Coffee, Cake, Champagne… and Consumer Habits
A product’s tie-in to a consumption moment seems like a given.
Products are meant to be consumed for certain needs. Those needs happen within the context of an occasion. And that occasion is the consumption moment.
Among the many exponential products vying for the attention and affection of consumers in those precious moments, it’s of notable interest to reflect on those that have so deeply imprinted themselves as ‘go-to’ definitive staples and solutions…
You wake up in the morning. Coffee dominates mindshare.
You are hosting a birthday party. Cake seems like a mandatory.
You are celebrating a milestone. Champagne anyone?
The consumer habit formed around choosing these products to satisfy a consumption moment (breakfast, birthday, celebration) is a sticky one.
Sticky?
Marketers refer to stickiness as the repeat rate of your consumers in selecting your product over time, usually to meet their motivations in a certain consumption moment or occasion.
The sister metric that precedes stickiness is often not given as much attention, but it’s crucial to the plot: mental availability — the extent to which your product is top of mind for someone when a need arises.
Basically, does the consumer think of you in a buying moment because they associate you to a specific consumption moment.
If so, they will have a higher likelihood of turning to you — considering your offering, assessing its relevance, and eventually buying — if and when that specific need hits. You’ve made it into their consideration set.
Long-term stickiness is the goal, it’s a principal reason why reoccurring revenue models are still the sweetheart of many portfolio architectures. But, the need first starts with paving that top of mind awareness and getting that golden seat of mental availability…
Before your competition is able to assume it, before your consumer gets persuaded and distracted by alternatives, before you become another option in a long lineup of (often times and exceedingly) similar, non-differentiated products.
In many instances, relevancy inroads have been forged at the macro product category level, so it’s the micro offering scape within an existing product vertical - when the consumer is faced with selecting a brand - that the real arm wrestling for mental availability and subsequent stickiness begins.
For instance, I might think of coffee (versus tea) as my product need first thing in the morning — I’ve drawn a solid line of resolution to that beverage sub-category. Great. But then I’m confronted with the many dotted line remedies… what brand will I turn to?
A theme I have written about before — non-linearity (see: Consumer Choices in the Age of Connected Consumption — Disloyal, Non-Linear, & Non-Singular) — stipulates that a brand’s competition is not relegated to the category it plays in. Even though I might want coffee in the morning, cake for a birthday, and champagne for a celebration, it’s not a given that those categories are insulated from threat or that many others are entrenched product solutions.
It comes down to a consumer’s baseline motivation — if I am craving energy and alertness in the morning then coffee might do the trick, but I could also create a morning habit that propels me to select an energy drink, attend a rigorous cycling class, or spend some time with a mindfulness app.
All of these different categories (beverage, exercise, meditation) could satisfy my need for energy and alertness, and they could be complements or substitutes to coffee.
Even at the product and category level there is always vulnerability to be disrupted.
The brand level comes into focus after a product and category need has been identified to address a certain motivation.
I need coffee. Starbucks.
I need a ride. Uber.
I need to order in food. DoorDash.
I need entertainment. Netflix.
I need new eyeglasses. Warby Parker.
I need to buy something (literally anything). Amazon.
The consumer habit emanating from knowing who you are (awareness) to thinking of you in a buying moment (mental availability) to continuously choosing you (purchase) forms the basis of routine preference.
Routine preference — behaviorally selecting your brand consistently — that’s where the funnel typically breaks down for many brands.
The degree to which a consumer selects a given brand for a given need in a given period of time is referred to as a brand’s share of requirements.
If, in a certain week, I consume coffee seven times and I select Starbucks three out of those seven times then Starbucks occupies nearly 43% of my share of requirements.
For certain product categories like food and beverage, purchasing cycles are shorter and there are higher incidences to intercept someone’s shopping trip and jockey to get your brand into their basket to grab more share of requirements (and consequently, share of spend).
For other more durable categories, the cycle can be a lot longer and if you don’t get that golden seat you might be on the periphery waiting for months or, in some cases, even years.
Being top of mind over and over and over again cements not only awareness and mental availability, but also lays the tracks for relevancy loops that are critical to reinforce your brand in the consumer equation after a need has been identified and a category has been selected for a consumption moment.
It’s great to occupy mental availability for a key consumption moment, even better to occupy it for many, many more.
Expanding the surface area as to when someone selects you beyond a single-use aperture further amplifies your share of requirements and extends your brand’s survival rate by diversifying into different occasions, demand moments, and need states.
Coffee is not just for early morning jump starts, it is also perfect for your mid-morning jolt, your afternoon reset, and your evening decaffeneited wind-down (not to mention for all weather conditions and moods - hot, extra hot, cold, iced).
An ongoing cycle of repeat behavior perpetuates stickiness through frequency that migrates to (hopefully) routine preference which converts into the two most coveted metrics of them all, loyalty and referral.
So how to get someone to be aware of you, think of you, connect you to a key consumption moment, and ultimately prefer you?
Content! Creativity! Channels!
