Consumer Benefit

I recently had a visit with a local planning director. He offered me tea from their cabinet of boxed tea selections and I selected ‘green tea’. He shared with me that the green tea and another were the most popular and that the other varieties were hardly ever selected. I recall wondering, perhaps out loud, why that was…

I do believe it all ladders back to the benefit. The benefit should be connected to a consumer belief and all should be grounded by drivers. The following construct I use to tie the three together:

Consumer Belief – leverage or change existing
Benefit- provides the answer to the question… why should the consumer care?
Drivers– supports the benefit and connects back to the consumer belief
Folks don’t select Chai tea because they don’t know why they should. Others may know Chai too well, and want something different. As a good ‘got it right’ example, Tazo Tea does a nice job of announcing the benefit- the cup in front of me is tagged with ‘Calm’.  However, if we look closer at Tazo we might see that this naming theme is not consistent. Some variations are closer to the leaf, while others are connected to the benefit.
People don’t pick certain teas when faced with a nice selection because they don’t know why they should, or because they know what they like (or, don’t like). Selection processes can be further dimensionalized by understanding frame of mind. Is the current mindspace: personal, communal, and/or altruistic? Can consuming tea be communal? Can consuming tea be altruistic?