Viper Creative

What Can A Humble Coffee Biscuit Teach Us?

Author: Neil Wilkins

Neil learnt his marketing with the likes of Orange, NatWest, BP Castrol and Ordnance Survey and now helps individuals and businesses to communicate more effectively. He trains and mentors marketers on professional Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifications through to post-graduate level.

The humble little snack in its plastic wrapper that appears in your saucer when you hit a cafe for espresso or cappuccino can teach us a lot about customer focused marketing.

Imagine you wanted to buy some for home use when a friend comes around for a coffee and chat. You head to the supermarket to find them. In which aisle do you begin? Is it the aisle with biscuits or the aisle with coffee?

Sounds like a daft question but actually it's a profound thought process that can effect your entire purchase process and one for which an entire industry has been spawned and it's called Category Management.

If you answered the question 'biscuit aisle' then you perceive the humble snack as simply a biscuit to add to the collection of those you bring out when you want to put your feet up or when a friend unexpectedly arrives at your door. Perhaps though you answered the question 'coffee aisle' because you only think of those particular biscuits in direct association with a cup of coffee and therefore naturally think of them as part of a coffee drinking experience.

The difference is subtle but very important in terms of customer experience and something we call more broadly the Customer Journey. If you as a retailer assumed that because they are biscuits you put them in that aisle (well afterall they actually are biscuits so that makes sense doesn't it) but in fact the most important and profitable customers who shop with you perceive them as more 'coffee' than 'biscuit' then you didn't meet their expectations in their customer journey.

It's just a biscuit here but a general principle that makes such a huge difference to how customers perceive what you offer them. Get into their heads and their way of thinking and you stand a great chance of providing the customer journey that creates true long-term loyalty from them. Get it wrong and make basic but incorrect assumptions about what your customers want and you will find them heading very quickly to your competitors around the corner.

So grab a latte and perhaps a humble little coffee biscuit to go with it and think for a moment about the customer journey you are providing to your customers.

- Posted on Monday 13 Sep 2010 at 09:51 by Neil Wilkins

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