Text |Professional Catering Network Contributing Author Jiao Yimeng.
Spending so much money on grass marketing every year, why is the ROI of my catering brand still so low?”
The kitchen holds meetings every day and develops so many dishes, why is there still no hit?”
If you don't pay attention to the star rating of Dianping, it will drop, which directly affects the number of customers entering the store”
Catering is known as the "king of all industries", the chain is complex, there are many things, in the actual business process, the restaurant boss encounters more than these problems, even if the restaurant boss has "three heads and six arms" is also lacking.
But no matter how busy they are, there is a consensus among restaurant owners that consumer insights and user research are always the most important ones, because it is related to the market and which direction the company should sail.
"Customer research" is imminent
A number of leading catering brands are doing research here!
Consumer insights are related to brand strategy and track width
Consumer insights may seem like a macro and cliché topic, but when it comes to the practical level of brands, the effect can be described as a cloud of mud.
It took 7 years to create an emerging beverage brand with an annual revenue of more than 8 billion yuan, which is what a group of people from games have done, and this brand is Yuanqi Forest.
One of the important reasons for this is that Yuanqi Forest has created the category of sparkling water, and behind the success of sparkling water, it reflects Yuanqi Forest's deep insight into consumers. That is, consumers keep saying that they want to be healthy, and the real idea of consumers is to pursue health while also wanting the drink to retain some sweetness.
Therefore, Yuanqi Forest is not a sugar-free drink, but a sugar-substitute drink with healthier raw materials, 0 calories but sweetness, which meets consumer expectations.
On the other hand, the data shows that the market share of sugar-free tea in China is less than 10%.
There are many consumer needs, and it is possible that consumers themselves do not know what they want.
The difficulty of consumer insight is also here, it is directly linked to strategic decision-making, how to identify the real demand?How do you identify a large demand that is broad enough to be broad?
The accuracy of consumer insight means that the size of the market is related to the brand strategy, and it is related to whether the resources will be wasted and whether the brand will get good results when all the core resources are poured into this thing.
In addition to identifying the real and false needs and the size of the demand, another difficulty in consumer insights is to identify what can be used for you.
Daniel Zhang, the founder of Haidilao, was originally making hot pot across the industry, and the hot pot base he made initially did not taste particularly good, but Daniel Zhang was very warm and thoughtful in his service to customers.
The taste is not good, and it can be continuously improved;And good service can make customers feel like a spring breeze.
When the warm service required by the public catering and the kindness of Daniel Zhang were integrated, it slowly gave birth to the "** service" that belongs to Haidilao, free shoe shine, nail art, and hair washing. It also gave birth to the "unique" Haidilao, the "big brother of the catering industry".
So, what does Consumer Insights insight?It is necessary to gain insight into what is really needed by consumers, and also to gain insight into the opportunities that belong to your own brand.
There is "real gold**" hidden in customer research, how to "dig" treasures?
It has become a consensus that consumer insights are important, and the next question before us is, how to implement it?How to do it in practice?
The future development of a brand mainly depends on the explosive products, positioning, brand, etc.
1) "Calculate" the explosive product
From not being favored to opening nearly 15,000 stores, from the "subsidy war", controversy to data-driven, Luckin Coffee's subsequent success is inseparable from the "explosive product strategy".
So, how did the raw coconut latte, a coffee explosion created almost by Luckin Coffee, come to be?
Before the advent of raw coconut latte, Luckin Coffee had thousands of new recipes lying in its inventory, which was preparation.
Based on internal and external data, coupled with a large number of user research, and analysis by industry experts, Luckin Coffee has gained insight into the popularity of raw coconut flavor and sufficient chain, which is user research.
So I decided to take out the raw coconut latte for testing, and once it was launched, it exploded, which was the landing.
Behind the birth of the popular raw coconut latte, there is the credit of obtaining "online members" by subsidies, and the credit of screening "effective voices" from thousands of user reviews.
These are not thought up by patting the head, but "calculated" by comprehensive user research.
2) Look at competing products to "find differentiation".
Sometimes, it may be difficult for start-up brands to understand the market, but by looking at competing brands, they can quickly understand the real "battlefield".
