentive and recruitment management, helping the team maintain community health and engagement. Support extends to project execution through programming, QA, fieldwork and implementation, giving the Weber team bandwidth to respond to business needs quickly.

Weber also partners with Reach3 Insights for full-service study design and execution that ensures insights are applied across the business.

Results

The shift to a more conversational, mobile-first approach has strengthened both community performance and how insights are used across the business.

  • Higher engagement: A 92% completion rate reflects strong and consistent participation.

  • More representative feedback: Improved engagement from Gen Z and millennial consumers has created a more balanced view of the customer base.

  • Faster access to insights: Teams can answer questions as they arise, without waiting for formal research cycles.

  • Richer insights: Video and open-ended responses provide deeper context and make findings more impactful for stakeholders.

  • Stronger internal adoption: The community is widely used across functions and has become a trusted, go-to resource.

Business impact

  • Earlier product direction: The team identified key barriers in new categories, such as perceptions that electric grills lack heat and flavor, early in the development process. In one case, Weber launched a product based on community feedback and later returned to members to show how their input directly shaped the final outcome.

  • More informed marketing: Insights from the community have shaped messaging, partnerships and seasonal strategies.

  • Support for sales and external conversations: Teams have brought community-backed insights into retailer discussions and other key moments where primary data was needed.

  • Broader decision support without added budget: Questions that surface across the business can be answered without launching new research projects.

  • Shift to always-on insight: Research is now embedded in day-to-day decision-making, rather than treated as a one-off function tied to budget and timelines.

Is it time to turn up the heat on your customer insights?

Ready to understand customer behaviors and deliver fresh insights like the team at Weber? Connect with Rival to see if we're a good fit. 

BOOK A DEMO

Looking for more insight community examples?

tyson foods

Tyson Foods

Capturing videos and images via mobile diaries to understand shifts in morning behaviors. 

Learn More
Carnival Cruise case study

Carnival Corporation

Driving 83% response rates and accelerating speed to insights with Community 2.0.

Learn More
Brunswick insight community example and use case

Brunswick

Connecting their system of record with their insight community to get a real-time, more nuanced understanding of boaters.

Learn More