Alumni Profile: Gayle Fuguitt

MBA 1980
Vice President, Consumer Insights
General Mills, Inc.

You won't find a marketing research department at Minneapolis-based General Mills, Inc. The company goes beyond demographics and statistics; it strongly believes that a superior knowledge of the customer -one that builds on intuition and improves decision-making - is key to outperforming competitors. They call this approach Consumer Insights, and Gayle Fuguitt, MBA '80, serves as vice president of this multi-faceted department.

General Mills, with $11.5 billion in net sales, markets consumer brands across a wide range of food categories, including Big G Cereals like Cheerios and Lucky Charms, in addition to well-known brands such as Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, Yoplait and Pop Secret. This wide breadth of brands leads to unique marketing research issues.

To meet these challenges, Fuguitt and her staff led General Mills' shift from traditional survey methods to the more streamlined process of Internet research. Today, more than 85 percent of General Mills' research is conducted on the Internet. Fuguitt has found that consumers preferred the Internet for expressing their opinions, yielding better research that was 50 percent cheaper and delivered results 10 times faster than traditional methods.

"Online research is powerful because it puts the consumer in control," said Fuguitt. "Consumers can respond to questionnaires at their own convenience, and the nature of the Internet makes customers feel as though they are speaking directly to the company, leading them to respond with more in-depth answers."

While online research is extremely valuable to General Mills, Fuguitt believes it never substitutes for interacting directly with consumers. To that end, her department also uses ethnographic research, a process that puts market researchers in direct contact with consumers. Instead of simply using a questionnaire, ethnographers study consumers in their kitchens and while they are shopping, providing a more robust look into purchasing habits.

Fuguitt credits her broad understanding of marketing research to her experience as a marketing research MBA student at the School of Business. "My career was molded and shaped by (Emeritus) Professor Gil Churchill," said Fuguitt. "He saw that I received the best experience, learned correct techniques and built a conceptual framework about how research is done. My degree helped me understand how to turn research tests into better decisions."

Fuguitt, board chairman of the business school's A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research from 1993-1994, also credits UW-Madison for helping her establish strong connections with industry peers. A key way she's kept her Wisconsin ties is through collaborating with Jeff Rotsch, MBA '74, senior vice president of sales and channel development at General Mills and a member of the Dean's Advisory Board, on a marketing project on behalf of the School of Business. "When people say you make a lifelong connection when you come to Wisconsin, they aren't kidding."

-Rebecca Smith
Fall/Winter 2003 Update: Alumni News