What are you trying to prove?

In a recent meeting with some senior research executives I was asked a pretty simple question specific to food - “What is more important, proving providence of a product, or increasing productivity of food producers?

The question took me a little by surprise and as a result I gave a weaker answer than I would have liked - I said “It really depends on the customer and what they want”. The senior figure said “Well, let’s take a Chinese customer, what’s most important then?” I responded with, “They would want to know whether or not what is being said about a product is the truth”.

I have reflected on this exchange and hope to articulate a better more considered response here.

In my reflections I was reminded of the story shared by the famed author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell in one of the many tails he writes about behavioural economics and market research, specifically the “pasta sauce” story. In that story, he shares the experience of a senior consumer goods researcher in the 1980’s who was asked to help a company answer the question “What is the perfect pasta sauce?”. His response was to say, “You’re asking the wrong question. You need to ask what are the perfect pasta sauces?”. The company did not understand his point but commissioned him to do some research anyway. Several months and a great deal of taste testing later, he returned to the company with a selection of the top pasta sauce recipes and suggested they produce more than just the one historical product. The idea of a “variety of flavours” was born. Types of sauces never mentioned in consumer testing and focus groups were developed, not because the consumer told them what they wanted, instead the consumer discovered they wanted something they never knew they could have.

If I had my time again, my answer to the senior research executives would have been, “I don’t think you have asked the right question. I think the question should be, what attributes of a food product does a customer value and can you give that information to them in a transparent, authentic and truthful way?

I often observe conversations and commentary that praises single attributes that are considered fundamental or a cornerstone to successful food products. Providence (where the product comes from), food safety (will this make me sick), quality and/or taste (inherently a subjective measurement), composition (what is in the recipe), nutritional values, “activated” ingredients (and the list goes on) all get called out

Whatever the key selling point of your food product, whatever the claim is you wish to make, that you believe your customers value, whatever the customer wants to know or didn’t even realise they could know, can you give them that?

I believe a better understanding of what is “more important” is that no individual attribute is a guarantee to success and the ability to prove one or a few of these does not give everything the consumer needs or could possibly ever want.

Just because your champagne comes from France doesn’t guarantee it will be liked by everyone and just because your beef was raised on sustainable pastures in remote Tasmania does not entitle the farmer to premium culinary superiority and prosperity.

My advice is to not focus on the individual claim or promise you wish to make about your food product, but be focused on being able to PROVE IT, whatever IT is.

My read of human behaviour is that a product will succeed or fail based on the promises it makes and its ability to honour those promises, not the promises alone. Have you ever bought a product and been disappointed some time later when it came time to eat it or use it, we all have.

Like in so many other aspects of humanity, trust comes from delivering on promises and is destroyed when you don’t.

If you remain unconvinced, consider this from the shoes of a consumer who lives in a marketplace that is filled with lies and fraudsters on every corner. Imagine how you would live and make your choices of what and who to trust.