Trial and Error as quick as you can

Let’s use an example to illustrate what is disaster check： Background: A large A-share listed company had acquired an American ginseng brand from abroad. Customer profile showed that most of them are heavy users over 45 years old. How to improve the ROI after the acquisition? The marketing director thought of expanding the ginseng user to coffee user, because the basic needs of drinking coffee and drinking tea are refreshing. Any marketing decision means the investment of time and money. The disaster check of decisions at early stage is critical, so the customer found us. 

Solution: Considering the limited budget, we conducted an in-depth consumer interview with coffee users and American ginseng users fist, rather than large size quantitative survey at the very beginning. An anthropological research tool was adopted. It was found that the extension to coffee users is a marketing disaster. In addition to refreshing, coffee users also enjoy the taste of coffee and the atmosphere of the cafe. They don’t mind taking health risks in exchange for current indulgent. Many American ginseng users had suffered from illness. They drank American ginseng tea not only for refreshment, but also for the future’s health. Although the two groups share the same need of refreshment, the internal value are completely different. Our client couldn’t win coffee users in the short to medium term.

 Marketing initiatives: 1) Extended to young people who need to work overtime, mainly sold in  convenience store or pharmacy in the office building with small size SKU; 2) Extended product line to ‘Ganoderma lucidum + American ginseng’, which extension didn’t affect the "pure American ginseng” brand image according to consumers. Finally, client achieved the performance target after the acquisition.