3 lessons green tea tasting revealed about India's psychology of flavours
Image from Twinnings Australia
Hello dear readers. Apologies for the delay due to, well, a little pandemic-shaped bump in the road. However, I am back with new insights from one of my research projects. This may be of particular interest to those in the food and drinks space.
I conducted an in-depth consumer taste test comparing flavoured green teas from two start-up brands to investigate: flavour palate, preferences and purchase intent among green tea drinkers.
Unlike the previous pieces, I will not go into the details like the 1.10 million cups of tea India drank in 2020 (I may have drunk 10% of that for this taste test), nor how Green tea is expected to grow more than regular tea (7% vs. 4.2%). Instead, I will combine the qualitative learnings from this project with my previous experience on some of the largest global food brands, to prescribe three building blocks on product, to keep in mind for the Indian market.
So, here’s the tea on achieving the perfect balance of flavour and palate –
1 - Promise loss of weight without loss of flavour – Green tea is believed to be the elixir for weight loss (despite lack of evidence to support this). It’s one of the earlier weight-loss habits consumers adopt. However, it turns out that green tea’s naturally astringent flavours taste worse than ‘drinking lukewarm water in the mornings’. Therefore, to make it more palatable, consumers end up adding their own pinch of familiar tasting ingredients that include: milk, sugar, honey, cinnamon and even cardamom. The promise of weight-loss hitches them on to the bandwagon, but lack of palatable flavour nudges them to fall right off.
Marketing lesson – Dial up the flavour messaging if you’re claiming to cut calories! The flavour compromise automatically happens in consumers’ minds as soon as they read words like ‘weight loss’, or ‘healthy’. Consequently food and drink products are judged less harshly on flavour and taste. This is also the primary reason why one sees all ‘healthy’ foods trying to dial up the taste or flavour factor vs. decadence quotient in regular food products.
What companies can do – add strong, familiar flavours to food to distract from the ‘anticipated compromise’. Flavours like cinnamon, paprika, cumin, mint are all strong, distinctive and are known to have health benefits of their own. Engaging people’s attention on flavour changes the frame of reference and judgement. The product will then be judged as primarily having great taste, then as healthy.
2 - Complexity wins over simplicity – of all the flavours tested (there were quite a few), simplistic flavours fell flat. We Indians love flavour combinations over uni-dimensional tastes. While consumers liked the subtle notes of Chamomile and mint, purchase intent was higher for more complex flavours like Kahwa, and Ginger-Mint.
Marketing Lesson – single flavours are associated with being boring and bland. They’re seen as mere carriers for a more complex composition.
What companies can do – build ‘intentional complexity’. Food technologists suggest building a flavour profile like a pyramid. Build with the mildest flavours at the base, and keep adding flavour layers till you manage to hit the triumvirate of three zones on the tongue. For example, the flavour with the highest purchase intent was a spicy Green Tea mix: green tea was the base canvas, cinnamon was the middle distinctive flavour, and pepper added a complex top-note. This opens up a whole new world of unmined flavour pyramids that exploded in the market such as salted caramel, dark chocolate and chilli, berry and black pepper etc., So the next time you like a flavour, notice the pyramid.
Source: Exeter.com
3 - Indians are flavour maximalists – we like good bang for our buck! While respondents briefly turned into sommeliers to note subtle flavours of green tea, they almost unanimously chose the brand with the stronger flavour. Because, “If I am paying for a flavour, I want to taste it!”.
Marketing Lesson – when it comes to flavours, more is more and can never be too much! For example, Lay’s and Maggi’s Masala flavour, as opposed to their plain salt or tomato - are more popular if not the highest selling variant. In ‘Western’ food formats, a desi twist always works; like the McAloo Tikki Burger or Chicken Tikka sandwiches
What companies can do – The stronger and more complex the flavour, the higher the perceived value for money. Hence use the familiar, spicy flavours as your main stay. They are your cash cows, and you can use fusion and international combinations of flavour to drive aspiration and imagery.
In conclusion,
The near unanimous victory of the green tea brand with spicy, strong flavours inspired me to put down the three basic rules of flavour. To re-cap, firstly, while health and weight loss automatically reduces taste expectations, people are not willing to compromise as much now. Secondly, flavours need to be familiar and complex. While subtle flavours may sing for the more ”evolved” palate, the larger chunk of the market likes strong, multi-layered flavours. Thirdly, brands can use the stronger and more Indian flavours as their cash-cows while building aspirational imagery with more subtle flavours.
After over a decade spent working on food and beverage brands, I can safely say that the more successful brands are those that built themselves these three rules upwards. I hope this article helps unlock some flavourful thinking and insights even if you are not in the food space. After all, people are people and people like complexity and variety.
