‘Marketing our candy and snack on nutrition, a sure winner?’

Q: We’re selling a hard candy brand and a packaged snack like Boy Bawang.  My brother, who is my business partner in charge of product development because he was a nutrition graduate of UP Los Baños, recently came up with what he claims to be a “brilliant idea.”

He said that our hard candy should be in two variants: the current one, which is a regular ordinary hard candy and a new one that’s fortified with Vitamin C.

He says he can develop also two variants for our snack: a regular snack and one fortified with Vitamin A.

I told my brother to first test the two concepts with consumers before we commit funds to producing the two new variants.

My brother got really mad and blurted out: “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see and smell a sure winner that’s right in front of you and right under your nose?” But I had to be honest. I just wasn’t sure.

I’m a follower of your column. Will you please help? Please let us know what you think? Do we really have a sure winner in marketing our candy and snack each under a new second variant marketed on nutrition? The candy’s second variant fortified with Vitamin C and the snack’s own second variant fortified with Vitamin A?

A: Like most creatives, your brother, who’s an inventor, is obviously an inspired innovator and who believes that growing any business (yours not excluded) is all a matter of imagination and inspiration. He’s probably inspired by some author on personal success like Napoleon Hill, considered as “a pioneering and great success writer” whose best-selling book, “Think and Grow Rich,” sold 20 million copies at the time of his death in 1970. The most cited Hill quotation says something like this: “First comes thought, then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.”

Today, while another best-selling author in his own right, Mark Johnson, in his book, “Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal,” agrees about the role of imagination, he qualified with these cautionary words: “No one wants to depend on something as fickle as inspiration to create a new business.”

So what should you do?  e agree with your initial intuition. Test the two concepts with the target consumers. But it can’t be just any kind of testing. The test must challenge each of the concept’s two basic assumptions about consumer behavior toward a candy or a snack. The first basic assumption is what the typical and conventional product concept test seeks to challenge. The second basic assumption is about the consumer behavior toward nutrition. In the case of the candy, this is specifically about Vitamin C while in the case of the snack, it’s about Vitamin A.

Let’s talk and be clear about the first assumption. The typical and conventional product concept test assumes that the candy consumer, for example, will find a candy fortified with Vitamin C as superior to one that is unfortified. And so with a snack fortified with Vitamin A. The product concept test will therefore be designed to challenge, i.e., confirm or disconfirm this assumption or proposition about the fortified candy or the fortified snack.

In 8 to 9 out of 10 cases, if not 10 out of 10, the prediction of perceived superiority will be obtained. This is because consumer psychologists agree that nutrition (Vitamin C or Vitamin A) is a “normative” product attribute or value. Everyone will say that it’s important, worthwhile, the best. But the practical question is this:  “Will Vitamin C drive or motivate the consumer in buying a candy?”  That’s another question. It’s a different question that honest consumers answer more in the negative than in the positive.

Similarly with Vitamin A. Will Vitamin A drive or motivate consumers to buy a snack? Honest consumers will tell you that it’s not what will bring them to buy a snack. And that’s the nature of a normative value. No consumer will say it’s not important. To consumers, by the very fact that a product value is normative means it’s a very important value but being normative does not mean it’s a buying motivator.

We now shift to the second assumption. In question form and in regard to candy, this assumption asks: If the consumer, say a Mom, wants Vitamin C, will candy be one of the top two or three product categories in her buying consideration set or what the consumer behavior literature calls “the consumer’s repertoire?” A similar challenging question pertains to snack and Vitamin A.

Our more than 30 years’ consumer research experience tells us that candy would not even make it in the consumer repertoire of top 10 product categories for Vitamin C. This is also true in the case of snack and Vitamin A. Of course, you can try and push for a consumer habituation campaign aimed at bringing candy or snack into that repertoire of top 10 categories. But that’s basically what Unilever or P&G calls a market development initiative requiring lots of “throw-away money.”

For a business of your scale, that will most likely be an option that’s out of the question.

In sum, the foregoing provides you with the strong logical support to go back and persuade your brother to consider your call for concept-testing his two related ideas so you can validate if it’s true that one or both of those ideas are a “sure winner.” What we’ve explained also tells you what two kinds of concept-testing to undertake.

Keep your questions coming. Send them to us at [email protected] or [email protected]. God bless!