Companies must spend millions researching the taste of the candy they manufacture, the texture, what sells, what doesn’t, why sales start to decline or increase, what to bring to market and what to eliminate. They have huge staffs to do this.
They perform market research, do taste testing and analyze the statistics. Markets are segmented. People are asked for their opinions about why they like a certain candy, what it is that keeps them buying it.
All this comes at a huge cost in terms of research. There is no perfect system to figure out what is going to sell, and what is going the way of the Tyrannosaurus. But there are simpler ways to decide what a candy company should eliminate from its product line to make way for something new.
Recently, a good friend and I figured out a fool proof plan that would save the candy behemoths tons of money. This tactic would provide direct feedback to the companies. It would demonstrate in a live workplace what people like to consume and what they don’t.
This system is based on what gets eaten from the office candy bowl. Every workplace environment has at least one person who puts out a regular display of chocolate bars, gummy worms, lifesavers, mints, Skittles or Jolly Ranchers.
The smart person puts out a mix of the above, changes it up from time to time, and monitors human consumption activity. “Hmmm, all the Heath bars got eaten first. What the heck is wrong with those watermelon Tootsie Rolls? No one is eating them.” And so on.
Observation takes place. It’s easy to see what people like and what they don’t.
One of the important facets of this type of workplace candy research is that typically you get different types of employees coming by based on age, sex and occupation. This allows you to extrapolate.
So, if you put out Jolly Ranchers, for example, and the purple ones are ALWAYS the last ones left in the bowl, then the makers of Jolly Ranchers know it is time to jettison purple. Invent a new flavor. Phase out the grape. Put the new one in the bag, and see how that fares the next time the hard candy gets publicly displayed.
This technique works on several levels. You can, for example, put out a set of candy bars one week, then chewy fruit candy the next, then thin mints. In this case, rather than seeing what is left in the bowl, you are doing a comparative analysis to see which type of candy takes the longest to disappear.
Do people seem to like chocolate the best and they dry up in two days? Or is it the thin mints that disappear in a day-and-a-half? How about the chewy fruit? Are they still sitting around two weeks later?
Gathering data from the candy deposits yields an incredible amount of exquisite information in a short period of time. And it’s information that’s demonstrated in a “live” environment, not in a sampling where people know they are being observed.
This is the best way to figure out consumer behavior: Watch what they consume.
When it’s clear that white chocolate Kit Kats repeatedly disappear before dark or regular chocolate, why isn’t it marketed more heavily? When no one eats the grape Jolly Ranchers, why does the company keep churning them out on the assembly lines?
The Presidents of candy companies need to get out of their offices and into the front lines. Walk the halls. Check out the bowls of candy. Observe it from day-to-day and week-to-week. Take notes. See what the leftovers are.
Then charge forward with some new products. Eliminate the losers. Give us something fresh.
They perform market research, do taste testing and analyze the statistics. Markets are segmented. People are asked for their opinions about why they like a certain candy, what it is that keeps them buying it.
All this comes at a huge cost in terms of research. There is no perfect system to figure out what is going to sell, and what is going the way of the Tyrannosaurus. But there are simpler ways to decide what a candy company should eliminate from its product line to make way for something new.
Recently, a good friend and I figured out a fool proof plan that would save the candy behemoths tons of money. This tactic would provide direct feedback to the companies. It would demonstrate in a live workplace what people like to consume and what they don’t.
This system is based on what gets eaten from the office candy bowl. Every workplace environment has at least one person who puts out a regular display of chocolate bars, gummy worms, lifesavers, mints, Skittles or Jolly Ranchers.
The smart person puts out a mix of the above, changes it up from time to time, and monitors human consumption activity. “Hmmm, all the Heath bars got eaten first. What the heck is wrong with those watermelon Tootsie Rolls? No one is eating them.” And so on.
Observation takes place. It’s easy to see what people like and what they don’t.
One of the important facets of this type of workplace candy research is that typically you get different types of employees coming by based on age, sex and occupation. This allows you to extrapolate.
So, if you put out Jolly Ranchers, for example, and the purple ones are ALWAYS the last ones left in the bowl, then the makers of Jolly Ranchers know it is time to jettison purple. Invent a new flavor. Phase out the grape. Put the new one in the bag, and see how that fares the next time the hard candy gets publicly displayed.
This technique works on several levels. You can, for example, put out a set of candy bars one week, then chewy fruit candy the next, then thin mints. In this case, rather than seeing what is left in the bowl, you are doing a comparative analysis to see which type of candy takes the longest to disappear.
Do people seem to like chocolate the best and they dry up in two days? Or is it the thin mints that disappear in a day-and-a-half? How about the chewy fruit? Are they still sitting around two weeks later?
Gathering data from the candy deposits yields an incredible amount of exquisite information in a short period of time. And it’s information that’s demonstrated in a “live” environment, not in a sampling where people know they are being observed.
This is the best way to figure out consumer behavior: Watch what they consume.
When it’s clear that white chocolate Kit Kats repeatedly disappear before dark or regular chocolate, why isn’t it marketed more heavily? When no one eats the grape Jolly Ranchers, why does the company keep churning them out on the assembly lines?
The Presidents of candy companies need to get out of their offices and into the front lines. Walk the halls. Check out the bowls of candy. Observe it from day-to-day and week-to-week. Take notes. See what the leftovers are.
Then charge forward with some new products. Eliminate the losers. Give us something fresh.