Never before has consumer feedback on products been so transparent and instant. When consumers are unhappy with a change in their usual product they are quick to jump onto Facebook and Twitter to voice their outrage.

When reformulating, FMCG producers must avoid alienating their loyal users. If a new formulation is not liked or accepted by the current users of the product, then the producer risks losing precious market share and negatively affecting brand perceptions.

It’s not just small players who can fail to transition to a new formulation, any sized company can be at risk. Here are some recent examples.

Product Reformulations Gone Wrong

In late 2013, Mondelez Australia decided to make Easy Mac ‘healthier’ and substituted the processed cheese with cheese powder. Consumers were quick to post comments on social media such as “It tastes weird. It is a vomitty flavour”. The consumer backlash was overwhelming and after a loss of over $10 million in revenue, Mondelez was forced to revert back to the original recipe.

In mid 2015, Nestle in NZ changed its iconic Milo product to attain a 4.5 health star rating. Consumers took to social media with their complaints such as “Omg!!! What have u done 2 milo? It tastes terrible!!!”

In mid to late 2018, thousands of negative reviews flooded the net after Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) changed its popular Moccona Classic Medium Roast (No. 5) recipe.  JDE had responded with a statement claiming they had improved the blend and people wanting a milder blend should try their French Style product..  One review posted this comment “The new taste is awful. We will no longer buy Classic and have not found any other Moccona worth drinking. You have lost a loyal customer.”

So in a time when we have so many resources available to ensure changes to product recipes are seamless and accepted by consumers, why is it that these blue chip FMCG companies got it wrong? Was it: poorly designed sensory research (or lack of it), that the projects were carried out by researchers with a poor understanding of how to interpret the results, DYI research platforms, inadequate action standards, incorrect respondent sample, budget constraints, or perhaps factors outside of their control?

Regardless of what went wrong in the above examples, there are steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen to you.

Steps to Reformulation Success

Define simple, clear objectives for the reformulation project. Typically most reformulations aim to either to improve the current product (eg where a product is failing to deliver on expectations) or match the current product (eg when an ingredient is changed).

Develop several new prototypes that meet the objectives.

Run the prototypes through a consumer taste test against the current product. It is important that the research is carried out with regular users of the product and not a random respondent sample. These consumers are very familiar with your product and will act as an instrument to measure if the new formulations differ in sensory profile to the current product and if moving to a new formulation would result in alienation or acceptance. The research should be properly designed with a rigorous methodology, have comprehensive product evaluation questionnaires, and be interpreted by a sensory researcher.

And finally, once the results of the research have been reviewed against your initial objectives, a strategy for implementing the new formulation should be created. You should consider whether you move forward with a direct replacement of the current formulation, stagger the introduction of the new formulation, introduce an entire new variant, be silent or overt in your communication, or go back to development.

When reformulating, FMCG companies cannot afford to offend their loyal consumers with an inferior or dissimilar product. Ensuring acceptability of the new reformulated product amongst regular consumers of your product is critical for reformulation success.

By Anne-Marie Haydon

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Anne-Marie Haydon, Managing Director of Benchmark, is a sensory research specialist with 20 years experience in helping food and beverage manufacturers reformulate, optimise, and develop products.  Anne-Marie is passionate about Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG’s) and helping food and beverage manufactures improve their position in the market place.

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Other posts by Anne-Marie:

Sugar. Is it Really the “Dietary Villain of Our Time” and What are Food Manufacturers to Do?

Get Your Pack Right, But Don’t Ignore What’s Inside It.

Consumers want Natural Colours & Flavours, so What are the Barriers for Some FMCG Producers?

Is the Quality of Your FMCG In-line with its Price?

The post FMCG’s: How to Reformulate with Success! appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.

Delivering a good product experience is essential to repeat purchase and will help drive organic sales growth.  Most consumers will not re-buy an inferior product – no matter how cheap it is.  People are willing to compromise on product quality when buying a cheaper product, but there is a limit.

At a recent research conference in Sydney, Damian Young – General Manager Marketing at Chobani, spoke about Chobani’s success story and the strategy they used to drive sales from around $200k when they first launched in Australia in 2011, to over $90 million in 2016.

Young explained that they had a low media budget and had to come up with a sound strategy to drive growth in the presence of many long standing competitors like Yoplait and Ski.  There were four key parts:

·         to make a great product,

·         make it available for sale,

·         get people to try it, and

·         invite people to talk about it.

Young stressed the importance of delivering a great product experience and measuring it.  People are no longer fooled by pretty packaging.  He said “If you make a crap product now or deliver a crap service there’s nowhere to hide”.  Social media can quickly turn into your worst enemy if you don’t deliver on expectations.

