Rationality and Product Preference

About a year ago, for fun, I went to grocery stores and bought as many different kinds of cola soft drinks as I could find, including:

Coke
Pepsi
HEB Original Cola
Safeway Select Cola
RC Cola

I then proceeded to administer blind taste tests to guests whenever I had people over to my loft. The results were interesting, mainly because what people thought was their favorite cola differed greatly from their actual preference.

Safeway Select Cola performed best overall. Unfortunately, I can no longer find it at the Randall's stores where I originally bought it.

I administered this test to only a few people (about six, if I recall correctly), so take the results with a grain of salt. But chalk this anecdote up as another example of how customers have all sorts of prejudices that interfere with knowing what they really like.

Comments

Kevin Brennan said…

My Dad, for many years, was the head of marketing research for a major beer company. In that industry, it's pretty much taken for granted that the image associated with a brand of beer is far more important in driving consumer choices than the actual taste of the beer (which does vary, but not as much as people tend to believe).

Tue Oct 24, 01:25:00 PM 2006

Scott Sehlhorst said…

A fun random anecdote.

When drinking a small sample of a cola, people prefer a sweeter flavor. When drinking an entire can of the cola, people preferred the less sweet flavor.

This was the trick that made the pepsi challenge so successful. It is also the misinterpreted marketing data that lead to the New Coke fiasco.

Thu Oct 26, 09:47:00 PM 2006

Mike Lunt said…

I have to second Scott's comment. Gladwell explicitly explains why these taste tests are flawed in 'Blink'.

Sat Oct 28, 11:30:00 AM 2006

Scott Sehlhorst said…

Thanks Mike!

I had forgotten where I heard that. Credit to Gladwell.

Sun Oct 29, 09:24:00 AM 2006

Why Spreadsheets Suck for Prioritizing

The Goal As a company executive, you want confidence that your product team (which includes all the people, from all departments, responsible for product success) has a sound basis for deciding which items are on the product roadmap. You also want confidence the team is prioritizing the items in a smart way. What Should We Prioritize? The items the team prioritizes could be features, user stories, epics, market problems, themes, or experiments. Melissa Perri makes an excellent case for a " problem roadmap ", and, in general, I recommend focusing on the latter types of items. However, the topic of what types of items you should prioritize - and in what situations - is interesting and important but beyond the scope of this blog entry. A Sad but Familiar Story If there is significant controversy about priorities, then almost inevitably, a product manager or other member of the team decides to put together The Spreadsheet. I've done it. Some of the mos

Use Case as a Black Box

Consider the following use case: Purchase Items Actor: Purchaser Precondition: Purchaser types at least thirty words per minute and has a web navigation efficiency rating of at least 40. Postcondition: For the average Purchaser acting at full efficiency, the number of seconds elapsed is no more than 30 + 20 * n, where n is the number of items purchased. The name of the use case represents a functional requirement. What does the product do, or enable the user to do? Purchase items. What are we to make of the preconditions and postconditions? What relationship do they have to the requirements for the product? Answer: the preconditions and postconditions are the nonfunctional requirements attached to the functional requirement . Another way of expressing the nonfunctional requirement would be as an attribute and associated constraint: Usability: For a Purchaser who types at least thirty words per minute and has a web navigation efficiency rating of at least 40, it shall take no

Henry Ford's "Faster Horse" Quote

You may have heard the ( apocryphal ) Henry Ford quote: If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse". Over at the On Product Management blog , Saeed gives his take on this infamous quote. He "hates" it, and gives some compelling reasons. Saeed is spot on in his explanations. Personally, I think the quote is great, but it's a matter of interpretation. The valid point of the quote is not that it's a bad idea to facilitate a conversation with your market to better understand it. The valid points are: You must ask the right questions to get valuable answers. You must interpret the answers thoughtfully - often outside their direct meaning - to glean reliable information. Asking questions is not always the best way to "listen" to your market. (E.g., sometimes pure observational studies are more reliable.) Nonetheless, I find the quote is helpful to combat "armchair product management" in the

Cauvin

Search This Blog