Don’t get “fired” by your consumers

Have you ever received bad service, didn’t get what you wanted or purchased something that didn’t meet your expectations? The most predictable reaction when this happens is that we feel angry and upset to the service or product provider, and decide to “punish” them by “not setting foot in this joint again” or by “not purchase this piece of garbage brand again”. Although this might not be a sizable loss for the company, by not understanding why our consumers “hire” our brands in the first place, we might be setting up for failure.

In 1985, during the peak of the “Cola wars” in the US, Coca Cola released a new Coke formula to re-gain market leadership. The company felt they had a winning proposition as consumers rated the formula better than Pepsi in blind tests; however, in interviews with consumers, about 10%-12% of consumers had negative feelings about the change as they felt that the brand was key to their identity and claimed they might not keep drinking Coke. This was not enough to prove the company wrong, and sure enough after an initial success many consumers were not happy with the change. The company had to make a massive recall of the “New Coke”, reintroducing the traditional formula in three months under the “Classic Coke” name, which helped save the day (and the company).

When doing product innovation, it is paramount to understand what specific “job” your consumers want your product to get done, and learn if what you are offering is doing the “job” to which they “hired” you for. If it is not, next time they will “fire” your product and “hire” one that does it better. What’s more, the “job references” they will give to their family and friends for your product are not going to be those of the “employee of the month”.

In the case of Coke consumers didn’t necessarily want to quench their thirst with a dark carbonated sweet drink. They wanted to feel a part of something larger, they wanted to keep their identity; when this changed, they reacted angrily and neglected to consume the product. When the traditional formula was returned with the word “Classic”, they felt their identity restored. As the adage goes, “the customer is always right”. I would add: “…and if the customer is not right, then it is not your customer anymore”, is it?