Chobani have a philosophy that ‘The product has to be right’ and they do not compromise on quality.  Young said “It takes four litres of milk to make a litre of Chobani yoghurt, and it takes one litre of milk to make a litre of Yoplait”.  This is how Chobani achieves its amazing thick and creamy texture, and high protein content (without the use of additives) and why it commands double the price point of Yoplait. 

Chobani have their own field team that give away a million pots of yoghurt each year. Product trial is a clever strategy to use when you have a great tasting premium priced product, as people can appreciate the quality of the product for themselves without the initial outlay.  Once consumers have tried it, they are converted. 

Streets deployed a similar strategy in the 1990’s when they introduced Magnum.  Magnum was double the price of the most expensive ice-cream at the time – Heart, however, the product was worth it.  People where happy to uptrade from Hearts ice-cream and compound chocolate to Magnum’s super premium ice-cream and Belgium chocolate. 

Is making a great product part of your marketing strategy?

Need help to measure this?

Get in touch and we will create a strategy to optimise your products’ experience

The post HOW TO DRIVE SALES IN YOUR FMCG’S. PRICE REDUCTION IS NOT ALWAYS THE ANSWER appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.

Never before has consumer feedback on products been so transparent and instant.  When consumers are unhappy with a change in their usual product they are quick to jump onto Facebook and Twitter to voice their outrage.

When reformulating, FMCG producers must avoid alienating their loyal users.  If a new formulation is not liked or accepted by the current users of the product, then the producer risks losing precious market share and negatively affecting brand perceptions.

It’s not just small players who can fail to transition to a new formulation, any sized company can be at risk. Here are some recent examples.

Recent Reformulations Gone Wrong

In late 2013, Mondelez Australia decided to make Easy Mac ‘healthier’ and substituted the processed cheese with cheese powder. Consumers were quick to post comments on social media such as “It tastes weird. It is a vomitty flavour”. The consumer backlash was overwhelming and after a loss of over $10 million in revenue, Mondelez was forced to revert back to the original recipe.

In 2014, Coca Cola US changed the sweeteners in its Vitaminwater from fructose and sugar, to stevia and sugar in the hope of making it ‘healthier’. After the change, consumers hit Facebook with comments such as “The new taste is nasty. You just lost a customer. I can’t drink it now.”  Within a few months Coca Cola went back to the original formula saying “…We tinkered with the taste of Vitaminwater and our fans haven’t had the greatest things to say about it. So we are changing back to the taste you know and love…”

In early 2015, Cadbury UK switched the Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate in its Crème Egg for a cheaper chocolate. Again, loyal consumers of the product took to social media with passion.   This cost reducing reformulation, has cost the company dearly.  According to London’s Daily Telegraph, Cadbury lost £10 million in sales (AUD 20.6 million) from its best selling Easter lines last year.

In mid 2015, Nestle in NZ changed its iconic Milo product to attain a 4.5 health star rating. Consumers took to social media with their complaints such as “Omg!!! What have u done 2 milo? It tastes terrible!!!”

So in a time when we have so many resources available to ensure changes to product recipes are seamless and accepted by consumers, why is it that these blue chip FMCG companies got it wrong? Was it: poorly designed sensory research (or lack of it), that the projects were carried out by researchers with a poor understanding of how to interpret the results, DYI research platforms, inadequate action standards, incorrect respondent sample, budget constraints, or perhaps factors outside of their control?

Regardless of what went wrong in the above examples, there are steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen to you. 

Steps to Reformulation Success

• Define simple, clear objectives for the reformulation project. Typically most reformulations aim to either to improve the current product (eg where a product is failing to deliver on expectations) or match the current product (eg when an ingredient is changed).
• Develop several new prototypes that meet the objectives.
• Run the prototypes through a consumer taste test against the current product. This can be done internally or externally, however, it is important that the research is carried out with regular users of the product and not a random sample. These consumers are very familiar with your product and will act as an instrument to measure if the new formulations differ in sensory profile to the current product, whether or not the new formulations are well liked, and if moving to a new formulation would result in alienation.  The research should be properly designed with a rigorous methodology, have comprehensive product evaluation questionnaires, and be interpreted by a sensory scientist.
• And finally, once the results of the research have been reviewed against your initial objectives, a strategy for implementing the new formulation should be created.  You should consider whether you move forward with a direct replacement of the current formulation, stagger the introduction of the new formulation, introduce an entire new variant, be silent or overt in your communication, or go back to development.

