In the post-war years of prosperity and commercialisation, so many food and drinks products have embraced the shift from generic commodities to branding opportunities. Brands confer a promise of quality, but more importantly, they provide the structure onto which one competitor can gain loyalty at the expense of another.
It is this competitiveness that has seen vast numbers of new products join the market each year, making new product development demand an increasing amount of ingenuity.
Britain is a nation of tea, coffee, malted and hot chocolate drinkers. Each of these product categories has its own heritage, but like other food and drink markets, they are being driven and developed by large international companies and their brand owners. Meanwhile, coffee shop culture has reached a level of maturity which sees consumers unimpressed by the sheer number of outlets. Instead, quality, good customer service and an enjoyable ambience play more significant roles in driving coffee shop success.
This juxtaposition of big brand and homely coffee shop demonstrates the fine balance that needs to be struck between authenticity and short-term profit generation. How can a coffee product, or coffee shop, retain its appeal for a specialist minority, the real connoisseurs, while at the same time deliver on the promise of its brands to a wider audience?
It is in this context that we see an increasingly segmented coffee market, with new and demarcated product types stretching their category muscles to provide consumers with ever more choice. Premium, fair trade and organic coffees began where bean provenance, blends and roasting methods now follow, and the old bi-partisan world of real coffee and instant has evolved into a new world inhabited by barista-style instant coffee, home coffee machines, liquids and capsules.
It isn’t just coffee which is segmenting to meet the variable needs of its drinkers. Flavoured and herbal teas are not new, but their growth in popularity is proof again of the requirement for products to appeal to the mass public, while also meeting individual needs.
Segmenting within product category can only stretch so far, however. There comes a point when a new product must displace an existing one, so real category volume growth becomes more difficult, and even category value growth can be stifled.
Manufacturers are now being forced to be more creative with what they offer, but to take hold with consumers, a product has to meet a genuine need for its point of difference to truly resonate.
How to achieve this? At MMR, we believe a consumer-centric approach is key. Our recent work with Carte Noire demonstrates this.
Ahead of the launch of its new Carte Noire Instinct, a whole bean instant coffee, Carte Noire called on MMR. Designed to capture the qualities of premium roasted coffee in an instant, Instinct blends Carte Noire’s finest instant with ground roasted coffee beans, with a view to creating a noticeably superior taste and aroma in a premium product.
The product was already being advertised on TV and in print, but to launch the product successfully into the hugely competitive coffee market, Carte Noire felt that it could show consumers the overall better coffee experience when drinking Carte Noire Instinct.
Our work identified precise sensory components of the optimal drinking environment for Carte Noire Instinct, such as how the room should be lit or what music should be playing in the background when consuming the product. Emotive (such as seductive and authentic) and functional associations (such as ‘wakes me up’, ‘relaxes me’) were also explored to more deeply understand what makes Carte Noire Instinct different.
When coffee lovers were asked what features of vision, odour, touch and sound best combine to enhance the enjoyment of their coffee, they revealed that a relaxing break is the key to the perfect cup, providing a coffee shop experience in the comfort of one’s own home.
Specifically, drinking the blend from a porcelain mug while relaxed on a leather chair at home, in a room decorated with dark purple colours, accompanied by smooth jazz music, was the environment found to perfectly match the characteristics of the product.
Carte Noire used the findings of MMR’s research to create The Silk Rooms, a multi-sensory coffee-tasting experience, bringing together flavour, texture, aroma and sounds for the ‘perfect coffee moment’.
Guests to the launch event were taken on a sensory journey, noticing how furnishings, music, and food all worked to elevate the experience of drinking Carte Noire Instinct.
By using consumer-centric research to deliver a distinct and memorable launch, Carte Noire was able to cut through the clutter of a crowded market and generate enviable media coverage. But more importantly for its customers, the use of sensory knowledge to uncover the ‘truth’ of how consumers truly experience its product.
Merging coffee culture with the home environment proved beneficial to Carte Noire at its launch event, yet other manufacturers are delivering this trend via different means.
Starbucks and Costa are placing their branded capsules and products on the supermarket shelves, allowing consumers to enjoy barista moments wherever they are.
However, Carte Noire demonstrated that you can lead a customer to coffee but you can’t make them drink. Truly understanding their needs is key to making a new product in a crowded market stand alone.
Helen Stratton is associate director at MMR.
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