Consumers experience the world through many communication touch points — inside, outside, offline, online.
The brand assignment then is to storytell the who, what, where, when, and why of your product offering and brand narrative in a way that widens your reach and advances your consumer uptake by cohesively certifying you as the solution for key cosumption needs.
Time spent online has commanded a surge of activity and digital platforms are the central conductors of content consumption for many growth audiences (during a time when digital interfacing is lending itself to an evermore immersion-based Web 3.0 model of AR, VR, and everything ‘meta’ in-between).
So let’s focus on digital.
On the recruitment side, creating a digital ad and driving trial has lost much reliability and specificity in recent months, but it can still be a viable, albeit increasingly expensive, feat.
Audience targeting with predominantly paid digital channels like social, search, and affiliate allows for a direct response content net to be thrown over an audience while continuous iteration and optimization of assets via content development and creative rotation aims to convert these cohorts at the lowest cost (goal is to keep CAC — customer acquisition cost — low ).
On the retention side — the downstream behavior of encouraging and nurturing repeat from the vulnerable cohorts that do actually convert and deepening their spend traction — well, that’s arguably more turbulent (goal is to keep LTV — customer lifetime value — high).
Inheriting a potentially less targeted and therefore less attuned customer audience requires a second (third, fourth, fifth) door tasked with tailoring messaging and vigorously personalizing content to keep them engaged and in the funnel.
Viewed in the context of a relationship, this is where it often devolves. We’re talking borderline stalking (multiple emails a week, a day) to desperate (a parade of promos, discounts, offers).
The thing is, although well intentioned, none of these tactics is, on its own, a passport to commitment.
They can stimulate a reaction, but it’s typically a short-lived cosmetic boost. The instrument, be it a cleverly worded email or promotion, can lose its fidelity and impact over time if it doesn’t deliver meaningful value.
The pay-for-play nature of this genre of marketing ultimately isn’t sustainable, nor is it practical or useful in establishing an enduring, lasting relationship with consumers.
That’s because long term relationships actually don’t require cause-effect gimmicks to keep someone interested.
Instead, the internal machinery of the product and brand promise is what delivers meaningful value.
That intrinsic clockwork is comprised of critical components:
Relevance — are you providing products and/or services that people want and need that provide a valuable addition to their lives? Often conveyed with… a portfolio offering, product mix, assortment, community, and network connection that is insulating enough to behave as a competitive moat.
Differentiation — are these products and/or services distinctively compelling, do they enhance consumer engagement, and should they warrant loyalty? Often provided through… superiority in product performance, product innovation and exclusivity, unique competitive advantage in platform/ price/features, accretive benefits, rewards programming, and a values & mission alignment that is perceived as valuably different and makes you rise above parity.
Accessibility — are these products and/or services easy to engage with and replenish? Often accomplished via… a seamless and delightful user experience that removes barriers to usage and offers convenience, flexibility, and ease. (Note: accessibility is different from exclusivity and approachability, traits which are dependent on brand values).
And, invariably, the most important for relationship longevity is your Brand Equity — are your collective efforts fusing cultural, consumer, & category significance and establishing a web of associations that wraps your brand in an armor of distinction within your competitive space?
Brand equity is the fluid that infuses all expressions of your brand identity across your values, mission, purpose, tone of voice, communications, product lines, partnerships, collaborations… everything… to convey your distinct perspective and underscore your unique stance.
It pushes you from a product into a brand and transforms you into a lifestyle marker.
Many smartphones can make calls, but Apple is the most innovative.
Many theme parks can impart fun, but Disney is the happiest place on earth.
Many toys can be educational, but Legos is the most creative as it inspires learning through play.
Many shoes can run a race, but Nike stands for winning.
Relevance, Differentiation, Accessibility, and Brand Equity together form the fundamental basis of consumer math.
What lives and thrives within these dimensions is often dynamic —
What was relevant yesterday might erode and lose meaning over time, initial points of differentiation might quickly become table stakes, definitions of accessibility could undergo change as your consumers evolve, and your brand equity will need to be reexamined by what is core and by what can and should adapt.
And therein lies the alchemy of brand marketing — navigating and understanding these parameters, forging new paradigms, and evaluating the matrix of conditions surrounding your own brand offering with a lens towards assessing vectors of relevance, differentiation, accessibility, and brand equity.
It could surface unrealized pathways that reinforce mental availability, facilitate habit generation, encourage routine preference, and over time yield that much sought after stickiness.
On a product level and on a brand level, the game is in play.
Coffee, Cake, Champagne… what’s next?
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Shruti is a seasoned brand strategist with a broad diversity of background, expertise, and industry knowledge in marketing and consumer design.
She is compelled by the intersectionality of brand, consumer, & culture and is deeply motivated by applying this passion space.
She is the Founder & Principal of Drive Brand Strategy, LLC a brand and innovation consulting firm. Connect with her at shruti.saini@drivebrandstrategy.com.
She received her MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA degree in Economics from Harvard College. All opinions are her own.