When reformulating, FMCG companies cannot afford to offend their loyal consumers with an inferior or dissimilar product.  Ensuring acceptability of the new reformulated product amongst regular consumers of your product is critical for reformulation success.

The post How to Avoid a FMCG Reformulation Disaster appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.

Food manufactures add sugar to their products to make them taste good. Have you ever tried a biscuit without sugar? It is bland and tasteless. A product like chocolate is too bitter and almost inedible when sugar is absent. Sweetness is required, in some form and amount, to help make our food palatable.

Food labelling laws require manufacturers to clearly list all ingredients and display a nutrition panel – including % daily intake for sugars. The sugar content of some products is surprising, but nothing is hidden and nothing is secret.

Consumers need to be better educated on how to understand nutrition panels, make good food choices, and avoid over eating. Research has shown that when consumers are informed about the nutritional content of food, they make healthier choices.

Dr Robert McBride, my mentor and expert in consumer behaviour and sensory psychology, was asked on the program if we should be giving up sugar, his answer was “No, absolutely not. It’s one of the pleasures of life. We need these pleasures”.

It is this pleasure we get from eating great tasting food that helps us decide which brands we buy and which ones we avoid. A food product must taste good for us to consider buying it again and for it to succeed in the market place.

In the last few years consumers have been demanding foods with less sugar and/or alternative natural sweeteners (eg stevia, honey, rice malt syrup, maple syrup, coconut sugar, agave nectar etc).  Many big food manufacturers are responding with new products or reformulations, and new players are entering the market.

Food manufacturers need to be cautious with how they address this trend. When a well-liked product is tampered with and replaced with an inferior tasting offering, it is only a matter of days before consumers start venting on Twitter or Facebook. Take Coca Cola’s Vitaminwater in the US as an example. It had long been criticised as being too high in sugar, so last year Coca Cola decided to reduce the sugar and reformulate. Within days of the new formulation hitting the shelves, loyal users wrote comments on the Vitaminwater Facebook page like “The new taste is nasty. You just lost a customer. I can’t drink it now.” Coca Cola went in to damage control and were eventually forced to return to the original formula.

So how do food manufactures avoid costly mistakes like Vitaminwater in the US? They need to start with a good strategy. They must first determine if they can reformulate the existing product and achieve a near identical sensory profile to the current offering. It is critical that this is properly researched with regular users of the product to ensure that alienation wouldn’t occur and sales would continue. If it is not possible to produce a near identical product, then a separate new reduced sugar variant would need to be introduced. This new variant must also be acceptable to the target market, otherwise it will fail to take off. After learning important lessons, Coca Cola released a new reduced sugar variant a few months ago – Coke Life. This time they got the taste right.

I think it’s fair to say that when consumed in moderation, sugar is a harmless addition to most people’s diet. Better nutrition education is required to help make informed choices and tackle its overconsumption. As consumers, we should be able to continue to buy the products we love and enjoy and make our own decisions. Food manufacturers should continue to work on reduced sugar offerings, but they need to be diligent with any changes they make to their current product formulations.

The post Sugar. Is it Really the “Dietary Villain of Our Time” and What are Food Manufacturers to Do? appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.

Dewi Suryani of the flavour and fragrance company Firmenich, says that the main barriers for some manufactures are:

• cost – natural colours and flavours are typically more expensive and
• limited options – there is a smaller range for natural, although this is growing

From a technical prospective there are also some other factors to consider, most of which are continually improving, such as:

• colour vibrancy – natural colours tend not to be as bright
• heat and light stability – natural colours and flavours tend to be less stable when heated or exposed to light
• pH – some natural colours are only suitable to use in products with certain pH levels.

While there may be some challenges when going ‘natural’, when done well, the change is a positive one.  Many products in the supermarket proudly display their ‘No Artificial Colours or Flavours’ statement on the front of their packs.  Here are a few stories of those who have gone natural.

In 1992, Binkas ‘The Natural Confectionary Company’ range of products was launched.  They contained no artificial colours or flavours and mums felt less guilty about buying lollies for their children. By 2003, they had become the most popular jelly lollies on the Australian market and were bought by Cadbury Schwepps (now Mondelez). (image from Mondelez International)

In December 2008, Nestle Australia agreed to produce their Smarties with natural colours after 2 ½ years of requests from parent activists and anti-food additive lobbyists to follow in the steps of the UK company.  A statement from Nestle at the time said that it had taken 12 months of R&D work to get the reformulation right and maintain the taste and appearance of their iconic product. (image from Nestle Australia)

Some products are more difficult or impossible to reformulate.  Take Jelly Belly jelly beans for example; these tiny little bursts of flavour are known for their exotic offerings such as buttered popcorn and chocolate pudding.  These taste sensations make them unique and is a strong selling point, however, the flavours are synthetic.  Jelly Belly knew that they had to win back consumers who were avoiding artificial additives, but wanted to ensure that they didn’t alienate loyal users.  They made a clever decision to introduce a new range in 2007 in the UK – BeNatural Jelly Belly’s.  (image from Jelly Belly UK)

There is no denying that the demand for natural ingredients is here to stay, and food and beverage manufacturers need to be strategic with how they go about providing this for consumers.  If it’s a direct swap from artificial to natural colours and/or flavours then the new formulation must deliver a similar sensory profile to the existing product.  The new formulation should be tested with regular users of the product to ensure acceptance and continued sales.

