The purpose of marketing is to connect tasks and products. The magic of the brand lies in that moment when a task emerges in the consumer's mind that needs to be solved. At this moment: Brand is a shortcut.
The purpose of the project is to increase the sales of milkshakes in the store.Like many other large companies, McDonald's has its own customer research methods. They approached milkshake customers and had them fill out a typical consumer survey, asking them questions like, "How could the milkshake be improved so you would buy more? Would you like it cheaper? More chocolatey?"Based on the feedback from the survey, the company began to make many improvements to the milkshake. Strangely, the milkshakes were getting better and better, but neither sales nor profits increased .So McDonald's invited Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen (author of "The Innovator's Dilemma") and his team to solve this problem.Clayton Christensen, Professor at Harvard Business School (Author of The Innovator’s Dilemma)Through a series of observations, records, and interviews, the Clayton team discovered an interesting truth:Almost half of the milkshakes are sold in the morning, and the customers who come to buy the milkshakes are almost all the same people. They only buy milkshakes, and almost all of them drive away.They conducted further interviews and research and found that all customers who bought milkshakes had the same thing to do early every morning: they had to drive a long time to work and were bored on the road, so they needed to do something to make the journey more interesting; they were not really hungry at the time, but they knew that about 2 hours later, which was between the morning and noon, their stomachs would start to growl.How do they generally solve these problems?Some people will eat a banana, but soon find that it digests too quickly and they are hungry again soon. Some people have tried bagels, but they are too crispy and your hands will be sticky when you eat them while driving. Some people have eaten Snickers chocolate, but they always feel that eating chocolate for breakfast is not very healthy.What about milkshakes? It is undoubtedly the best of them all. Sipping a thick milkshake through a thin straw takes a long time and mostly keeps away the hunger waves that come all morning. One person blurted out: "These milkshakes are so thick! It takes me 20 minutes to suck the milkshake clean through the thin straw. Who cares what's in it? I don't care. I just know that I'm full all morning and it fits my teacup holder perfectly." He said while raising his empty left hand.How do big brands like McDonald's, Starbucks , and Coca-Cola quickly find loyal fans?After understanding the above information, it becomes obvious how to improve the milkshake. How can we help customers better kill boring commuting time? Make the milkshake thicker so customers can sip it longer. Adding a little bit of fruit pulp is not to make consumers feel healthy, but to give customers a little surprise during their boring journey. Move the milkshake machine to the counter so that consumers don’t have to queue and can just swipe their card to get the milkshake by themselves. These measures have greatly increased the sales of milkshakes.If we reflect on this case carefully, we will find that it reveals that the traditional method of understanding consumers, segmenting the target market, and then building a brand is problematic.1. Find the real market segmentTaking the most basic market segmentation as an example, the definition of market segmentation has a very direct impact on what kind of products the company develops, what functions the products should have, how to market them, and the company's assessment of the market size.Generally speaking, consumer companies segment their markets using two common dimensions:The first is consumer demographic information, such as age, income, region, and education level;The second is the product categories and price ranges in the existing market.The problem with this is that this is not how the consumer sees the market. For consumers, their lives are complicated and they constantly find that there are many "tasks" to complete in life.These "tasks" may be that you are bored on the subway and feel like doing something, or you may have just moved into a new house and realize that you need furniture to fill the house, or you may suddenly feel thirsty while walking on the road. Consumers discover different "tasks" every day, and they "hire" different products to solve their tasks.What does this mean?This means that the basic unit of market segmentation and business analysis should not be the consumer himself or the competing product category, but what task the consumer wants to complete.Let’s explain this problem from another angle. Generally speaking, the ultimate goal of all business analysis activities is to establish the causal relationship between different business variables and consumers' purchase of products. Only in this way can we control these variables and get consumers to buy more of our products.However, it is difficult to establish a causal relationship between information such as consumers' age, income, and marital status and product purchases. If more than half of the consumers who go to McDonald's to buy milkshakes are men over 40 years old, then are the other men over 40 also necessarily the target consumers of milkshakes?This type of demographic information often provides some probabilistic references about purchasing behavior, which are correlations, but it is difficult to constitute causality.Obviously, most of the time, using the task that consumers want to complete as the unit of analysis will help us establish effective causal relationships. Although correlation and causation may seem similar on the surface, they can lead to huge differences in business results.Qunar founder Zhuang Chenchao has shared on many occasions a key lesson he learned when he founded Qunar: you have to think clearly about what your addressable market is. He pointed out that the biggest mistake Ctrip made was to use "Online Travel" as its addressable market, while Qunar used the entire travel market as its addressable market.Another explanation is that a key task for consumers here is to travel, and what kind of product or service can best accomplish this task? Booking flights and hotels online is just one solution to this task, and this is not a very stable market.Peter Drucker , the father of modern management, said:The customers rarely buy what the business thinks it sells him.In most cases, what consumers buy is not what companies think they sell.Thedore Levitt, a Harvard marketing professor who coined the term “marketing myopia,” once taught his students:People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!People don't really want to buy a quarter-inch drill bit. They just want a quarter inch hole!True consumer-centricity means focusing on the "tasks" that consumers need to complete, rather than their age or income. Similarly, if we only focus on competitors in one niche category, we will lose many opportunities for growth.2. Limitations of Positioning TheoryFurthermore, after the company