What was Kumon trying to understand?

Kumon wanted to grow across its European markets. After the pandemic, families had changed how they thought about tutoring and digital learning, and extracurricular learning did not land the same way in every country. Kumon needed to know how families actually decide before renewing its identity and planning a go-to-market strategy.

What did Famdom find about how families choose extracurricular learning?

What looks like a brand decision is a trust decision. Parents choose the provider they believe will help their child, and the signals that build that trust differ between markets. Spanish and German parents weighed the same things in a different order, so one script exported everywhere would have missed both.

What did Famdom build from the research?

A renewed visual identity for Kumon and a go-to-market strategy for eight European markets, each built around where family behaviour actually diverges. The research gave every market its own entry point instead of a single translated plan, which is what the case proves: divergence inside family life can become a growth strategy.

Discover Create

Extracurricular learning doesn't always land the same way.

An international study of how families actually decide on extracurricular tutoring, used to renew the brand's visual identity and build a go-to-market strategy for European markets.

A boy working on a tablet with a stylus in a classroom

Sector: Education
Markets: ES, DE
Format: Parent panel
Year: 2022
Channels: Quantitative research
Solutions: Discover, Create

01 The challenge

Kumon wanted to grow across its European markets. After the pandemic, families changed the way they thought about tutoring and digital learning.

After this huge shift in education, we needed to understand what was actually driving a parent to choose one tutoring provider over another, in this new landscape, market by market.

02 Inside family life

The family truth

What looks like a brand decision is a trust decision.

The logo, the app, the price, none of it gets evaluated on its own. It all passes through one filter first: who is this person going to be to my child.

A tablet reads as progress once the tutor behind it is trusted. A grandparent's opinion can outweigh a marketing campaign because of its influence within the family decision journey. Kumon wasn't competing on how modern it looked. It was competing on how much a family could trust it. In the online panel, 91% of parents said digital learning mattered, but the single factor they ranked highest inside a digital tool was personal support.

03 The Famdom response

Stop asking "how do we sell Kumon." Start asking "what does a family in this market actually believe tutoring is for."

We ran a quantitative study with Spanish and German parents alongside, mapping decision drivers, cost sensitivity and channel relevance in each market. In parallel, a franchisee survey across Germany, Spain and Italy tested where local partners felt the brand and its marketing support were, and weren't, working. The divergence between markets became the input for a go-to-market strategy built market by market.

04 What we built

Kumon · Quantitative study
Parent research

A quantitative study to find out parents' education attitudes, media habits and tutoring decision drivers, benchmarked against each market's competitive landscape.
Franchisee research

A survey of Kumon partners across Germany, Spain and Italy, covering motivation, marketing satisfaction and local activation needs.
Decision-driver map

A ranked comparison of what makes a family choose extracurricular tutoring, market by market.
Go-to-market strategy

A country-by-country approach for 8 European markets, built from where countries actually diverged rather than where they were assumed to align.

05 The outcome

1.2K
Participants across Spain and Germany: 54%
Of Spanish children have already had, or currently have, tutoring: 8
Markets following a multinational brand strategy

06 What it proves

Famdom can find where family behaviour actually diverges between markets, and turn that divergence into a growth strategy built for each one, instead of exporting a single script everywhere at once.

Questions about this case

What was Kumon trying to understand?: Kumon wanted to grow across its European markets. After the pandemic, families had changed how they thought about tutoring and digital learning, and extracurricular learning did not land the same way in every country. Kumon needed to know how families actually decide before renewing its identity and planning a go-to-market strategy.
What did Famdom find about how families choose extracurricular learning?: What looks like a brand decision is a trust decision. Parents choose the provider they believe will help their child, and the signals that build that trust differ between markets. Spanish and German parents weighed the same things in a different order, so one script exported everywhere would have missed both.
What did Famdom build from the research?: A renewed visual identity for Kumon and a go-to-market strategy for eight European markets, each built around where family behaviour actually diverges. The research gave every market its own entry point instead of a single translated plan, which is what the case proves: divergence inside family life can become a growth strategy.