Мед и трюфель

мое недавнее открытие - комбинации вкуса меда и трюфеля - претендует на "открытие 2011 года". я раньше думала, что комбинация сладкого варенья, хлеба и сыра - это вкусно. но такой необычно-ароматный мед совсем вскружил голову! с подругой незаметно стащили баночку с общего стола и пока не облизали, не успокоились.

производитель рекомендует с выдержанным пеккорино, а я просто очень рекомендую!

Funky wine

who said that wine bottle should be a standard borring 0.75L vassel made of green thick glass?

and honestly, i don't care what's inside :)

Company's competitive advantage – is a disequilibrium phenomenon.

In order to stand out from players in the industry, you must either offer a superior value for your product or a lower cost. And have to be unique in your offer. Evidently, Italians are doing an excellent job by inventing a unique user value-proposition. Even private labels nowadays try to offer here a good product quality and not price. A know some good examples of how brands successfully differentiate on price in Ukraine (Gala was a good one with “why pay more” campaign, white-box juices). What about Italy? There must be more examples, as the only one we came up with in class was Autogrill..

(c) prof. Bruni

SDA Bocconi

Not all brand-loyals, are THE loyals that a company should be looking for

Interestingly enough, I haven't previously heard companies distinguish between different loyal consumers. But it turns out that no all loyal customers - are THE loyals customers we should be looking for. Cmpany is interested in cognitive loyals - the people that love and trust its brand, follow it thru the years, look for it in store, recommend it to friends, try its brand extentions etc. Companies rely on loyal consumers as they help grow the business and get stable revenue, thus further invest in the company and product innovation, deliver higher quality products and services, even charge premium price to keep loyal customers even more happy.

But please, don't confuse loyalty with repeated purchase. As there are brand users that buy your brands because of convenience, price or for other reasons. But if one day you are not on the shelf where consumer expects you to be, if your competitor comes up with a new bright packaging, or if you increase your price - your so-called loyal user will easily switch to buying other products or brands.

Repeated purchasers - is a good start that a company can build upon, understand true reasons behind loyalty. It should try to win these people's trust and convert them into true loyals that is not an easy job, but is definitely worth the fight :)

(c) Prof. Troilo
SDA Bocconi

How do you calculate potential market size?

An interesting and an easy view on calculating your potential market size for non-durable goods is to multiply all possible customers by all possible usage occasions.  Sounds easy, right?
So, an example of how to calculate potential market size for pasta products in Italy.
Potential consumers: A country has a population of 60 million. We consider everyone to be potential product users except for those that have objective impediments not to use the product (e.g. kids below 6 months that just can not use pasta otherwise they die). It is imperative to include EVERY SINGLE person here, even someone who can not eat pasta due to gluten allergy (you can invent and sell him pasta without gluten), people with low income that can not afford to purchase pasta (as potentially you can invent such a low-priced product that they can buy it) etc. So, 97% of the target population will be considered as potential consumers.
Potential usage occasions: 2 times a day (he-he).
Maximum consumption quantity per usage occasion: 100 g
So - potential market size is 60M * 97% * 2 * 365 * 0.1kg = 4,248B tons of pasta per year.

Some watch-outs. Potential market by default can not be saturated, its potential can not reached. Well, technically it can be, but in reality I would guess this will never happen.  AND its size can grow due to some changes in the market environment (e.g. significant product improvements, such as invention of special breakfast pasta which would potential usage occasions from 2 to 3, or pasta for kids below 6 months:)

So, next step is to determine where are the biggest gaps between current and potential market come from. Is your current market smaller because not all 97 % of people use pasta? (If so, why now what can you do to increase your penetration)? Or is it because they eat pasta less than 2 times per day (and what can you do to make different lunch, dinner and possibly even breakfast pasta)? Or does the biggest gap come from the fact that they use 97 g of pasta per occasion and not 100. These gaps exist due to product, price, knowledge/communication and availability problems. Only :) Now when you know the gap - what can you do to close it? Good luck!

And some trivia: did you know that EMRI scans are used in consumer research to detect human emotions towards some products / campaings? Another one: a necessity of the cork in a wine bottle is one of the biggest myths of wine business, a respected ritual (remember how sommelier pops-up the cork, explores, smells it and gives it to you so that you can smell it as well?) - that doesn't add any product quality benefits. But when you do it - you feel yourself a part of the special "wine lovers club" that know what to do with a used bottle cork..

(c) Prof. Troilo

SDA Bocconi

Consumer segmentation

Interesting 8-hour discussions on consumer segmentation today. It once again reconfirmed that cases of successful segmentation based on socio-demographic differences is almost nonexistent. Rather, the segments are based on a combination of cultural, psychological, value-based and behavioral characteristics (or "life-style" if you will). And there is not a single correct segmentation - be creative to create your, this may lead to discovery of absolutely new markets! But please, check that your segmentation is valid - any given consumer can only be on one single market segment :) The more focused you are - the more effective, though even in a specific segment you will most probably have compete with the mass-market products..

And some trivia: Did you know that Heineken sells over 90 different beer brands in Italy (the most non-beer country I can imagine)? What caught me by surprise is that Italy is the world's largest mineral water market!

(c) Prof. Troilo
SDA Bocconi

Humans are rational - but have a subjective rationality..

Today's take-away substantiates the quote: there are product benefits that the consumers are searching for (e.g. tasty wine). These benefits are determined by product subjective attributes (e.g. country of origin, docg information, sort of grape, vintage year, shape of the bottle etc.). So the wine is not necessary tasty, you just believe it should be based on the attributes you see when you buy it. So, do you know why South African wines are considered to be good wines? Because producers use black glass of the bottle (cool!) and the bottle is heavy (it weights like quality product). These were functional attributes. What if you search for emotional benefit while buying the wine (e.g. you want to be cool and look like a wine connoisseur) - what would be the attributes for such a purchase? First of all price! The more the better :)

Today's learning - generic beliefs are effects with no knowledge. An example: Italians consider Naples coffee to be the best in Italy (no one remembers why). Italians think that Americano is the worst coffee in the world. The legend of the good Naples comes from the an apparatus Napoletana - that was actually used for making Americano-style filtered coffee :)

Market info - did you know that coffee is world's 2nd largest business by size, right after oil!

(c) Prof. Troilo
SDA Bocconi