finds its own market segment, it needs to further position its brand.The positioning theory proposed by Jack Trout in 1969 is the method adopted by most companies. Positioning theory may be the most influential idea in marketing ever. The core of this theory is that marketers should make their own brands occupy a special position in the minds of consumers relative to competing brands.Interestingly, thinking about how to position a brand in terms of what tasks consumers want to accomplish can help us better understand the limitations of positioning theory.To further explain this, I would like to ask you to think about a question: Coca-Cola may be one of the most successful brands in the business world. What do you think is the positioning of Coca-Cola?Some people might say "Open Happiness", which is the slogan that Coca-Cola has used for 7 years. Starting this year, they changed their slogan to "Taste the Feeling".Whether it is "Open Happiness" or "Taste the Feeling", many people may wonder: What kind of positioning is this? It is neither specific nor vivid, and you may not be able to remember it even if you read it three times.Yet Coca-Cola remains one of the most successful brands. Why?In addition to Coca-Cola's huge distribution network, which allows you to easily buy its products in most places , another reason explains the limitations of positioning theory.To explain this problem, let us first introduce a concept called category entry points (CEP).As mentioned above, consumers have different needs or tasks to complete every day. For example, when you are watching TV at home, you suddenly want to drink something or chew something; when you are having dinner with friends, you want to drink something; in the hot summer, when you are sunbathing on the beach, you also want to drink something. These are all "tasks" that consumers need to complete.And these "tasks" can be considered as the "category entry points" of beverages. The drinks here can be cola, juice, or even wine. Obviously, category entry points can be large or small, important or minor.We all know that if a brand wants to be purchased, it must first be actively thought of by consumers, that is, it must be prominent in the minds of consumers. The reason why Coca-Cola has become a brand worth hundreds of billions of dollars is that it has successfully linked itself with many important category entry points and established mental significance in many scenarios.A comparison of data can give you more powerful evidence.Take the Turkish soft drinks market as an example. In this market, there are two big brands, one is Coca-Cola and the other is Türkiye's local Cola-Turka. The market share of the former is 8 times that of the latter. A research institute has identified the eight most important entry points into the Turkish soft drinks market and has counted whether consumers can actively think of these two brands at these entry points. As shown in the figure below, the X-axis is the number of category entry points that can be associated, and the vertical axis is the proportion of the total soft drink consumer population.We can see that 67% of consumers cannot actively associate Cola-Turka with any of the eight category entry points, while the figure for Coca-Cola is only 14%.More importantly, nearly 70% of consumers (67%) can actively associate Coca-Cola with more than 3 category entry points, while for Cola-Turka, this number is only 15%. A very stark contrast.Different category entry points (or tasks that consumers need to complete) are like distribution points in our minds. Just as it is difficult for a consumer brand to achieve great success without extensive offline distribution coverage, in many categories, the success of a brand is also inseparable from occupying entry points into different categories in the minds of consumers.Another good example is Starbucks.Howard Schultz, Starbucks' legendary CEO, described his vision back in 1995:An authentic coffee experience that conveyed the artistry of es pr esso making, a place to think and imagine, a spot where people could gather and talk over a great cup of coffee, a comforting refuge that provided a sense of community, a third place for people to congregate beyond work or the home, a place that welcomed people and rewarded them for coming, and a layout that could accommodate both fast service and quiet moments.A true experience that conveys the art of espresso, a place to think and imagine, a place where people can drink a great cup of coffee, gather and chat, a comfortable haven with a sense of community, a third place besides work and home, a place that welcomes and encourages people to come back, a space that can accommodate fast service and inner peace at the same time.Obviously, Starbucks' coffee is not significantly better than Costa's, so why is its market value more than 10 times that of Costa? One reason is that Starbucks does not position itself as a simple coffee shop. In most of the above "task" scenarios, it establishes a direct causal relationship with the tasks.At the "Goldman Sachs Global Retail Conference" in September this year and the "Morgan Stanley Global Retail Conference" in November last year, Starbucks Chief Financial Officer Scott Maw summarized the seven driving forces for Starbucks' continued growth, two of which are: creating new consumption scenarios and encouraging people to enjoy Starbucks at home.Positioning theory has become an enduring classic, and it naturally has its unique insights, but we must also understand its limitations. Positioning theory is more suitable for some early brands, single-point breakthrough and detonation, but when a brand grows slowly, the original single-point positioning may also become a shackle.That’s why we see Coca-Cola’s slogan with a broad meaning and Starbucks’ persistent exploration of more consumption scenarios.3. Rethink your brandLooking back at this long article, we have developed it around a very simple concept. Some people call it a scenario, some say it is consumer demand, but I prefer: what kind of tasks do consumers want to complete?This concept, like many of the conclusions above, has its limitations, but this does not prevent it from being a key issue that is easily overlooked.A general brand finds its own position in the game with competing brands. A good brand can sometimes define the category it is in. A great brand perfectly solves one or more tasks that consumers want to complete. This is a very rough rule, but it seems to make some sense.When a consumer uses a brand's product and his/her task is perfectly solved, he/she will continue to use it next time. By repeating this process over and over again, consumers will gradually establish a causal relationship between the task and the brand.Brands that can establish this causal relationship are powerful, and we can see that a large number of brands have wide recognition but find it difficult to establish this causal relationship.The purpose of marketing is to connect tasks and products. The magic of the brand lies in that moment when a task emerges in the consumer's mind that needs to be solved. At this moment: Brand is a shortcut.
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