Dongpeng Special Drink, from a little-known small factory, has later become the "first brother of China's functional drinks", with an annual revenue of 10 billion, using this method.
At that time, there was already Red Bull in the functional drink, and Red Bull was staring at white-collar workers in advertising, product design and **.
Dongpeng Special Drink has insight into the blue-collar crowd that Red Bull ignores, and those drivers who do manual work and drive trucks are often sleepy and also need energy drinks to refresh themselves.
As a result, Dongpeng Special Drink becomes a canned bottle and a dust cap, even when driving, the bottle is easy to open, and the bottle cap can also be used as an ashtray.
Every big brand has grown up so far, and all of them have laid out data early.
According to the Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network, as of June 2023, the scale of China's Internet users has reached 107.9 billion people, with an Internet penetration rate of 764%。In the way of user research, I am afraid that there is no way to reach the people of the whole country in real time and quickly like online user research.
Previous user research required dumb effort. At a time when the Internet has become popular and has become a new infrastructure, brands need to be "skillful" to do user research. This requires the help of more professional online tools.
The industry is calling for a good customer research plan, which needs to be "more granular".
The advantage of using professional tools is that you don't have to build a thousand-person R&D team like a large enterprise to do it yourself, nor do you need to manually read the articles and comments of various social media platforms and e-commerce platforms one by one. Time and costs can be freed up and used where they are needed most.
Due to the huge complexity of knowledge in all walks of life, more specialized and fine-grained tools are needed.
Recently,Many restaurant owners are using a user research system called Jiuqian Zhongtai. Its functions include, but are not limited to, explosive product research, brand research, and competitor analysis that we mentioned above. For example, which products and ingredients have a tendency to be on fire and can be laid out in advance?”
The industry has exploded a new product, do you want to follow?”
Entering an industry, how to understand the advantages and disadvantages of competing products, so as to determine their own strategy?”
With the tool, you can see a lot of real user voices, and the answer may be hidden inside.
For example, if you want to study the tea industry, enter "tea" in the system, and it will capture articles and comments on social media platforms and e-commerce platforms in real time, quickly conduct structured analysis, and clearly list them according to key business elements such as products, stores, and marketing.
As shown in the figure below, after the system completes the reading comprehension, it will automatically output the target customer group, market volume, entry players, product raw materials, hot topics, etc. of tea drinks according to the content of the social media platform and e-commerce platform, and can also summarize the views.
Most importantly, it is possible to know what consumers really care about through the user research system. As shown in the figure below, the most discussed by users are product elements such as products, drinks, tastes, and textures, followed by service elements such as stores, experiences, and service attitudes, that is to say, tea products are fundamental, but the service attitude of stores is also very important.
The worst thing about running a brand is that you don't know what you're good at, what you lack, and you're blindsided. Through the competitor analysis function of the user research system, you can have a clearer understanding of your market positioning. By opening specific consumer posts and corresponding comments, you can understand in which dimensions the brand outperforms its competitors and what the specific reasons are, so as to obtain valuable business guidance and advice.
We often envy some brands that do well, then we can actually go one step further. Through this user research system, find out what its big hits are and why they are good, so as to find inspiration for your own products and brands. That's the job and the mystery of user research.
Most of the SaaS companies solve the common needs of the industry, and relying on a large number of industry research done in the consulting field, the user research of Jiuqian Zhongtai is more professional, with key industries, key categories, social media platforms, e-commerce platforms, and industry segmentation platforms.
The logic of Jiuqian's user research system is to aggregate a large amount of information in real time and output it as key elements, positive and negative emotions, and can also trace the original post and summarize opinions.
Jiuqian Zhongtai has an insight that compared with articles, netizen comments may represent a more authentic voice. Therefore, Jiuqian Zhongtai has broken through the technical limitations, and can also monitor comments, using LLM technology to read the context completely and accurately understand the context.
Summary of Professional Catering Network:
Li Xiang, the founder of Li Auto, once said: "The biggest difference between organizations is the ability to use tools. ”
Good tools can improve efficiency and save costs.
Business is changing rapidly, and we see that the pattern between brands has been changing, and when we sigh and sigh at the results of the change, the cause of change may have already been planted.
Change from now on;And every bit of effort that brands spend on user research may hide opportunities and futures.