Another of my favorite examples of understanding the consumer’s belief in a brand is the reformulation of products to reduce salt, fat, or sugar content.
There is immense pressure on food and drink manufacturers from government, from lobby groups, and also from their consumers to make their products healthier. In most cases that means reducing the salt, fat, or sugar content or overall calorific value.
When producing a food or drink product, much work and research goes into getting the flavor exactly right for the target market. If a product is doing well, it is a good indication that the team have got the flavor, mouth feel, and other aspects just right. When they are then asked to remove some of the fat content, or reduce the amount of sugar or salt, this will not only change the taste but also affect the consistency and mouth feel of the product.
When the brand team taste this product and compare it to the original, it will be quite a disappointment. When they take it out to consumers and ask them how it tastes, the feedback is invariably at least as disappointing as their own assessment. So, even greater efforts go into replacing the lost flavor and mouth feel and getting the ‘healthier’ product to taste as close to the original version as possible.
In truth, they can never get the reformulated version to be the same as the original, but they get it to be as close as possible and launch it hoping either that the consumer will not notice the difference or that they will be happy to trade a slight loss in satisfaction for the knowledge that this product is better for them.
But this is entirely the wrong approach.
It is true that if you go and ask the consumer what they want, they will tell you that they want the product to taste exactly the same but be healthier. This is a great example of the axiom frequently attributed to Henry Ford (although I can find no proof that he ever actually said it): “If I asked the consumer what they wanted, they would say they wanted a “faster horse.”
If we, as consumers, are choosing a healthier product, or a brand is offering one, then there needs to be something about the consumption experience of that product that convinces us that this is healthier. Instead of trying to replicate a successful product with a different recipe, companies need to start by understanding why their current product is successful. What is the emotional journey that the product takes the consumer on? What is the mood shift that it delivers and how does it do this? Once this is understood, they need to replicate this emotional journey to deliver the same mood shift as the original product, but along the way we need a slight diversion.
It is like changing your route to work so that it no longer goes past your ex’s home. It does not change the start or endpoint, it makes no material change to the journey, but it removes a part of the route that you used to enjoy but that now no longer seems relevant to you. It makes the route more suitable for your revised requirements. Before long, you realize that this is a better route anyway and wonder why you ever liked the original one.
The new product does taste a little different, but that difference confirms for the consumer that it is a healthier version than the original, while the overall consumption experience delivers the same mood shift that they have always enjoyed from the product. If the ‘healthier’ version tastes the same as the original, it will perform well in preference testing (consumers will say that they like it), but in real life they will not believe it is any different from the original. “Have they really reduced the sugar? Are they trying to trick me?” It undermines their belief and faith in the brand.
The trick is not in minimizing the change in the taste and mouth feel of the product; it is in managing that change to ensure it is delivering the right story to the consumer, that it is consistently building on and never undermining their faith in your brand.
Consider sodas. We all know that they contain more sugar in one can than we should be consuming in a whole day. So we have a choice:
🍴 we can ignore this fact and enjoy our drink
🍴 we can avoid sodas altogether
🍴 or we can drink the no- or low-sugar versions.
Diet Coke tastes different from the full-sugar version. Many will say that it is not as good. However, most consumers of Diet Coke will tell you they prefer it to Coke. They have made a decision not to consume that quantity of sugar. Now, whenever they drink a full-sugar Coke, it tastes inappropriate to them. The knowledge that this is not good for them spoils the experience. The different taste of the diet version feels more appropriate. They believe this to be healthier, better for them. There is nothing inappropriate about drinking Diet Coke, so they can enjoy this drink.
If Diet Coke tasted exactly the same as Coke, there would be nothing about its consumption experience that convinced the consumer that it was any healthier. They would not believe In the diet product. It would not establish a mass faithful following.
The Shape of Taste is a great tool in improving faith and belief in a brand and in adapting, evolving, and improving brands and products. In the next chapter I will look at how these same principles can be used to create new brands and new products that consumers will love.
You can order my new book, The Shape of Taste here:
Chris Lukehurst is a Consumer Psychologist and a Director at The Marketing Clinic:
Providing Clarity on the Psychological relationships between consumers and brands
