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–Henry Ford
After World War II, the clouds of war started to fade with each sunrise. Along with that, the economy of Japan began to flourish again. The reason behind the acceleration of the Japanese economy was the effective allocation of resources - the workforce of Japan shifted to the non-agriculture sector from the agriculture sector. As a result, the per capita income of Japan postwar rose at a 7.1% average annual growth rate.
Nescafe was the leading coffee brand of Nestle in the global coffee market and thought this would be the right time to enter the growing economy of Japan. It wasn't a secret that tea was part of Japanese culture. Nescafe thought it would be easy to replace tea with coffee to penetrate the Japanese market. They observed the Japanese consumer cautiously and carried out many focus groups to analyze the taste and preferences of Japanese consumers. As anticipated, all market research was in the favor of Nescafe, and almost all volunteers of the focus group loved the taste of coffee. Nescafe was all set to dominate the beverage market by investing a huge amount in the advertisement of the coffee brand. They shifted to the top gear and executed a rollout plan to have their coffee on each shelf in Japan at an affordable cost.
However, the result was disappointing marketers of Nestle failed to acquire Japanese consumers. Though the market research showed positive signs and the Japanese consumer loved the taste of coffee, Nestle Coffee wasn't selling in Japan. Nestle became eager to know why Japanese consumers stuck with the cup of tea. This time Nestle appointed Dr. Clotaire Rapaille to dig to the root of the problem.
Gilbert Clotaire Rapaille, a French marketing consultant had expertise in dealing with intricate marketing problems. He approached this problem with his way of doing things. Clotaire believed that the desires that drove humans were unconscious ones, and only a very few were aware enough to understand them. He called this reptilian instinct. Clotaire interviewed consumers and asked them about their
previous association of them with coffee. Surprisingly, they hadn't any childhood memory associated with coffee. Japanese kids grew up with the smell of tea and watching their parent drink tea. No wonder the Japanese chose tea over coffee as they had cultural imprints of the tea, and those imprints come with emotions.
Clotaire reached out to the brand managers with the suggestion to stop wasting money on marketing the brand as the problem was much deeper. When you first comprehend a word, you imprint its meaning on your mind and establish a mental association that will last the rest of your life. And you need some emotions to form this mental link. Neurotransmitters cannot be produced in the brain without emotion, hence a connection cannot be made. So, each word has a mental highway. In the case of Japanese consumers, the emotional link for coffee was missing.
This time Nestle rolled out coffee candies in the Japanese market to create imprints of coffee. Japanese kids started liking the taste of coffee candies and it became part of their childhood memory. Nestle cleverly moved them from candy to cold sugary coffee-flavored drinks and after that, they followed the generations. A decade later, Nestle entered the market again with the same energy. And before Japanese consumers knew their reptilian instinct chose a steamy mug of Nescafe coffee over tea. For the Japanese working class, black coffee became the reason for the short breaks between the long office hours. Furthermore, canned coffee that was distributed through vending machines became popular among the younger population.
The patience and perseverance of Nestle to understand its consumers paid off. In 2020, according to Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence’s report, the instant coffee market in japan was valued at USD 3.19 billion and expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.85% to USD 4.15 billion in 2027. Nescafe is one of the key market players in Japan.
This case study delivered by Dr. Clotaire Rapaille was an ideal example for marketers to learn the correlation between the consumer's cultural imprints and consumer preferences and their buying behavior patterns. A smart marketer should not limit his market research to the word of consumers. Consumers never buy anything unknowingly, there is some psyche behind their purchase, and sometimes they may fail to put it into words. To market their product better, marketers should understand the psychology of consumers beyond words.
Blog By:
MBA II Year 2021-23
Mail- Jayesh.Kangare@indiragbs.edu.in
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