The post Consumers are Demanding Natural Colours & Flavours. So Why are Some FMCG Manufacturers Hesitating to Change? appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.

In the world of food and beverages, quality is directly related to how much consumers like a product and how it delivers on key sensory measures such as taste, texture, aroma etc.

A good strategy for producers of FMCG’s is to keep on top of how your product and its competitors are performing on key sensory measures with a routine category audit.  This enables you to track the quality and purchase interest of your product versus competitors over time, and make sure yours is consistently performing at an acceptable level.  It also gives you insights into any changes competitors are making to their formulations.  If a cheaper competitor improves their formulation to be similar or superior to yours, you need to take action fast before your market share is eroded.  Similarly, if your main competitor drops the standard of its product below yours, a new opportunity is created for you to win over new business with your superior product.

Having an early indicator of any product shift for cash cow lines is an essential protection and opportunity measure.

Get your product formulation right, keep it equal to or better than similarly priced competitor products, and positive quality perceptions for your brand will follow.

I love the quote from Aldo Gucci who never strayed from producing high quality products:  “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten”.

The post Is the Quality of Your FMCG In-Line with its Price? appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.

When asked what research had been conducted during the NPD process, the answer was none.  Some rudimentary tastings were conducted around the lab table and that was it.  We suggested that an unbranded/blind taste test of the product range be carried out with their target market to determine if the products were performing at an acceptable ‘market ready’ level.  Not surprisingly, the research revealed that the drinks were less than satisfactory on tasting.  None of the variants met the benchmark for an acceptable product to be launched into the market place.

This was a classic example of a great concept and brand, with a poor product.  The brand and pack generated trial, but the inferior product was the barrier to repeat purchase.

Conducting sensory research with your target market is an essential part of any NPD process.  This can help avoid any negative impact on your brand, and the huge costs associated with a failed product.  Don’t let an under performing product ruin your new idea’s chance of success.

The post Get Your Pack Right, But Don’t Ignore What’s Inside It appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.

A new client came to us with a problem.  They had conducted sensory research on their new snack product and discovered that it needed improvement.  The results, however, did not provide any clear direction on what needed to be changed to achieve a better result.  Upon review of the questionnaire, the problem was clear.  There were many questions about the products intended use and its appearance, however, questions about its aroma, taste and mouthfeel were limited.  The product contained an outer chocolate layer, and the only question about chocolate was ‘How Much Do You Like The Chocolate’.  There were no questions specific to the thickness of the chocolate layer, hardness of the chocolate on biting, the speed of the chocolate melting in the mouth, and the sweetness and bitterness of the chocolate.  The sensory questions on the snack’s filling were also limited. 

This absence of sensory questions prevented proper guidance for product improvement and not even the most sophisticated statistical analysis could compensate for the poor design of this questionnaire.

When designing a sensory research questionnaire, all elements of the senses (appearance, aroma, taste and texture) must be included, along with diagnostic questions about each component of the product.  The questionnaire should be reviewed by the R&D team responsible for the product’s development to ensure that the right level of detail has been achieved to assist them with future modifications.

Get your input right and the insights will follow.

The post Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) – Questionnaire Content is King appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.

Consumer sensory research is usually conducted prior to the launch of a new product.  We therefore get to see the standard produced by many different R&D teams.  Some only ever produce mediocre products that require many changes and usually further sensory research.  Some are inconsistent and either hit or miss the target, while others consistently produce market ready products. It is the latter group that provide cost efficiencies for their company and the best chance of success for their new product.

We can all think of brands that consistently produce good products.  With this, our perceptions of the brands quality and trustworthiness are high.  When these brands launch a new product, we usually are keen to buy it and ‘give it a go’ as it will almost certainly deliver on expectations.

Having a great R&D team with the capability to produce consistently good products is an important asset to every FMCG producer.

The post A Great Innovations/R&D Team are Worth Their Weight in Gold appeared first on Benchmark Sensory Strategy & Research.