Consumer association

Decided to finally get through the last bit of 'Blink'. Malcolm Gladwell's book on the spontaneity in human nature. On reading one of the final chapters I came across a very interesting section covering the concept of what can be called 'Consumer association'. This was an original concept founded by Louis Cheskin. See his website here! He moved to the USA from the Ukraine and found great delight in the development of the American culture. However, he discovered a desire to want to analyse the system by which consumers related to their choice in products. One of his achievements was to aid Coco-cola in their understanding in why Pepsi was beating Coke in the race for customers in the late 1970s. Coke was under the assumption that the rival was true in their statement, in that in the taste test (something I remember as a child) Pepsi was better than coke. So Coca-cola spent time and money in the development a new taste. They even called it 'New Coke'. What they didn't realise is that their assumptions were misguided. New Coke was a flop, and never even made headway against Pepsi. also, on returning the original to the market the new coke drink failed further. What they were under the assumption was, was that the customers like the taste of Pepsi and therefore to compete they had to simulate that taste to be in good competition. What Cheskin made them realise is that the 'Pepsi taste challenge', although not incorrect, was a misguiding aspect to the Pepsi success. What Cheskin pointed out to Coke was that people rarely drink their drinks blindfolded in a test environment and that there was a big difference between CLT's (central location tests) and drinking a full glass of Coke over a sip. Basically Coke is still the leading soft drink over Pepsi, not because of the research criteria, but simply because the customer who drinks the drinks is in a different state of mind, than to the presumptions of the advertisers. Sometimes advertisers can get it wrong.

Cheskin's skills were once again proven correct in many occasions from convincing margarine manufacturers that they could not simply sell the product based on its value as margarine. He convinced them to change the colour to a soft yellow, in order to compete with butter. And that the actual wrapper was an important aspect to the customer's choice. This was also very successfully noted with Christian Brothers Brandy. The quality drink was loosing ground against a more inferior brand and there was a need to understand why. There were several tests, looking at advertising, taste, etc, before the Cheskin approach was adopted. The previous tests failed to distinguish the reason for the decline in sales. What Cheskin and associates discovered was what we can call an evolution in marketing. They carried out several tests. This was based on the notion of consumer association to the product. Christian Brother's Brandy was in a wine bottle, the rival was in a squashed decanter type bottle. The labels had different aesthetic aims to show the feel of either quality or brandy culture. What the tests did was to first serve the drinks in a glass, alone. This proved that people like the superior one above the inferior. Then they did a remarkable thing. They served the drinks with their associated bottle sitting behind. They found that the inferior drink won hands down over the superior. Then they switched the bottles, so that the superior was in the inferior's bottle. The result was what they expected. The superior brandy served in the inferior's bottle was more successful.

What this basically proves and is sometimes overlooked by the designers and advertisers, is that the association to a products package is as important to the customer as is the product itself. Even more so, on top of this, it is not just about the package, but the elements of the package and their presentation. Del Monte changed their peaches from can to jar and found a successful response. Why? Because people associated the product to a memory of the way their mother would give them jars of peaches. Also, the design of the elements can affect the customer. Sometimes a customer seeks trust. Therefore this needs to be indicated in aspects of the design and so forth. There are many aspects of the aesthetic process that tend to negate this value of consumer desires over cost or trend values, that they really do forget that the customer tends to be right. Mainly, as we know from experience there are many values that come into call when designing something. However, some of the ones that are tended to be put aside are the most important, as shown by Cheskin. Those of how people relate to it, how it looks on the shelf, and the most important; the customer association.